My goal? Create vegan friendly food that doesn't rob the bank, doesn't kill me, and still tastes awesome.
DISCLAIMER:
Although I will try to post as many original recipes as possible, sometimes I will reblog other vegan Tumblrs or post from other recipe blogs with notes on how I modified said recipe to fit my needs. Please always check the source link on the bottom.
Posts tagged: Vegan
Bottom up: avocado, red onion, tomato, black pepper, marinated potabella cap, queso vegan cheese dip. Yum.
My super special-birthday pumpkin spice cupcakes with chai inspired frosting.
Chocolate-covered Katie’s Gingerbread Latte recipe taken to the next level by using Hazelnut coffee. Yummmm.
Then again aren’t I always? Anyways, here’s my long overdue Thanksgiving post that is almost (but not quite) a week late.
Clockwise from the olives are mashed red potatoes, Tofurky, green bean casserole, sweet bread, sweet potato casserole, and some veggies that I cooked my Tofurky in.
First up, are my mashed potatoes. These are really the only thing that I didn’t use a recipe for.
Ingredients:
- 20 small red potatoes (mine were freakishly tiny for some reason)
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced.
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 ts dried basil
- Black Pepper to taste
- 3/4 ts dried rosemary
- non dairy milk (as needed)
Directions:
Boil your potatoes until soft, drain them, and immediately put them back in the warm pot. Add all of the ingredients with a splash of milk and begin to mash the potatoes. Add more milk as needed until you get the consistency you want.
Tofurky:
My Tofurky was the stuffing filled Tofurky brand roast that comes with its own gravy. I put it in my slow cooker with 2 cups of vegetable broth, a packet of onion soup mix, a splash of evoo, Ms. Dash table blend seasoning, one carrot chopped, a handful of chopped onions, and black pepper. I cooked it on high for two hours.
Green Bean Casserole:
I wanted to try something different for my green bean casserole and when I saw Sunny Vegan’s recipe that called for actual onion rings rather than those weird crispy things you get in a can, I knew I had to go for it.
Sweet potato casserole:
I was rather particular on the recipe I was going to use for my sweet potato casserole. It’s my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I could eat a well made sweet potato casserole for days weeks months. Anyhow, I’m a big fan of using candied pecans in place of marshmallows. Don’t get me wrong, I love a couple dandies in my hot cocoa every now and then, that’s about the only time I eat them though. They just taste like pure sugar to me. Fat Free Vegan’s recipe totally hit the spot. This is a recipe i’ll make in later winter months even after Thanksgiving is long gone.
Caramel Apple Pie:
My pie recipe comes from the lunchboxbunch’s blog. I’ve made this pie before and it’s always a hit. Actually, anything I make from her recipe index is always a hit. That woman knows what she’s doing in the kitchen!
And of course who can forget about leftovers!
I had quite a few leftover meals but this is the only one I photographed. It’s just ezekiel bread with (from bottom up) Veganaise, leftover Tofurky, fresh spinach, my favorite dill and herb cashew cheese, and another slice of bread. So good.
Today I baked an apple pie and I currently have dinner rolls rising. Tomorrow i’m making sweet potato casserole and pumpkin pie, and on Thursday i’m making green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and my (boxed) Tofurky. If you had asked me even a year ago if I pictured myself cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner at 19 I would have called you crazy. Ah, well. Pictures will be up by the end of the week. :)
All my life my dad has eaten his apple pie with cheddar cheese on it, and he loves cheddar crust pies. I thought about doing and apple cheese crust pie with Daiya for Thanksgiving (i’m supplying everything but the carnivore’s Turkey this year).
I’ve honestly never even had pie with cheese on it so it’ll be quite the experiment, but I’m afraid it would taste too different or that the texture would be off. What do you guys think?
I know promised chicken salad in my last post, but sometimes things just don’t go exactly as planned. This week I was asked to provide a local coffee shop with some cake pops. Frankly, the idea scared the heck out of me. I had never made cake pops before and from what i’ve heard it’s a very extensive process. Well, I heard right. I made chocolate and vanilla flavored pops. The vanilla were covered in 65% dark cocoa and the chocolate were dipped in semi-sweet. Personally, i’m not a huge fan of chocolate cake but in this case the chocolate was way better flavor and texture wise. Anyways, here’s what I did.
