So the cooler temps have me thinking about autumn meals. What is more autumnish than pumpkins & cranberries? I love pumpkin anyway, ask my husband about how I sneak a can in mac & cheese, chili, etc. It is so mild flavored no one will ever know, and you're adding vegetables!
Ok enough of the sneaky vegetable discussion. I'm adding a new item to my line up. Pumpkin cranberry spelt baby cakes Let me break that down, I started with a pumpkin bread and swapped whole spelt flour for wheat flour and the baby cakes refers to the mini bundt cake pan I bake them in. Now even though I'm calling this a "cake" it is much healthier than the standard cake. There is more pumpkin in this recipe than most other pumpkin breads, as a result the texture is moist & creamy. I cut down the amount of sugar to have a lightly sweetened cake, but not a toothache. The fat is primarily canola oil with a little bit of butter. There are yummy spices to lightly flavor but not overpower the mild taste of the pumpkin. Oh yeah other healthy stuff like cranberries & flax seeds (a great source of omega 3's that doesn't taste fishy!) What about the spelt? Well I have had several customers request spelt yeast breads & I have stayed away because of the difficulty of making a yeast bread with entirely spelt flour- it doesn't rise as well. Whole spelt flour is great in quickbreads (cakes, muffins...), it is more tender than whole wheat & has a milder flavor. Although it has gluten, people with gluten intolerance may be able to handle spelt. This is a good list of facts about spelt, there is plenty of information out there.
My reason for wanting to include spelt in my lineup of goods is to increase the diversity of ingredients I bake with. With any diet it is best to have variety (of good nutritious choices of course). Spelt has advantages over oatmeal and vice versa depending upon the nutrient.
Ingredients: organic stone-ground whole spelt flour, pumpkin, sucanat, organic raw cane sugar, cage free eggs, water, canola oil, flax seed, egg whites, butter, dried buttermilk powder, cake spice, baking soda, salt, powdered vanilla
Most importantly my Pumpkin cranberry spelt baby cakes are yummy! So please come try some, I'll be at the market Sat, October 6th.