Food Gifts - The easiest pumpkin spice cake in the world

This recipe is accidentally vegan. An elderly woman at the grocery store gave it to my mom as a "thank you" for helping her get a product off of the shelves. Since then it's been my favorite pumpkin spice cake and I make it about 47 times every year between the months on October and January. Because it's so pretty, tasty and festive, this cake makes a fantastic present as well. Do you know what the best part is, though?

 

It has 2 ingredients.

Spice cake mix (most are vegan, just check the ingredients)

1 can of pumpkin puree (or equal amounts of homemade puree)

 

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and beat the two ingredients together in a large bowl.

Pour (or actually scoop, it's a pretty thick batter) into whatever pans you are using and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  

I used these adorable mini loaf pans I found. With the extra batter I made some muffins to snack on. The mini loaves baked for just over 30 minutes and the muffins took exactly 20 minutes to bake.

You can also bake the cake in a bundt pan and garnish with little stars made from homemade apple leather. Just spread some applesauce out on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake at 200 degrees until it's solid and fairly dry. Then use a knife or cookie cutters to make shapes.

This is seriously the easiest holiday present you'll give this year, I promise you.

 

Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

Christmas season has officially begun!

My fiance and I were starting to set up my Christmas decorations and I decided that we needed a festive treat. I couldn't find any that I liked and had all of the ingredients for, so I made one up.

The result was a crazy fluffy cookie that was definitely a hit. They aren't overpoweringly chocolatey or minty, they are just a teensy bit chewy around the edges, and they absolutely melt in your mouth. This is definitely a recipe that will be added to my Christmas cookies folder.

To decorate them, my fiance made little paper cutouts that we placed over the cookies and dusted with powdered sugar.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of applesauce
1 tablespoon molasses
1/4 almond milk (soy, rice or hemp will work too)
1/4 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 ounces semisweet baking chocolate
1 1/2 tablespoons Earth Balance

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips

How to make them:

Preheat oven to 350.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl.

Melt the baking chocolate in a double boiler. If you don't have a double boiler, melt the chocolate in a glass bowl on top of a saucepan with simmering water in it.
When it is all melted, remove from heat and mix in the Earth Balance. 

Add the sugar, applesauce, molasses, milk and vinegar to the flour mixture. When it is mixed together, add the melted chocolate and mix well.

Mix in the extracts and the chocolate chips.

Put tablespoon sized pieces of dough on a lightly greased cookie sheet and bake for 8 minutes. Cool on a cooling rack.