Ingredients:
1 recipe basic chocolate cake of choice
1 recipe chocolate mouse frosting
Half of one 16oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli)
1 Tablespoon of coconut oil
20 lollipop sticks (I got a pack of 20 from Michael’s for about $1.20)
Sprinkles/nuts/coconut flakes for rolling (optional)
Make cake and frosting according to recipe. It’s almost better if you do this the night before. I crumbled the cake immediately out of the oven because that’s usually when it’s the weakest. Refrigerate over night, or long enough for the frosting to set and cake to be completely cold.
The next morning put your cake crumbles into a large bowl and add frosting a little at a time. You’re NOT going to use the entire batch of frosting, if you do it will turn to soup and you’ll be back to square one. (I learned this the hard way). You want your cake/frosting mixture to turn into a doughy substance. Use a cookie/ice cream scooper to scoop out balls of the mixture, roll them into shape, and place them onto a pan covered in wax paper. You need the wax paper or they will stick to the pan. Freeze the balls for about an hour or until completely hard.
When your cake balls are hardened, place the pan in your fridge. Melt chocolate and coconut oil in a double broiler. Once the chocolate is almost (but not entirely) melted, remove from the broiler and whisk until no lumps remain.
You’re going to want to work out of your fridge because if you take all of the balls out of the fridge at once they’ll get warm an crumble on your stick.
Take one ball out the fridge at a time, dip your stick partially into the chocolate, and place the stick inside of your ball. Dip the cake in the melted chocolate and roll immediately in your decoration of choice (you’ll need to work quickly because the chocolate hardens extremely fast). Repeat until all of the balls are coated. Keep them in the fridge until time to serve.
I know this is a lot to take in and if you’re anything like me it’s easier to work with recipes when you have something to look at. So this is the recipe that I referred to. Have fun and enjoy your cake pops. While you’re at it, wish me luck. If these sell I may have myself a part time baking job. :)
Apple Cider Butterscotch Cookies
Adapted from Scrambled Henfruit
Ingredients
- 1 cup softened shortening
- 1 cup organic sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt alternative
- 1/2 cup store bought apple cider
- 4 table spoons applesauce
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3 cups unbleached flour
- pieces of butterscotch (I used this recipe)
Directions
Preheat oven to 350° F. Lightly grease a large cookie pan
In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon.
With your mixer (or an energetic spoon) cream together shortening, sugar, salt and apple cider, until light and fluffy.
Beat in applesauce, two tablespoons at a time.
Add vanilla and mix well.
Gradually add flour mixture to the shortening/applesauce mixture. Mix until just combined.
Refrigerate for about an hour. (This was only a suggestion in the other recipe but the dough kept sticking to my hands so badly that it was actually interfering with inserting the butterscotch)
Scoop out cookie dough ball about the size of a walnut. (I used a rounded cookie scoop-full. My scoop holds about a Tablespoon.) Flatten the ball of dough slightly in the palm of your hand. Press the butterscotch piece into the center of your dough and seal the dough around it, covering it completely. Place on cookie sheet.
Bake 12-14 minutes, or until very lightly browned around the edges, make sure not to over bake! Wait until almost completely cool before digging in. I was too anxious and the melted butterscotch ended up burning my tongue. :(
Yield: about 2 dozen large cookies (as shown) or 4 dozen small cookies.
