It’s never a good idea to admit you’re a loser over the internet.  But let me come clean.

This pie lost my family’s Holiday Pie-off.  The Sistaster’s Chocolate Pecan pie was the victor.  So why I am burdening you with a losing pie recipe?

Oh my, for many reasons:

One – it’s really hard to compete with a supersweet pie.  In fact, in a blind taste test people tend to prefer Pepsi on the first sip as it has a sweeter first bite than Coke.  But in a longer drink-a-full-can-type taste test, the more balanced flavor of Coke wins out.  Now I’m not comparing my pie to can of Coke but after a huge holiday meal I think my family’s senses were pretty darned dulled and couldn’t appreciate the subtlety of my Gingery Sweet Potato Pie.

Two – my pie is made mostly of real food.  Real vegetables.  The heart and soul of my pie are three beautiful winter-resistant tubers.  That’s just got to win some points over a pie mostly made of corn syrup.

Three – I think I overbaked the pie I made for the Pie-off.  The siblings do not forgive overcooking.

Four – The Sistaster doesn’t write a food blog of her own - therefore nary a word will come in her defense from the internet ether (unless she chooses to leave a comment below, in which case I can only plead to be kind, dear sister, be kind.)

So go on.  For reasons one, two, and three above, make and enjoy this lovely pie.  And in the name of the New Year, please forgive me for being a loser, and forget reason number four.

Time: 20 mintues active time plus about 2 hours baking time
Serves: depends on how many slices of pie you like.  4-12.

Gingery Sweet Potato Pie

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Pick the whole sweet potatoes with a fork and bake them on a
foil-lined baking sheet until tender, about an hour.

For crust:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus additional for buttering pie plate
Flour for dusting
1 1/2 cups finely crushed gingersnap cookies (5 oz; 30 2-inch cookies)
3/4 cup finely chopped almonds or walnuts (2 oz), toasted
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Meanwhile, start the crust by buttering and flouring a 9″ pie pan.

In a medium bowl, mix together melted butter, gingersnap crumbs,
almonds, sugar and salt.
Press a 1/4 inch thick layer on the bottom, then build an even layer
up the sides.  Chill in the refrigerator until filling is ready.

For filling:
1 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes, (about 3 large)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
3/4 tsp vanilla

Split potatoes in half legthwise to cool.  Peel.

In a blender, blend together the potatoes, eggs, cream, sugar, salt,
cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and vanilla.

Pour the filling into the crust and bake for 50 mintues or until the
center is solid and the filling close to the crust is just barely starting to crack.

Cool pie on rack about 1 hour.

My Savory Squash Flan was such a success that I thought I’d follow it up with a sweet one - it’s just as easy as the savory. 

Tis the season of sweet treats so perhaps you can feel a little better about yourself by serving up a local veggie for dessert.  This flan isn’t too sweet or rich so it can do double duty as a brunch buffet item.

Get the squash at your winter farmer’s market or CSA… or worst case scenario pick one up that’s been hiding out near the old Halloween pumpkins at your grocers.  Worst WORST case scenario you can pick up a can of squash mash at your closest Whole Foods or similar.

Sweet Squash Flan

1 medium butternut squash (or can of squash puree)
1/2 plus 1/3 cup sugar
1 (12 oz.) can evaporated milk
4 freerange eggs
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground cloves

Preheat oven to 375.

Halve the squash lengthwise, discard the seeds, and place cut side down on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Bake for an hour, or until soft to the touch all over. Cool and set aside.

Reduce oven temp to 350

Scoop flesh from the squash. Discard the skin. Puree in a blender until smooth and creamy.

Pour 1/2 cup of sugar into a small heavy saucepan.  Heat over medium-low.  When sugar is fully melted pour into a round 9″ cake pan, quickly tipping the pan before the caramel cools to coat the bottom.
 
Combine 1 1/2 cups of squash puree, 1/3 cup sugar, eggs, evaporated milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a medium-sized bowl or blender.  Blend until combined.

Pour the batter into the caramel-coated cake pan. Place the cake pan in a larger shallow pan or baking sheet.  Add an inch of hot water to the larger pan.
 
