Pumpkin Love

I have been completely in LOVE with pumpkin lately.

The other day I made these lovely pumpkin donuts.

AMAZING! We gobbled these up while they were still warm.

To clean up the recipe, I subbed the brown sugar for sucanat, butter for coconut butter, nutmeg for pumpkin pie spice and white flour for white whole wheat flour. I accidentally forgot the buttermilk on the countertop, so it didn't make it into the recipe, but the donuts turned out delicious... just a little denser and chewier.

Here is my cleaned up version of Polly's recipe:

Pumpkin Donuts


1 cup pumpkin
1/4 c sucanat
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 c skim milk + 1 tbsp lemon juice, let sit for a couple minutes)
1 tbsp coconut butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg whites, lightly beaten
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 cup white whole wheat flour


Preheat oven to 350°. Prep donut pan by spraying with cooking spray. In a medium sized bowl combine all ingredients with a whisk. Pour into gallon sized zip lock bag. Cut tip off one of the corners and squeeze into a donut pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Let donuts cool for 5 minutes. Loosen the edges with a knife and invert the pan onto a plate. The donuts should pop right out of the pan. Sprinkle with pumpkin pie spice. Enjoy!

Makes 6 donuts.

Chocolate Cravings

Most nights I get completely ravenous around 8:30 PM. Usually Allan grabs a bowl of Panda Puffs and organic 1% milk and sometimes I follow suit and grab a bowl of homemade granola. But some nights granola will just not do - all I want is chocolate.

However, my desire to loose the rest of the baby weight (13 lbs) is usually much stronger than my desire for chocolate, so I came up with the following compromise:

1 cup of fresh raspberries

+

I took 1/4 square of Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate and melted it in the microwave for 15 seconds. Then added a little drizzle of agave nectar and stirred it up. Raspberries with dark chocolate sauce... HEAVENLY!

Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate is 100% cacao and needs a tiny bit of agave or maple syrup to balance out the bitterness. But the combination is a beautiful evening snack.