A while back at one of my weekly trips to Trader Joes (yes, weekly) I stumbled across this awesome accidentally vegan cake mix. I had been craving a crumb cake for quite some time and I felt like this made it way too easy to get my way. Apparently I was right about the way too easy part because I felt that in order to be satisfied by this baby I couldn’t just throw the contents of the box together and call it a day. No, I had to get all fancy and what-not. The finished product resulted in an awesome-chocolate-filled-pumpkin spice flavored-cinnamon topped-extravaganza. It’s rare that my parents will eat anything I make. Usually if the word vegan is thrown in anywhere near what they’re eating there’s something to complain about. This cake however, didn’t even last 48 hours in my house (of only 3 residents) and I hardly got any of it to myself. I figured if it was that good I had to share it with you wondrous people so, here we go:
Ingredients:
- boxed cake mix
- 1 cup of pumpkin (i used fresh but i’m sure canned works just as well)
- 2 Tbs milk alternative
- 1 Tb applesauce
- 2 ts canola oil
- 1/8 Ts nutmeg
- 1/2 Ts ground cloves
- 1 ts cinnamon
- 2 Tbs cocoa powder (I used Ghiradelli’s brand. I
havecould eat this stuff out of the jar) - 1 Tb organic sugar
- Boxed cake topping
- 4 tbs vegan shortening
- A handful of vegan chocolate chips
Directions:
In large bowl mix together the packet of the cake mix, cinnamon, ground clove, nutmeg, canola oil, apple sauce, “milk”, and pumpkin. In separate bowl mix together cocoa powder and sugar, and in one last bowl mix the contents of the crumble topping and the shortening*.
In a greased 8x8 baking dish pour half of the cake batter, a layer of crumble, and half of the cocoa mixture, then the rest of the cake batter, the rest of the cocoa mixture, and the rest of the crumble mixture. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and cook according to the box’s directions.
That’s it. That’s all there is to this, and it’s really fantastic. I promise.
*The box calls for 3 Tbs of butter for the crumble, however when I read the reviews online most of the people complained about not having enough for the two layers to be completely covered. If you don’t like a lot of cinnamon then go ahead and stick to the amount of butter on the box.
I was asked by one of you lovelies to post some conventional replacements for non vegan items in baking and cooking. I never even thought about doing this, as I have been baking vegan goodies for some time now and it all just really comes naturally. I realize though that not all of my followers are vegans, so you don’t have to work with this kind of stuff regularly. Here’s a little cheat sheet i’ve made up for you guys:
Eggs:
There are many replacement options for eggs when baking. I normally opt for cornstarch, flax, or applesauce personally. Mostly because I can’t afford to go out and buy an egg replacer (I.e. Ener-G egg) and these ones have the least amount of a “hidden flavor” after all is said and done.
Flax seeds: 2 Tbs flax seed meal/powder + 3 tbs water = 1 egg
Tofu: 1/4 cup silken tofu = 1 egg
Banana: 1/2 banana well mashed = 1 egg
Applesauce: 3 tbs = 1 egg
Corn Starch: 1 tbs corn starch + 2 tbs water = 2 eggs
Milk:
This is pretty general. There are so many milk replacers on the market these days. You can choose from soy milk, coconut milk (my favorite), almond milk, hemp milk, ect. It really just depends on what nutritional needs you have.
Butter:
Again, pretty general. Earth Balance is the only all vegan brand that i’m aware of right now and it comes in different formats. Smart Balance light is also vegan and though it’s not the most diet friendly option, you can always use vegetable shortening. I do the ladder quite often because i’m on a crazy low sodium diet and need to do as much as I can to keep my sodium intake as low as possible.
Buttermilk:
Whenever a recipe calls for buttermilk I add one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar for every cup of “milk”. Add the vinegar to the milk, give it a quick whisk and a few minutes to sit. Eventually it will start to curdle and then you’ll be good to go.
Chocolate:
Carob chips are vegan, and most store brand dark chocolate is dairy free and vegan friendly. Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips and Trader Joes brand chocolate chips are both dairy free. Enjoy Life chocolate is completely allergen free which is just awesome. It’s soy, dairy, nut, egg, casine, AND gluten free! *whew* Yet they still taste awesome, trust me.
If you’re looking for already made chocolate goodies my favorites that i’ve tried so far would have to be Dr. Lucy’s gluten free chocolate chip cookies (they carry them at my Starbucks. I was SO excited when I saw the little “V” on the package!), almost ALL Oreos, Chocolove brand chocolate bars, and if you are into the boxed cake stuff most Duncan Hines is vegan friendly.
I hope this was helpful enough. If any of you have questions or have anything to add feel free to shoot me a message. :)
This isn’t so much a recipe as it is just an excuse to share the awesomeness that is this sandwich. My obsessions include peanut butter, bananas, and pumpkin butter. So what better way to enjoy them all than together, making tasty love between two slices of bread. unf.