Bake for 50 minutes or until the center of the flan is a consistent texture to the edges and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cool fully - at least 2 hours. To serve, loosen edges of the flan with a thin knife, place a large plate over the flan and quickly invert onto the plate.

The recipe below is a little, um, trashier than what I generally like to post here (beware, Marshmallow Fluff below!) but I’ve been thinking about this recipe since last year when the L’il Sis made a huge batch of soft pumpkin cookies. I knew these soft cakey gems would be even better as a wee cookie sandwich and curdle your Thanksgiving gravy if I’m not right.

One interesting fact I’ve learned about holiday cooking from my fellow foodbloggers is that the best pumpkin pie is not made with canned L*bby’s pumpkin puree but with homebaked butternut squash. The redeeming quality in these cookies, should their soft cake-like texture and binge-worthy filling not be enough for you, is that you can use an honest-to-goodness strain-your-arm-when-trying-to-slice-it squash. You know, those crazy shaped things next to the leftover flavorless Halloween pumpkins.

I have a pal (who shall remain nameless here but you know who you are) that last year cooked her own “from scratch” Green Bean Casserole using fresh haricots vert, creamed wild mushrooms, and even breaded and fried her own onion rings for the topping. And! Not one person at the table remarked on the effort. Sigh.

In any case, at least you can feel good about throwing one fresh from the farmer’s market ingredient into this tasty holiday-time treat.

makes: 8-9 dozen single cookies, about 50 sandwiches
time: 1 hour to bake squash, 30 minutes to mix batter, 11 minutes to bake

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

4 cups flour
3 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups butternut squash or pumpkin puree*
1 1/2 tbsp milk
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

*see introduction for words of warning about using canned pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.

Cream butter and sugar together in a second mixing bowl. Add oil, squash/pumpkin puree, milk, eggs and vanilla.

Slowly add dry ingredients to the wet while beating on medium speed. Continue beating until well mixed.

Drop in 1/2 teaspoons onto a greased baking sheet 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, until bottoms are golden.
For Filling (adapted from Allrecipes.com )

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
4 cups marshmallow fluff
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp of lemon zest, optional
1/4 tsp salt

Cream together the butter and the sugar.

Add the remaining ingredients and beat together until well combined.

Put the filling into a large ziplock or other clean bag. Snip a small piece off the corner and use as a pastry bag to pipe the filling onto the bottom side of one cookie.

Press the bottom side of another cookie into the filling and Whoopie! you’re all set.

Between my CSA takings and my weekly farmers market ritual buying spree, I end up spending a lot of time thinking of how to turn seasonal veggies into dinner. So why not turn them into dessert?

Inspired by this fascinating vegan Chocolate Beetroot cake from Kathryn’s information-rich blog Limes & Lycopene, I designed a lively-tasting vegan cupcake - with beets - that lives up to it’s party pink exterior.

There’s a really cool (geeky?) science-experimenty situation happening in this recipe; the uncooked batter is a murky magenta from the grated beets but when baked it turns to a gold flaxen color. More beet research suggests that if left uneaten long enough the pink icing will turn back into white in a magic-disappearing ink sort of way but I suspect that these cupcakes won’t last long enough for you to test this hypothesis.

I’m entering these cupcakes to Minko’s (another Aussie!) Think Pink for Pinktober event over at Couture Cupcakes - she promises to send $1 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation for every pink recipe. Check out her Pinktober Pomegranate Turkish Delight Cupcakes - um, wow! I also can’t wait to try her vegan Lime Zucchini Pistachio Cupcakes - another creative veggie-packed dairy-free dessert!

Time: 25 minutes plus 20 minutes to bake plus cooling time before frosting
Makes: 12 cupcakes

Vegan Ginger-Beet Cupcakes with Very Pink Frosting

Cupcakes
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup plain or vanilla soymilk
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup of raw grated beet (a bit less than one medium-sized beet)
3 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1/2 cup coconut oil (or any mild-tasting veggie oil)
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
spray oil

Frosting
1/4 cup vegan margarine
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 cup soymilk
splash beet juice (extra grated beet mixed with water)
squeeze of lemon
dash salt

Preheat the oven to 350º.

