Merry Christmas To All!

From our to yours,

wishing you peace and love,

....a season of brightness and light,

.......with lots of joy and cheer (watch out for the sneeky Grinch)!

Wishing you A Very Merry Christmas!!!

Brownies in a Flash

Most brownie recipes call for 2-3 eggs as one of their ingredients to help bind all the ingredients together. When I bake, I can usually replace one egg without a problem but 2-3 eggs are much harder to replace so we have not tried making brownies with Egg Replacer or any other egg replacement method. The problem is that every time we made brownies I would feel bad that Katie could not eat them. I remember a friend of hers asking Katie if she liked brownies. She turned to her and said “I don’t know, I've never had one.”

It was time for me to figure this out! Right about that time, my son came home all excited because his gym teacher had given them a recipe for “Brownie in a Cup” and he knew that Katie could actually eat it. I tried it out on both kids and they loved it so I thought I would share it with you. 

Another reason I love this recipe is that instead of having a whole pan of brownies to eat up, you only have one cup to eat and clean up. I also love that it only takes a couple of minutes to make this.

Brownie in a Cup

4T       Flour

4T       Sugar

2T       Cocoa

Dash of salt

2T       oil

2T       water

¼ tsp.  vanilla

Mix the flour, sugar, cocoa and salt in a cup. Add oil, water and vanilla and stir. Microwave for 1 minute and 30 seconds until it is the desired consistency. The exact times will vary depending on your microwave.

Christmas Alternative: Add a drop of peppermint to the brownie mix before cooking and top with crushed candy canes.

Enjoy your sweet treat!

Vegan Wednesday

The other day, I was in one of our local downtown areas when I remembered that it was Vegan Wednesday! Vegan Wednesday is the one day a week this restaurant bakes vegan cupcakes, which are made with no dairy and no eggs. Thinking about my daughter, I thought I'd just pop in and buy her a vegan cupcake, just to surprise her. There are vanilla cupcakes with decadent chocolate frosting and red velvet and chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting. As my eyes finally found the sign that says "Vegan Cupcakes" on it, my excitement quickly turns to disappointment. The only vegan cupcake they had made for that day was a peanut butter cupcake. I know there are many people who love anything with peanut butter in it. I for one am not one of those people.The other problem is that my daughter is also severely allergic to peanut butter and all other nuts.

What is frustrating to me is this seems to happen to us quite often and in many different places. There has been many a time when we have been excited to walk into a bakery that has some vegan bake goods on display only to find that they have peanut butter or nuts in them. We are getting pretty good at hiding the disappointment on our faces, especially my daughter, but it gets harder and harder each time. So for now I can dream that one day when I walk in to buy my daughter a vegan cupcake that maybe, just maybe, it will be a red velvet cupcake with vegan cream cheese frosting. Yummy! So for those people out there who are nice enough to make those delicious vegan baked goods, hold the nuts and peanut butter please!