To creat this beauty I just took one slice of no sodium ezekiel bread, slathered it with chunky no sodium peanut butter, and layered on some fresh cut banana slices. On another slice of ezekiell bread I globbed on some of my home made pumpkin butter (It’s like pumpkin pie in a jar, i kid you not), slapped the two together, and enjoyed my lunch way too much. I seriously eat this sandwich all the time. Try it. I dare you.
I feel as though a bit of background has to go into this post. I am a big vegan pizza fanatic. Eventually my posts will probably consist of mostly pizza and cupcakes (pizza cupcakes maybe? Ohmygod. I need to get on that stat!).
So anyways, last night my best friend was coming over and we were going to be watching movies all night. With regularily following Tumblrs such as this one, I thought what could possibly taste better while watching a movie than pizza? Am I right, or am I right?
We had a few set backs though:
Problem 1. No toppings in the house
Problem 2. The only vegan cheese in the house was Galaxy Nutrition’s Parmesan flavor.
Problem 3. I had 5 bucks to my name.
Then I thought, breadsticks with pizza sauce would totally be the perfect compromise. I just felt like it wasn’t exciting enough. After a bit of thinking however the pizza inspired monkey bread was born:
Savory Monkey Bread
Ingredients:
- 4 cans of pilsbury flaky style biscuts (always double check ingredients)
- 2 to 3 TBS garlic powder
- 2 ts vegan parmesan
- 3 ts each of oregano and basil
- Pepper to taste
- 4 tbs vegan butter/margrine
What you’ll need:
- a large ziplock bag
- a small bowl
- a regular sized, lightly greased bunt pan
Preheat your oven to 350F
Open your cans of biscuts, seperate them, and cut each one into four pieces.
Put all of your spices into a ziplock bag and melt your margarine into a small bowl. Take your cut up biscuts and dip them into the butter before throwing them into the bag. Shake your bag vigorously until evrything is mixed and all your biscuts are covered. You may have to use your hands at some point, I did. Layer all your biscut pieces into your bunt pan and place in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes.
When done, flip out of pan and serve with your favorite pizza sauce (or any tomato sauce you happen to have on hand).
On a side note, this is by no means a low sodium meal. Sometimes my diet must be compromised in order to abide by my budget and visa versa. As long as you take care of your body regularly though, there should be no reason why you can’t splurge once in a while. Even if it’s a medically enforced diet like my own.
Stuffed French Toast Casserole
I have never baked french toast before so when I made this and it actually tasted good I must say I was awfully proud of myself.
Ingredients:
A lightly greased 8x8 casserole dish
8 slices of cinnamon bread
1 cup milk substitute (I use silk brand coconut milk)
2 tbs cornstarch
4 tbs water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I think adding 1/2ts of rum extract along with the vanilla would be really wonderful as well)
a couple shakes of both cinnamon and allspice
2 very ripe bananas
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 tbs agave
1/2 tbs maple syrup
1/4 cup of organic sugar
2 tbs Crisco
1 cup of pecans
1 cup of walnuts
Extra agave for drizzling
Preheat your oven to 350F.
In a large cup combine cornstarch and water. Wisk thoroughly. Add in milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and allspice. This will be your egg substitute.
In a small bowl combine the two bananas, brown sugar, agave, and maple syrup. Mash with a fork until it has the consistency of chunky baby food.
Next, line the bottom of your greased dish with four slices of bread. Stab the bread slices with a fork to ensure that all the flavors get absorbed nicely into the bread. Pour half of the egg substitute over your slices and cover them with the banana compote. Drizzle a little bit of agave over the top. Place remaining bread over the top of your compote and fork them again (hehehe), and pour the remaining egg substitute over the top.
In another small bowl (or the same one you used for the banana like I did), combine the regular sugar, Crisco, and nuts. Use your hands to crumble the topping over the bread slices. Drizzle with more agave.
bake for 30 minutes, let cool and enjoy.
My best friend and I ate this with a side of fresh fruit for dinner a few nights ago but I’m sure it would be a great dish to take to a brunch. I let her keep the leftovers and she informed me that it is even better the next day because all the flavors get a chance to mingle and the bread releases a lot of the syrup.