Fill a cupcake tray with 12 cupcake liners (I like to spray the inside of the muffin papers with spray oil to help the cupcakes release). Set aside.

Mix the vinegar with the soy mix well and set aside (the mixture will curdle).

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.

In another mixing bowl whisk together the soymilk mixture, beet, ginger, coconut oil, and vanilla. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and beat until smooth using a hand-held mixer, stopping once to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Fill each muffin cup 2/3 full with batter. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.

Let cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then remove cupcakes from the pan and place on a wire rack. Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting, first cream together the vegan margarine and shortening. You want to cream these together REALLY well, so mix vigorously with a fork for 5 minutes, until your arm is very tired.

Beat the powdered sugar into the margarine mixture until well combined. Then add a splash of beet juice for color and a squeeze of lemon and pinch of salt to help balance out the sweet. Mix for another few minutes until the frosting is pink pink and fluffy fluffy.

This recipe is a complete rip-off of homage to SusanV’s Vegan Peach Upside Down Cake that, like pretty much all other FatFree Vegan recipes, is just knockout. It’s a simple but beautiful idea; the glossy caramel showcases the peaches, the real star of this dessert, and the cake plays backup to the beautiful fruit.

It seems to be peach season in New York - white peaches came in my CSA share and I’ve been buying up all the ripe yellow ones from my farmer’s market in Brooklyn. They are just too good to share and quite frankly it’s going to be apple season for a looooong time. In other words, get your local peaches now; you can always get apples later.

This is my first foray into Gluten Free Baking. I read Karina’s gluten-free baking guidelines at Gluten-Free Goddess (I’m also a big fan of her blog in general) and felt empowered enough to give it a try. Instead of buying 10 different kinds of flour I simply purchased a mix of gluten-free flour (I used Arrowhead Mills brand baking mix, but there are other ones out there too.) I added oats for texture and used agave nectar, which has a great fruity taste and a low GI index, instead of sugar. If you don’t have gluten concerns, try replacing all or some of the flour with whole wheat flour and even adding some ground flax seeds for a more rustic tart with bonus omega-3s. Down-sided up with sliced peaches shimmering in caramel, I see this cake being a hit no matter what.

Serves: 6
Time: 1.5 hours: 45 minutes to prep, 30 to bake, 15 to cool

Gluten-Free Peach Upside-down Cake

1/2 cup gluten-free rolled oats
1 cup soy milk
1 tsp lemon juice
3 cups peeled and sliced peaches (about 5-7 peaches. I used a mix of white and yellow peaches)

Dry Ingredients
1 cup gluten-free flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp salt

Liquid ingredients
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon zest (or 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract)

For Caramelizing
spray or vegetable oil
1/4 cup natural granulated sugar
2 Tbsp water

Preheat oven to 350.

Soak oats in the soy milk with lemon juice while you slice and skin the peaches. See an excellent tutorial, also inspired also by SusanV’s cake, on slicing and skinning peaches at VeganYumYum.

Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl, mix together the wet ingredients and set the two bowls aside.

Spray or wipe a 10″ cast iron skillet with oil. Heat the sugar and water over medium-low heat until it turns brown and reduces, but can still fully coat the bottom of the skillet - about 5 minutes.

Lay the peaches in a single layer in the caramel. You can make a pretty design by getting them to face all one way on the outside loop and the other way on the inside loop. I alternated white and yellow peaches and that ups the aesthetic ante too.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir together briefly, until just combined. Pour the batter slowly over the peaches and put the skillet in the oven. Cook for 25 - 35 minutes or until the toothpick test comes out clean.

Cool the cake for 15 minutes or more and cut carefully along the edges of the cake between the pan to help loosen the cake. Place a plate over the skillet and clamping the long handle part of the skillet to the plate with one hand, and the short handle part of the skillet to the plate with the other hand, invert the skillet over the plate. Carefully remove the skillet from the cake.