Vegan Chocolate Biscotti And Vegan Donuts (The Breakfast Weekend!)

I've been on a bit of a breakfast crusade lately. With the onset of shorter days and darker mornings, my craving for the morning sweet-but-satisfying has intensified. These chocolate biscotti were a must. My first ever "try" at making homemade biscotti. So easy. Just use a light hand when mixing the dough. Shape into a log or two logs, bake for the first round about twenty minutes. Remove and allow the log(s) to cool. Then slice, and bake for the second round. It's the second baking shot that really gives this Italian cookie its "crunch" and earns it top honors in our house for dunking-ness durability. We proclaimed it a winner during our Breakfast-Palooza!

I made two versions of biscotti this week. I really wanted one for the afternoon pick-me-up (the chocolate one) and another for breakfast that packed a powerful punch in terms of nuts and fiber. The two finalists for Best Breakfast in Bed eats were: vegan biscotti takes first prize--both kinds. I made the chocolate and then the super-nutty-uber-healthy biscotti compliments of Alice Medrich's wonderful cookbook: Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies. The biscotti recipes were irresistible and a breeze to make--both of them! Who knew? For the record the last time we had biscotti in this house was after purchasing a small yurt-sized plastic tub of it from one of those giant warehouse places. I thought we'd never finish it. That was nine years ago! Nine.

The second breakfast-palooza prize goes to Babycakes vegan donuts. I made some just this morning from my newfangled donut maker put out by the Babycakes company, purchased yesterday at Kohl's with my ten dollar cash coupon at the sale price of 24.99, with coupon: 14.99. Totally worth it. Totally.

I tend to like my mornings better than any other time of day. My dream day: every few hours could be split up into segments of seven a.m. til ten a.m.--then repeat this entire time slot over again two more times until dinner prep time rolls around. My world would be perfect. I don't know why--but for some reason I turn into this puddle of a hot mess by 3:30 every afternoon. A HOT mess. I can't focus. Short of collapsing in bed, I try to stay as alert as possible. I may be in the middle of one thing . . .then when this "magic time" comes around, find myself completely into TEN other things within a short span of forty-five minutes. WHAT exactly is going on here? Am I the only one with this problem. Come around four thirty--all is back to normal and by then, I am thinking about dinner--and ability to focus resumes. It's simply maddening. Maybe I could send this to the writers of Dr. Who. Someone could surely use this as a plot device to poke further into plausible explanations as to why my three-thirty-itis train wreck happens and the role time travel may have on this daily dysfunction. (There was a point  in my life when I had NO idea who Dr. Who was. Thanks to Dr. Thyme, that is no longer the case.)

So, mornings hum along fairly close to this order depending upon my mood: Feed kids, coffee, get hubby off to work, coffee, breakfast, coffee, paper, snuggle with the kiddos, coffee, stare outside at the trees, NYT crossword puzzle, and word scrambles. For some reason beyond my comprehension, I am a whiz with the word scramble--I don't even need a pencil. Why this? Why not neuroscience? It's probably no surprise to you fans of NPR Sunday that I love, LOVE Will Shortz and the Weekend Puzzle Challenge. (Except this morning's challenge wore on my nerves a bit. I felt sorry for the guy on the phone. It was a messy, awkward challenge.) Anyhow, my seemingly useless piece of word scramble talent leads me to only one conclusion: I missed my calling. Had I been born a wee bit earlier I may have been part of a talent pool of amazing word scrambler solvers (in high demand during WWII). My dream job: Secret mission to find the word scrambles in newspapers and old novels helping to make the world a better place: one unscrambled word at a time. So cool. 

This is Alice's Superwoman Breakfast Biscotti. It's chock full of nuts, oats, wheat flour--in other words, great fiber content, and amazing super-power bringer.

This morning it poured. Our resident hummingbird is still here. All but a few are left. I worry about them not making it to points south before it gets much colder. Meanwhile, Dr. Thyme and I sat the breakfast tray between us in bed and enjoyed the season's first cup of pumpkin spiced coffee and homemade vegan donuts (for day two of breakfast-palooza) while reading the Sunday paper and watching it rain. A perfect morning. (Yesterday was biscotti morning.) I'm relieved as I watch the rain. Last week we had a bit of a home repair problem. And said home repair problem happened while Dr. Thyme was out of town. Of course it did. Why would the world have allowed him to be home for urgent matters of shelter. Thankfully, problem solved. (I won't go into how long it took me to be "coached" onto the roof to show me first hand what and where said "problem" had originated. Let's just say that "Fear of Heights" thing I have still very much exists--but I made it "up" there.) 

This morning: vegan donuts from my little donut maker. Heaven. Take that you non-existent vegan donut drive-thru! I will say that owing to the fact we had consumed all of the other varieties of donuts I'd made this morning: coconut covered and powdered sugar covered not pictured--this was all I had left to shoot. (Take my word for it--these donuts were amazing!) 

 The little donut machine that could: vegan donuts. Yum. I used my torn out copy of a recipe for vegan donuts from Vegetarian Times. A link for the reicpe is here.

And for a biscotti recipe. Well, I am a huge, huge fan of my Alice Medrich cookbook. Biscotti recipes are all pretty straightforward. Combining the dough takes minutes, you shape it, bake it for the first twenty or so minutes, then, allow the loaf to cool, then slice and re-bake for an additional fifteen minutes or so. Allow to cool. Store. Then enjoy the biscotti for weeks to come. So easy. Here is my adaptation of Alice Medrich's chocolate biscotti. (For a nutty biscotti recipe--what can I say, there are like a million links to them online, but I defer to Alice Medrich for all things biscotti if you are nut inclined. And highly recommend her cookbook!) Below is my adaptation of her Choclolate Biscotti with Less Fat recipe. The vegan changes are obvious, but I also added white whole wheat flour for an extra protein/fiber boost. Enjoy!

Vegan Chocolate Biscotti

*Adapted from Alice Medrich 

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1 cup white whole wheat flour (I used King Arthur Flour)

1/3 cup chocolate chips

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons instant dried coffee (I used caffeine-free instant dried coffee grounds)

3 eggs (4 1/2 teaspoons Ener-G Egg Replacer mixed with 1/4 cup water)

1 teaspoon canola oil

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup extra chocolate chips (to fold into the batter at the end)

Preheat oven to 300. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside. In a food processor, add the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and coffee crystals and pulse to combine. About six pulses. Next, in a medium mixing bowl, combine the Egg Replacer with water, oil, then add the sugar and vanilla extract to this. Mix well. Next, add the flour mixture to this sugar mixture. Gently mix the dough. The dough will be wet and heavy with a few lumps. That is okay. Just be careful to NOT overwork the dough. Gently lift the dough up out of the bowl and turn it out onto the parchment lined cookie sheet. Divide the dough in half and shape into two long, somewhat roundish logs. About ten inches long and three inches wide. Don't bother flattening the logs out--they will flatten as they bake and take on the domed look of biscotti. On lowest rack in the oven, bake biscotti logs for about 30 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool for about fifteen minutes. Slice logs into 1/2 inch pieces with a serrated knife. Separate the pieces a bit so the air circulates around them during the next round of baking. Bake for a second time for 20 minutes. (A bit longer if you love a super crunchy biscotti.) Remove from oven. Allow to cool completely before storing. Can be stored in airtight container for several weeks. Great for dipping!