Pumpkin Hummus Lasagna & Cupcakes

I've been working on a recipe for "no tomato sauce" lasagna for a while. Megan the Vegan's lasagnas were very intriguing. After much thought, I decided to use hummus instead of sauce, a tempeh sausage (from VWAV) and veggie filling, fresh spinach, and spelt lasagna noodles. The noodles get a big thumbs down. Good taste, poor cooking instructions (only 3 minutes!) and too hard to work with. We wanted a wheat free noodle, but we definitely won't use these again.

I made the hummus Saturday and I can't believe I didn't eat it all before tonight. It was the best, creamiest hummus ever. I'll post the recipe further down because you absolutely have to make this hummus!

The filling was made with tempeh sausage, onions, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, and roasted red peppers. Eight ounces of sausage was not enough. It got lost among the other ingredients.



I also made Easy French Bread from La Dolce Vegan, which became garlic bread.


And a salad with mixed greens, broccoli, golden raisins, and toasted pumpkin seeds. I made a dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, dijon mustard, maple sugar, and agave. It was very good. We all wished I had made more.



Chase built the lasagna......


Ready to bake......


Ready to eat.




We did make cupcakes before we had dinner. Yes, I finally got Vegan Cupcakes. I found these neat little disposable muffin tins at the grocery store today. I thought they would make good take home containers too. I detest paper liners and cannot find foil liners anywhere. I baked the cupcakes in these foil tins, and then after they were cool, I did put them in paper liners so we could pick them up and decorate them. That's right, I put them in liners AFTER I baked them. I've never tried to hide the fact that I'm weird, so now you know another of my quirks. Here's a couple more that came up tonight. I used to get mad at Chase for spilling on my place mats and he would always say, "Mom, that's what they're for." Today I got out a new dish sponge and I didn't want to get it dirty with chocolate frosting.

On to the pictures.....



Perfectly done cupcakes.

Ready to decorate.

My cupcake.

Then I got the fun stuff out so Chase and Liz could decorate.

The peanut butter cakes are fabulous! But the chocolate buttercream was not what we wanted with these. My fault, I wanted it to decorate with. But it overwhelmed the wonderful peanut flavor in the cakes. The little drizzle of chocolate as presented in the book is not as pretty, but would be the perfect topping.

I hope you try this hummus recipe. It makes 4 cups and can be halved.

Pumpkin Hummus:

1 can pumpkin puree

1 medium sweet potato, cooked

(if halving the recipe, use either pumpkin or sweet potato)

1 large onion, chopped

1 30-ounce can chickpeas

1/4 cup tahini

1 cup (or as needed) vegetable stock

3 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 tablespoon Bragg's

1 teaspoon basil

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Blend all ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

I tailored the spices for more of an Italian flavor, but you could flavor it with the normal cumin and lemon juice. It really is so creamy with a beautiful flavor and color.