Eat. Run. Do Yoga.

I decided over the weekend that I was going to go a week without sugar. I was off to a good start yesterday:

Breakfast: Smoothie with almond milk, vanilla Spirutein protein powder, banana, spinach

Lunch: Smoothie with almond milk, vanilla Spirutein protein powder, banana, spinach, peanut butter  + CARROT CAKE???!!!

Ok so that ended my week sans sugar. Oh well. 

But even though my Sugar Free Week lasted only four hours, I was nevertheless inspired to try baking with stevia last night. Stevia is an herbal sweetener that has zero calories. Sounds great, huh? I already use stevia in my hot coffee and tea and I really like it, so why not try baking with it?

I found a recipe for Peanut Butter Bars – the description under the recipe was “Sure to please.” The recipe included stevia, oats, whole wheat flour, lots of peanut butter, and an icing that included cocoa powder, more peanut butter, and of course stevia. Sounds great to me!

OK – they totally sucked. The stevia left a horrible aftertaste that I couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many peanut butter M&Ms I ate last night! (Yes at this point I was back in full sugar swing). So I’m not even going to bother posting the recipe or a picture – they don’t even look good. But I’m still curious about stevia – do you have a good recipe that uses stevia?

Somewhat miffed about the stevia but not defeated, I moved on to…DONUTS!

I found a donut recipe on line at Vegan Yum Yum that looked pretty good. The pictures look amazing! I made a few modifications to the recipe:

Vegan Baked Donuts
Make 8 Donuts

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 Cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 1/4 tsp Nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp Cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:

• 1/2 Cup Vanilla Almond Milk
• 1/2 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1/2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
• Egg Replacer for 1 Egg
• 4 Tbs Earth Balance

• Sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350º F and lightly oil a baking sheet.
2. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients with a whisk to mix thoroughly. Combine wet ingredients (not the sugar) in a small sauce pan over medium low heat and mix until earth balance is melted. This mixture should feel just slightly warm.
3. Add wet to dry and mix until just combined to form a very soft, wet dough.
4. Drop by 1/4 cup onto your baking sheet. Create a hole in the middle of each donut using your finger and an oiled butter knife.
5. Sprinkle sugar on top and bake for 16 minutes. Mine looked like this before I put them in the oven:

They should not be browned on top, but a tester will come out clean. Cool completely on rack before decorating.

Here’s what they looked like when they were done:

It looks like there’s a little Rosie on my thumb! LOL!

I mixed up a little pb2 + powdered sugar + almond milk and created a makeshift frosting for this last one. YUM! But I have to say I liked them plain too. I KNOW they don’t look great but they taste really good. I think I might have to get a donut pan if I am going to make more donuts! I also need to get better at photographing my products…any photography tips???

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