Tag: vegetarian

Persephone Cupcakes

The quest to use up the POM Wonderful pomegranate juice continues! For our vegan potluck today, I made the Persephone Cupcake recipe I found while googling around. I made the recipe as written except I substituted soy yogurt & milk for the coconut yogurt and almond milk and I must say it needs some work. I forgot that I usually don’t like the results when using yogurt in a baked good. The texture seems a little gummy. But the flavor is lovely. 

The frosting also had issues. The pomegranate juice will not stay incorporated with the rest of the ingredients. Whip all you want, it’ll look all fluffy and mixed, then slowly the pomegranate juice seeps out. And it does appear to be just the pomegranate juice, not the soy milk. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to tell if the rose water seeped out since it’s clear. I’m sure there’s some chemical reason for this. Frosting still tastes okay, but looks funky. Also, to avoid an unappetizing color, I ended up using a drop or two of food coloring like I did with the Pomegranate Bars. All in all, I loved the flavor mix here and I’ll definitely be playing with it. I think I’ll start from scratch though and not bother trying to salvage this recipe.

Lemony Cashew-Basil Pesto on Pasta

Last night I whipped out this recipe from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. You can find the recipe here. I admit that I drizzled in a couple more tablespoons of olive oil, but it still has way less than a standard pesto recipe.  And doesn’t it look like Spring? Yeah, I know basil is a Summer thing, but work with me here. Also, I only used half of the pesto on half a pound of pasta. The rest I froze in a bucket for an even quicker meal some time in the future.

Pomegranate Bars

Last night I got experimental with the POM Wonderful pomegranate juice. Instead of stocking up at the liquor store and mixin’ and drinkin’ until I ended up with my arms wrapped around the toilet, I decided to try something a little safer. Pomegranate Bars. You know, like lemon bars, but pomegranate. I also tossed in some orange zest to make it interesting.

I was a little concerned when I tasted the filling. The pomegranate wasn’t coming through as much as I’d like. Also, the mixture ended up a kind of muddy greyish pink. So I added a little food coloring. The finished bar actually tasted better than I thought it would come out. But it still needs work. The bars would be awesome if some pomegranate seeds were stirred in just before pouring the filling into the bars. It would be pretty and give an interesting texture to them. To get more intense pomegranate flavor, next time I would reduce the pomegranate juice a little over heat to concentrate it. Another possibility is to mix it with lemon or lime juice to give it more of a tart flavor.

Need some pomegranate ideas

A week or so ago I got an email from POM Wonderful offering to send me some of their products. Yay! Hey, it only took me 8 years of blogging to get offered some free stuff. And since they have stopped testing on animals, I agreed to receive whatever it is they wanted to send me. It turned out to be a case of 12 cute little bottles of pomegranate juice.

Okay, so what do I do with these? I drank one, of course. Duh. I already have pomegranate molasses for some Persian recipes I make from time to time. I need some ideas to save me from using the rest to make POMtinis. No one wants that. Googling around I did get a couple of ideas: Pomegranate and Maple Glazed Beets and Persephone Cupcakes. If you have any other ideas that use just the juice, not the seeds, drop ’em in the comments. Vegan, of course.