When the weather cools off, I love to bake bread, both with baker’s yeast and with a sourdough start, but nothing beats the instant gratification of a quickbread – there’s no rising, no kneading, just stir and cook. We like to make this cinnamon bread in the fall and winter for an easy, inexpensive dessert, but it tastes great for breakfast, too.

This recipe is vegan, and although I use whole wheat flour, just about any flour would work. I also heartily recommend using organically grown ingredients if possible.

Vegan Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Quick Bread

• 1 & 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup brown sugar (if you eat honey, substitute it for the sugar)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 & 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 cup quick oats
• 3/4 cup raisins, soaked in either 1/4 cup apple or orange juice
• 1 & 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1/4 cup olive oil (or your choice of oil)
• 2 Tablespoons ground flax seeds, blended with 6 tablespoons of water (or use egg replacer equivalent to 2 eggs)
• 1/4 cup almond, soy, or hempseed milk

Preheat the oven to 350° F, and mix the first seven ingredients together in a large bowl. Adjust cinnamon to your taste.

Add the applesauce, oil, flaxseed mixture, and soy milk to the dry ingredients and stir well, then mix in the raisins and juice.

Grease and flour a loaf pan – we like coconut oil. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove the bread from the pan and let cool.

I use this recipe as a rough template – it makes a great loaf on its own – but occasionally I add fun stuff I have on hand, like shredded coconut or other fall spices. You can also substitute dried blueberries or other dried fruit for the raisins, or bake them as muffins instead of a loaf.

This cinnamon raisin bread makes a most excellent toast!

Image: S. Diddy at Flickr

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Looking for a super-tasty, quick and easy treat? A healthy snack that even your mother would love?

Stop right now and make this banana bread recipe!

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We eat a predominantly vegan diet- no meat, fish, fowl, dairy or eggs. We do use honey. The fundamentalist vegan would be right in arguing that some bees are killed through the regular maintenance and “harvesting” of the honey. Well, worms die every time we dig a carrot or potato out of our garden, and we probably inhale or step on many beings with each move.

What we try to do is minimize the suffering our food choices create, while eating a nutritious, energizing, diverse diet.

Some books that have inspired us:

• Conscious Eating – Gabriel Cousens
• The Sunfood Diet Success System- David Wolfe
• Diet for a New America- John Robbins
• The 80/10/10 Diet- Dr. Douglas Graham

Food is a big deal at our house. It’s our health plan and our insurance and our future. We feel very strongly that food is the foundation for all the body’s needs, and our kids deserve to eat real, whole, natural foods. Not from a box or a can or an aluminum tray, with all sorts of dubious substances added. It’s a very cool thing to hear our 2 year old ask “this organic food?”, or “this vegan?”.

This is a great basic cookie recipe that you can tweak to your tastes. We usually have the ingredients on hand, so it’s the default sweet treat around here. Makes a small batch, so if your family’s like mine, double it. If the kids are already in bed, one batch’ll probably do ya…

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie Recipe (vegan)

preheat oven to 350

• 1 cup quick oats
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 Tablespoon water
• 1/2 cup olive oil (or your choice)
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp salt
• shredded coconut to taste
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• (or whatever you need to get your fix)

Mix all dry ingredients, then mix in liquids, then add chocolate chips. Sure, you could make cookies on a baking sheet, but I just usually put it in a pie pan (no oiling necessary), put in the oven, and call it cookie pie. Bake until browned on the bottom, 15 – 20 minutes for cookies, and 25 or so for cookie pie.

This is a vegan recipe, though you can’t tell a difference in the taste (omnivores eat them up just as fast). Honey can be substituted for the maple syrup if you wish, and you can add hemp seeds or walnuts or whatever you dig. I like to put in about 1/2 cup of peanut butter and reduce the oil to maybe a tablespoon or so. When you add dry ingredients, be sure to put a bit more water to compensate.

These are so good you’ll hurt yourself by eating the whole thing. Not that that’s ever happened to me.

If you want more great vegan propaganda for yourself or a friend, try the Vegan Freak Radio podcast. Some of the language is not for little ears, but it’s funny.

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