Vegan pumpkin spice cake

Last week was my birthday, and birthdays are always a good excuse for cake. For home consumption I made the hummingbird cake I've posted twice before, which was just as good on this occasion as on occasions past. I also made a pumpkin spice cake to take to work, using the rest of the tin of pumpkin I recently bought.

Mr Bite doesn't like pumpkin, which is a shame, because I'd love to enter this cake into regular rotation. It was truly delicious. Three colleagues asked for the recipe, and whilst pumpkin preparation is annoying if you don't have the tinned variety to hand, I can attest it would be worth it here.

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Pumpkin oatmeal cookies {vegan + wheat free}

It is pumpkin season. I don't usually make many pumpkin recipes, because I am terribly lazy when it comes to buying (and carrying home), cutting up and cooking pumpkin. Tinned pumpkin is available in the UK, but it is generally imported from the US and thus quite expensive. All in all, pumpkin and I do not spend much time together in the kitchen.

This week, though, Tesco had tinned pumpkin on special. I picked up a tin and was pleased to use some of it for these biscuits - or cookies as I have termed them, building on the American tinned pumpkin theme.

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Grilled nectarine and pumpkin salad

I think I have discovered the secret to salad beauty: Char marks.

Like many of the dishes I make, this grilled nectarine and pumpkin salad has a simple ingredient list. However, by grilling the nectarine and pumpkin pieces, it is lifted from basic to (if I may say so myself) beautiful.

As summer winds down in Australia, I vote for farewelling it with this salad. For those of you in the northern hemisphere? You may want to welcome spring in with this dish, just as soon as nectarines reach your stores.

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Vegan pumpkin pie berry pancakes {Christmas ideas 2013}

Yesterday marked one month until Christmas. Today, I am showing previously unheard of blog organisation and kicking off my seasonal posts. Hopefully by starting now, you'll have a chance to enjoy any recipes you like the look of before Christmas is over for another year.

Unlike my last post, today's recipe has also been trialed, revised, re-trialed, and then posted. You can't take risks with Christmas! These pancakes could also do double duty for Thanksgiving, which I know is almost upon you in America.

Pumpkin and berry pancakes

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Pumpkin apple and cranberry muffins

It's taken a while, but I am finally grasping the implications of having a whole, full size freezer in our garage. All those months and years I bemoaned my inability to make things in bulk and freeze snacks and meals for later? I can finally make up for lost time.

(Or at least, I can make up for lost time within the bounds of planning to move countries in 6 months.)

On the weekend, I embraced this realisation with two batches of muffins. These vegan pumpkin, apple and cranberry muffins were one batch. They are adapted from the vegan pumpkin apple muffins on Minimalist Baker. They are full of goodness, easy to make, and completely delicious.

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Vegan pumpkin cheesecake with optional raspberry topping

I'm glad that my last post conveyed my enthusiasm for the pumpkin cheesecake that, well, inspired this pumpkin cheesecake. It may be accurate to say that Candle Cafe provided me with the best dessert of my life. It is certainly accurate to say that it provided me with the best dessert of our recent trip.

When I set out to recreate this dish, I remembered Gabby's vegan pumpkin mousse cake posted this time last year on The Veggie Nook. I bookmarked it at the time, but it took the Candle Cafe prompt for me to pull it out again. I am glad I did, because not only did it result in a dessert to rival that of my New York experience, it was also unexpectedly easy. You need to allow some time to soak your nuts (there is no way to make that sound good), and to let the cake chill and set, but the active preparation time is well under an half an hour.

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Candle Cafe's vegan pumpkin cheesecake

Pale tangerine offset by ruby red

And studded with pepita jewels

Cleaved by fork; ethereal lightness
Beauty and perfection.

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Pumpkin scones, the savoury edition: Hemp seeds, nutritional yeast, and herbs

Earlier this year, I made pumpkin and date cardamom scones and I loved them. A lot.

What I didn't mention at the time was that I also made pumpkin savoury scones, with hemp seeds, nutritional yeast and herbs. I loved them too, a lot.

I had put this recipe aside for Vegan MoFo*, thinking it would be in October and I might partake. Given Vegan MoFo is this month, and I have no other posts to deliver today!, I'm bringing it out now instead.

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Apple cider pumpkin fries

I am a detail-focused thinker. There are times when it would be appropriate to say that I don't see the wood for the trees, and I am terrible at puzzles that require you to see one thing in two different ways.

This trait can be useful sometimes, and it can be a bit unhelpful at other times. As I confessed to Mr Bite this week, I only recently realised that the Tudor, Elizabethan, Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian periods in British history actually lined up with the names of the ruling Kings and Queens of the same time periods. I had thought of the different periods as being characterised by distinctive styles of architecture and art, with it pure coincidence that the titles overlapped with royal names (which, after all, do repeat themselves frequently). Now I've made the connection, it is glaringly obvious where the names came from, and I'm embarrased it took me so long to work it out. That is generally the way - once you have spotted the woods, it seems incredible you didn't put the trees together beforehand to see the bigger picture.

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Pumpkin pie loaf cake with cardamom spiced apple

When I was 12, we had an American family join us for Christmas. The father had just started working with my Dad, and had moved to Perth late in the year with his wife and two young sons. Being new to Australia and away from family, my parents thought it would be nice to invite them to join us.

I don't remember much about the day, but I do remember that the American family contributed a pumpkin pie. It was the first - and to this day is the only - pumpkin pie I have had. I had no idea pumpkin could be made to taste so good, and I fell in love with the pie as utterly and completely as one can fall in love with any edible product (which is to say, quite a lot). The pie base doesn't feature in my memories, but the pie filling...oh yes. Soft yet firm, brown sugar and maple syrup sweet, and delicately spiced. At 12, the spice mix was foreign to me. Now, I suspect that it involved nutmet and cloves or cardamom. It certainly involved a lot of wonderful things.

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Harissa-spiced pumpkin and chickpea smash

I wasn't sure what to call this dish. It is a bit like a curry and a bit like a stew, but not properly either. Mr Bite called it a pumpkin and chickpea mash. I decided on smash.

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Cardamom and date pumpkin scones - vegan, fat free, and swoon-worthy

I'm no longer obsessed with peanut butter and carob.

(Or at least, the obsession is back to its usual levels, which means I'm content to eat them a few times a week instead of a few times a day.)

Instead, I have fallen in love with these scones.

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Roast vegetables and chickpeas, with apple

You provided me with some excellent pumpkin ideas when I requested inspiration in my pumpkin cookies post. Over winter, I now hope to work through pumpkin in scone, curry, bread, and cake form. I also foresee lots of roast vegetable mixes.

This easy meal is of the roast vegetable variety. To complement the pumpkin and cauliflower, I threw some apple in too. It might not be conventional, but I highly recommend it. The soft sweet apple pieces paired wonderfully with the vegetables, and made eating chickpeas even more enjoyable than usual.

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Energy-packed pumpkin cookies - vegan and gluten free

Left to my own devices, I rarely buy pumpkin. This isn't really deliberate, as I like pumpkin and enjoy it plain and mixed into dishes. Rather, it reflects a certain amount of laziness on my part at the time of purchasing (pumpkin is heavy) and when thinking about preparing it (because, you know, it takes a good minute or two to peel and cut up).

Luckily for me, I'm not left to my own devices with vegetable buying these days. Aussie Farmer's Direct have provided me with two pumpkins over my previous three deliveries (six weeks), pulling me out of my pumpkin avoidance and highlighting that, actually, pumpkin is really very easy to prepare and very versatile to use.

Protein-packed pumpkin cookies

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