• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Blueberry Crisp

Just try to resist this crisp—made with fresh blueberries and a brown sugar-lime filling, bubbling under a crispy topping of rolled oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

Yield:

1 (9×13-inch) crisp

Prep time:

20 to 30 minutes

Bake time:

30 to 40 minutes

Serving size:

1 piece

6 cups (about 3 pt.) fresh or frozen

blueberries, rinsed and picked

over for stems if fresh

¼ cup plus ¾ cup light brown

sugar, firmly packed

½ cup unbleached cane sugar

2 TB. plus 1 cup unbleached

all-purpose flour

1 TB. cornstarch

1¾ tsp. ground cinnamon

1 TB. fresh lime or lemon juice

1 tsp. grated lime zest

¾ cup rolled oats

½ cup nonhydrogenated vegan

margarine, cold and cut in small

pieces

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly coat a 9×13-inch baking dish with cooking oil spray.

2. In a large bowl, with a large spoon or your hands, combine blueberries, ¼ cup light brown sugar, unbleached cane sugar, 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour, cornstarch, ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon, lime juice, and lime zest, tossing ingredients together to coat. Pour into the prepared baking dish.

3. In a separate large bowl, with a large spoon, combine remaining ¾ cup light brown sugar, remaining 1 cup flour, rolled oats, and remaining 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Using a pastry blender or 2 dinner knives, cut in vegan margarine until mixture is crumbly, and spread evenly over fruit mixture.

4. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until crisp is beginning to brown and fruit filling is bubbly. Cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Variation: For Mixed Fruit Crisp, reduce blueberries to 2 cups, and add 2 cups (about 4 medium) sliced peaches and 2 cups pitted Bing cherries. Substitute lemon juice for lime juice and lemon zest for lime zest.

BAKER’S BONUS

If you use frozen blueberries, add 2 extra tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour when tossing frozen blueberries to account for the additional juice.

Chapter 17

Puddings and Such

In This Chapter

• Bread puddings = comfort food

• Sweet fruity clafoutis

• The perfect brown Betty

I could have titled this chapter “The Comfort Food Chapter.” The puddings and such recipes in the following pages are comfort food to many people, possibly because they remind us of curling up in a big armchair by the fireplace. That’s what these desserts are all about—comfort and coziness.

So dig in! All the desserts in this chapter are just waiting for a bowl, a spoon, and a scoop of vegan ice cream to make your day.

Getting Comfy with Desserts

Bread pudding is an old-fashioned dessert. Most often made with stale or leftover bread, bread puddings rely on a custardlike mixture—usually made with cream and eggs—to hold together the bread filling. Vegan bakers are especially challenged when it comes to custard-type desserts. How do you make bread pudding without cream and eggs? Simple. By using products like nondairy milk, tofu, arrowroot powder, cornstarch, and egg substitutes, vegan bread pudding can be just as delicious as its nonvegan counterpart—without all the animal products. By varying additional ingredients, you could be enjoying Chocolate Bread Pudding, Bourbon Bread Pudding with a tasty whiskey sauce, Apple Cider Bread Pudding, or a luscious Pumpkin Bread Pudding for tonight’s dessert.

BATTER UP!

The water bath technique is essential to achieving the texture desired in all bread puddings. Use any pan that is larger and a little deeper than the pudding dish, place the pudding in the larger pan, filling the pan halfway with hot water, and bake.

Next up, clafoutis. Clafoutis (pronounced kla-fu-ti) is a French dessert, generally made with fresh cherries swimming in a baked custard filling. While the cherry dessert is called clafoutis, it can be made with most any fresh fruit, at which time it’s a flaugnarde. The recipes that follow have a great-tasting flan filling made with tofu, nondairy milk, and egg