Hey guys! Dang, only two recipes in and i’m already slacking. It’s alright though because I have a couple of winners for you today.
First up:
Cinnamon Swirl Yeast Bread
I have to be honest with you all. Bread is not, and never has been my forte. In short I can never seem to get bread to do what it’s supposed to. Lately i’ve been determined to make at least one good loaf of bread that cooks all the way through, tastes good, and isn’t too dry. I think this recipe may just be the one. I am going to post my adapted recipe below but if you’d like to make a non low-sodium version of this bread feel free to click through to this link and follow this author’s recipe exactly for a super awesome cinnamon swirly bread.
Ingredients:
¾ cups soy buttermilk (soy milk combined with 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar)
¼ cup Crisco, softened (this is mearly just because crisco is 0mg sodium per serving, where as Earth Balance is 100mg per tbs)
3 ¼ cups flour (I did half whole wheat, and half unbleached)
1 package yeast
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons water
Filling:
1 cup brown sugar
1 TBS ground cinnamon
1/4 cup dairy-free margarine, softened
1/4 cup vegan Crisco
Heat the soy buttermilk in a small saucepan until it just begins to bubble, then remove from heat. Mix in margarine; stir until melted. Let cool until lukewarm.
While you’re waiting for the soy milk mixture to cool, in a large mixing bowl combine 2 1/4 cup flour, yeast, sugar and salt; mix well. Add water and the cooled soymilk/margarine mixture; beat well. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. Once the dough starts to form into a ball, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth, about 5 minutes.
Here’s where I had a bit of trouble. My dough actually didn’t form a ball whatsoever. 
My dough was so dry and flaky that I had to add about 6 more tbs of water to the mix until it finally took on the form of actual dough.
Place the kneaded dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp cloth and place in a warm place to rise for an hour (or so).
Heat your oven to 350 and lightly grease your loaf pan.
While you’re waiting for the dough to rise and the oven to warm up, you can mix together brown sugar, cinnamon, softened margarine in a small bowl. It smells delicious, but don’t eat it yet, you’re going to need this!
Roll out the dough into a rectangle. I gauge mine based on the size of the pan I’m using. You don’t want the loaf to be wider than your loaf pan, so you might want to keep that pan handy. Once you get the dough rolled out, spread it with margarine/sugar mixture.
Starting at the far end, roll the dough toward you and pinch the final seem to try and keep it contained. 
(My loaf pooped a little bit)
Place this in your lightly greased loaf pan and cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.
Bake for 40 minutes, or until browned.
And viola! That’s it! Beautiful cinnamon bread. My loaf didn’t rise as much as the author’s did and once I find out I’ll let you know. It did however taste fantastic. I used it to make pb&j’s, I ate it toasted plain, I even used it to make a stuffed french toast casserole that I will share with you all next. :)
omnomnom
Creamy Pesto Pasta Salad
(Gosh, I really need to work on my names)
This pasta salad was loosely based off of the one on this website.
Here’s what I changed:
- I doubled the recipe
- I used rainbow pasta instead of whole wheat for more color
- I added baked cheezy tofu
- I made my own pesto dressing and omitted hers.
For the cheezy baked tofu:
I used half a package of already cubed tofu (it has less sodium compaired to a block, which I’ve yet to understand), put it on a greased baking pan and sprinkled it with nutritional yeast. I then baked it at 375F for about 20-30 minutes, flipping the tofu half way through the baking process.
For the pesto dressing:
Ingredients:
A little over half of the cashew pesto batch from the previous recipe
3 tbs of heavy vegan creamer (I used Trader Joes brand because again, it has no sodium)
2 tbs of good quality olive oil (Be careful, some cheaper olive oils are just gag worthy)
2 chopped basil leaves (I just really love basil)
3 artichoke hearts
Place all ingrediants into a mixer and blend until a thick creamy substance forms. Adjust seasonings as needed (I added a few more shakes of Mrs. Dash).
Serve at room temperature or cold. Enjoy!
I haven’t picked up my camera for almost a year so this blog may have made me a little trigger happy.
