Sunday, June 25, 2006

IMBB 27 + SHF 20 = The Joy of Soy!



Can it be? Are we really up to IMBB 27? And SHF - didn't that start a couple of months ago? SHF 20??? I knew I had skipped a few of these events, but am horrified to find I've missed ten of each. This month Reid - the nicest guy in Hawaii - is hosting both events concurrently. There is no way I'm missing this one!

And if the fact that Reid is hosting this double-header weren't reason enough to participate, the theme this month is soy. Though I know little about soy and seldom cook with it, I've always been fascinated by its infinite incarnations - soy milk, soy flour, tofu, tempeh, TVP, "soysage", soy cheese, soy bacon, etc. Soy can do it all.

I didn't go too far from my comfort zone for this occasion (tempeh wouldn't really fit in with the SHF theme, now would it?). It's that time of year when I'm (happily) inundated with blueberries, so I took my favorite blueberry muffin recipe and swapped in some soy flour and changed up my new favorite smoothie recipe by using soy yogurt. Both are delicious and together make for a nutritious breakfast with lots of protein, fiber, and nature's sweetest little brain food morsels - blueberries!



Blueberry Muffins
adapted from "Maida Heatter's New Book of Great Desserts"

1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup soy flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup skim milk
finely grated rind from one orange

Preheat oven to 375 F and grease muffin pan or line with paper cups.

Stir together the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then stir in the blueberries. In a small bowl, beat the egg lightly then mix in the oil, orange rind, and milk. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir with a spatula until just mixed. Spoon into muffin cups. Sprinkle tops of muffins with a generous amount of sugar. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Makes 10 muffins.

Note: Reid reminded me that one of the benefits of soy is that those that are lactose intolerant (which I think is, believe it or not, most of the adults on this planet) can use it to replace milk products. I have substituted orange juice for the milk in this recipe before and I'm sure substituting soy milk would work equally well.

A few tips about substituting soy flour: baked goods made with soy flour will brown more quickly than those without, so you may need to lower the oven temperature and/or reduce the cooking time. Because it has no gluten, you cannot replace all the flour in a recipe with soy flour and expect similar results. You can swap in soy flour for a quarter to one third of the flour. Soy flour can also be used as an egg replacer (one tablespoon soy flour + one tablespoon water = 1 egg). Interestingly, baked goods made with soy flour keep better.




Banana Blueberry Smoothie made with Soy Yogurt

I happened upon this recipe while watching an episode of Everyday Food a few weeks ago. It looked so good and sounded so easy, AND I had everything I needed to make it. The next morning I tried it and was hooked. I've since made it with strawberries (I put some fresh ones in the freezer the night before) and now with soy yogurt. It is so good - rich and creamy and surprisingly sweet, given that it has no added sugar. If you've got some flavorful blueberries, you can throw in your ugliest old banana and it will still be amazing. I've also made this without freezing the berries, and while it's not quite as thick and certainly not as frosty, it's still mighty good.


Looking back over this post, I see now it looks more like the Joy of Blueberries than the Joy of Soy, but I really did enjoy my soy - honest! Thanks to Reid for hosting this round of IMBB and SHF. Watch for his round-up later in the week over on 'Ono Kine Grindz. I'm sure it's going to be fantastic!

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

IMBB 27?? SHF20?? Boy have I been away for a long time. This event should be quite interesting although I'm glad that I'm not lactose intolerant. Gimme cow's milk and make it whole please! ;-)

Cathy said...

Hi Rowena! I'm happily not lactose intolerant either, but make mine chocolate! Actually, my favorite milk beverage these days is a latte (caffe latte, that is - I remember my first trip to Italy requesting a latte and getting exactly what I asked for - a glass of milk!).

Niki said...

Bugger - I keep missing these events. I signed up to the IMBB email notification service but not received any notifications for nearly a year. I even sent them a message and signed up again, but nothing. Do you know what's going on? I want to keep participating!

Cathy said...

Hi Niki! I'm afraid I've been out of touch with what's been happening too. I didn't even realize they had a notification service! The only reason I knew about this one was that I saw the announcement on Reid's blog.

Mayaclone said...

These were great muffins! I am learning to cook with soy flour and this was a nice recipe. I traded in milk for oj and blueberries for cranberries. Worked great. I also threw in a little dried grated lemon from Penzys (perfect!). Thanks for a well done recipe.