Whether it is Chrismas or Thanksgiving, stuffing has always been my absolute favourite part of the traditional holiday feast. Literally I remember filling my plate with so much stuffing my mom would need to remind me to save some for the rest of the family. This year I successfully made a veganversion of our family recipe; italian-style whole wheat bread combined with garlic, celery, shallots, onions, parsley and raisins. Ground flax replaces the need for eggs in this recipe and you would never know they are missing! For our Christmas I decided to make the stuffing recipe into savoury cupcakes with cranberry filling but it’s also great on its own baked in a casserole dish until it’s nice and crispy on the top.
These lovely pictures are actually from this weekend because Christmas came early for the two green peas! Since I’m travelling to visit family starting tomorrow Mr. Pea and I did our gift-opening on Sunday. For a somewhat traditional holiday dinner we paired these stuffing cupcakes with grilled tofu and roasted veggies. It was really quite wonderful. We also had a special Christmas Eve meal the night before with artichoke & kale dip crostinis and sweet potato fettuccine alfread (check out our instagram account for pictures, recipes courtesy of Love and Lemons, one of my favourite sites).
This cupcake trick will work with any stuffing recipe if you want to use your own family recipe. Just grease the cupcake pan well and make little wells inside each cupcake to be filled up with cranberry sauce (about a spoonful for each cupcake). I recommend covering the cupcake pan with tinfoil for the first 20 minutes of baking so the tops don’t get too crispy.
Cranberry-Stuffing Savoury Holiday Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the Stuffing
- approx. 10 slices of whole wheat bread (about 1/2 – 3/4 of a loaf)
- 1 onion
- 4 shallots
- 4 celery stalks
- 2 garlic cloves
- 4 tbsp canola oil (or vegan butter such as Earth Balance)
- 1/2 cup chardonnay (we use Robert Mondavi)
- 1/2 cup chopped parsley
- 2 flax eggs (2 tbsp ground flax mixed with 6 tbsp water)
- 1 3/4 cup low-sodium vegetable broth (or as needed)
- 1/3 cup sultana raisins
- 1 tbsp poultry seasoning (yes, poultry seasoning is vegan!)
- salt & pepper
For the Cranberry
- use your favourite cranberry sauce recipe. We use OhSheGlow’s maple cranberry sauce (#11 in this holiday menu which uses fresh cranberries, maple syrup and a touch of balsamic vinegar)
Instructions
For the Stuffing
- Rip bread into small pieces and toast in the oven for 10min at 400 degrees
- In a skillet over medium heat saute garlic, onion, shallots and celery in oil or vegan butter until onions are translucent
- Add white wine and continue to cook over medium until wine is absorbed
- Combine onion mixture with bread in a large bowl and add parsley, poultry seasoning, raisins and flax eggs. Stir to combine.
- Add vegetable broth and stir.
For the Cupcakes
- Preheat oven to 350 and grease cupcake tin liberally.
- Fill cupcake wells with stuffing and make a little well in the middle of each for the cranberry sauce.
- Spoon cranberry sauce into stuffing cupcakes and cover pan with tinfoil.
- Bake covered for 20min, remove tinfoil, bake for another 20min uncovered.
- Let cool for approx 10minutes before removing from pan.
Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and are able to spend some quality time with your friends and family.
