Vegan breakfast/brunch

I have to start this off with a bad review, unfortunately -- I had been really excited to visit The Coupe, a few blocks from our house, since I'd looked at their menu and seen vegan pancakes and french toast. We went up there last weekend when some friends were in town, and within like weeks of me looking at it, the menu had changed -- the only vegan brunch option was a tofu dish. Super, super disappointing, since I prefer sweet to savory brunch, and they just didn't have anything that fit the category. But, to try and make up for it, I ordered buffalo seitan tacos, which were on the lunch menu. They were awful! I don't know if it was badly made seitan or terrible buffalo sauce, but something was extra salty in there and they were just inedible. I really hope no non-vegans try them, as I'd admittedly be put off from seitan and its capabilities by that one dish. Dan had the vegan tofu dish on the brunch menu, and it was OK, but really not worth returning for when Meridian Pint is down the street offering curried tofu scramble and vegan french toast. Sorry, The Coupe. You should have kept the vegan pancakes on the menu--it's SO EASY to veganize pancakes! I don't have a photo of my food, but maybe that's for the best...

OK, rant over--now, for some happy thoughts of vegan breakfast foods that everyone can make at home instead of going out to get terrible seitan tacos!

I have a sweet tooth, so I usually for stuff like this:

Sorry, was hard to show the filling in a good photo, but yum!

These are jelly filled muffins from this recipe. The batter was like cake batter, it turned out really moist and nice, and the jam-filled centers were great. We filled some of them with jam plus vegan cream cheese, which is totally indulgent but really good. Filling the batter seems hard, but even when I did a crappy job, they came out OK, so don't fret. Anyway, I definitely suggest making these if you like to indulge on a sweet breakfast during a weekend!

Crêpes!

When my sister and I were younger, my sister's favorite breakfast food was crêpes. My favorite breakfast food was also secretly crêpes, but I never admitted it because I wanted to like different things than my sister. My dad would make them with raspberry syrup and cream cheese with walnuts, and it was pretty much dessert for breakfast--as it should be on the weekends!

Last weekend, Dan pulled up this recipe from The Everyday Vegetarian and started making these while I was in the shower--a nice surprise! We didn't have any vegan cream cheese or raspberries, but we filled them with homemade cherry jam from Dan's mom, applesauce, and chocolate peanut butter.

Crepes with jam and applesauce

These were probably a little healthier than my childhood favorite, since they are sans cream cheese frosting, but they were awesome! A word of caution: the crepes were not very hard to make, but that is probably in part because we used a non-stick griddle whose non-stick feature is very, very useful in this recipe. I'd recommend using your most frictionless pan for these.

This morning, we did happen to have cream cheese and walnuts in stock... so, we made these again, the "proper" way (with the cherry jam subbed for raspberry syrup.) They were perfect -- and eaten too fast to snag a photo! I used half a tub of Tofutti vegan cream cheese with some powdered sugar (probably about half a cup, but I just added until it was sweet enough), a squeeze of lemon juice, and about 1/2 tsp vanilla, mixed with a handful of almonds.

Anyway, if you have a good non-stick pan, make these for sure--you don't have to go the sweet & fattening route like we did, these would be good as savory crépes as well, and they're great with just applesauce or jam, as we discovered!