No Bake Pumpkin Pie with a Spiced Ginger/Graham Crust

When I was a kid I could eat my weight in pumpkin pie. It was totally a thing among my family members: me and my pumpkin pie. In actuality, I think I liked crust and whipped cream. Pumpkin filling was merely a stepping stone. But to this day pumpkin pie is nostalgic and when Thanksgiving rolls around I pretty much have to have one. For old time sake. (Even though I honestly prefer pecan pie now days, sorry family).




This year when I was working on my pie I got a little...crafty. That's to say, I'm pretty much the worst baker ever, because I rarely follow directions or recipes. While that sort of behavior works in cooking, it can make for some real flops with baking. Sometimes things don't stick together, other times the little vegan aids I find a little repulsive (like corn starch or tapioca) and frequently omit, leave me with a pudding. This recipe worked fairly well. It tasted out of this world and looked pretty delicious. But I won't lie. I had a few moments of wondering how well the slices would hold up. I wouldn't even bother posting if I didn't think it was worth it. So go make this.

Thanksgiving Trials 3: Vegan Sheperd's Pie!

I've made a few takes on a vegan shepherd's pie and never loved them. A lot of them seem to use parsnips and mashed potatoes on top, and I think I might not be a huge fan of parsnips. Therefore, we decided when talking about how we wanted to go about this recipe, makes sense to omit them and just stick to ingredients we like. Duh.

So this time we opted for simple, comforting foods we know we love... and threw them all together, topping them with a tried and true (parsnip free) mashed potato recipe we knew we loved. And voila: the results were finally what we hoped for--a delicious shepherd's pie option we're totally going to eat for more than just Thanksgiving.

Nothing fancy, just simple and fantastic.

Thanksgiving Trails Take 2: Cranberry, Pumpkin, Pecan Upside Down Cake

When I became a vegan this was the first recipe I ever adapted. It's the perfect way to get my two favorite Thanksgiving desserts, pumpkin and pecan pie, without feeling overly indulgent. And it's the very best thing to bring to a party of vegans and non-vegans alike--because there's really nobody who doesn't like this dessert (that I've met). Last year my in-laws bypassed all non-vegan delights in favor of my cake. They were amazed when I revealed it was in fact vegan, and didn't use any refined sugars, and then we ate it again for breakfast the following morning, because it's sort of like a coffee cake, right?

I serve it with an extra helping of melted Earth Balance and maple syrup poured over the top, and if you want to get really crazy, you could even add coconut whipped cream. 

Cranberry, Pumpkin, Pecan Upside Down Cake

Topping:

1/2 cup Earth Balance
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 cups cranberries
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans, toasted

Cake:

2 flax eggs (2 Tablespoons ground flaxseeds combined with 4 Tablespoons warm water)
1 cup pumpkin puree
6 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cup maple syrup or Coconut Sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Line the bottom of a 9-inch pan with parchment paper.

Melt 1/2 cup Earth Balance in a small sauce pan over low heat, add 1/2 cup maple syrup whisk until smooth.

Pour the Earth Balance/syrup mixture into the bottom of the cake pan.

In a medium bowl combine the cranberries and pecans. Place them in the pan over the Earth Balance/syrup mixture.

Move on to the cake: In a large bowl put your flaxseeds and water together to form the two flax eggs--let sit for 5 minutes, then combine with pumpkin puree and oil.

Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Stir the flour mixture into the pumpkin mixture. Carefully spread the batter over the cranberry pecan topping.

Bake until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean, 35-40 minutes.

Cool the cake for 10 minutes on a wire rack. Place a large plate or platter on top of the cake. Invert the cake and plate together. Remove the pan and peel off the parchment paper.

Tip: as mentioned above, if you want to make it even more intense, melt equal parts Earth Balance to Syrup and drizzle over the top right before you serve it.

Thanksgiving Trials Take 1: Vegan Dinner Rolls

When I stopped eating meat in my early 20s my Thanksgivings home in the Midwest became a little challenging. It's not so much that vegetarian Thanksgiving foods are difficult, but more that my family couldn't even manage to make the collards without simmering them with a ham bone. With a bemused smile my relatives would shake their heads in mock-apology and tell me nothing--absolutely nothing save the pie, was without meat. When I became a vegan a few years later they stopped seeing the humor entirely and were just horrified. On the bright side, they never tried to accommodate me, which is often a disaster.

And so I began to cook Thanksgiving myself. Sometimes staying where ever I lived and hosting friends that, like me, opted to save airfare and skip Thanksgiving with family. Or, when I did make it back home, I started making my own food. My cousins still make collards with a ham bone. My aunt and uncle bring a turkey. I make everything else.

Every year I switch it up, though there are a few staples--some kind of roll, some variant of mashed potatoes...and there's always pies. For our des olives weekly meet up we decided to work together to nail a few recipes--we'll share the results over a series of posts titled "Thanksgiving Trials." First up? A vegan take on the traditional white flour dinner roll.

Full disclosure on these rolls. I don't really believe in proofing. Well, I believe there's a place for it--and that place is French-style bakeries--not my kitchen. I just don't have time to be that fussy anymore, but maybe when my kids are older I'll resume my interest in croissant-making and other puff-pastry doughs that require that kind of attention to detail. For the time being, I make due with working in a warm kitchen or lazily setting doughs on top of my oven for a few minutes. They could probably be fluffier--but really, when you're working with vegan butter that's already melted I can't justify the time.

Vegan Dinner Rolls:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp sea salt (or regular)
2 1/4 tsp Active Dry Yeast
1 cup very warm water
2 tbsp Earth Balance Buttery Stick
1 egg replacer (1 tsp egg replacer + 2 tbsp warm water)

Preheat oven to 425. 

In a stand mixer or by hand, mix 2 1/4 tsp of Active Dry Yeast with 1/4 cup of  hot/warm water. Let sit two or three minutes until bubbly, then add 1 tsp of sugar and stir. Let it sit for 10 minutes. 

Add 1 and 1/4 cup of flour, remaining sugar (1 tbsp + 2 tsp) and salt to yeast/sugar mixture. Mix briefly for 10 seconds, then add the remaining very warm water (3/4 cup) and 2 table spoons melted Earth balance and mix until smooth. Slowly add in the rest of the flour (1 cup).

With flour-covered hands and an extra sprinkling of flour to keep the dough from being too sticky when handling, create 6-8 balls (depending on how large you want you rolls). Place them right next to each other in the pie pan.

Set filled pie pan and rolls on TOP of the oven for 5 to 10 minutes and allow the rolls to rise briefly. If you like very buttery rolls, feel free to melt another table spoon or two of the Earth Balance and pour directly over the top, drizzling the rolls (after you've given them a few minutes to puff up.), but I thought there was enough buttery taste for me with just 2 Table Spoons.

Put in the over for 10 -12 minutes, watching  to make sure the rolls don't become too brown but are cooked through. 

Adapted from here.

chocolate peanut butter cream pie bars

I always thought once I started eating a plant-based diet I'd suddenly no longer want sweets or desserts. I'd be so into wholesome, good savory foods that my lifetime love of chocolates, cakes and pastries would just...disappear.

On the contrary, I think I've become a far more prolific baker and maker of sweet things since going vegan a few years ago. For starters, finding and creating good recipes feels like a fun, new challenge. And, as the mom of a toddler, baking vegan goodies with my daughter is much more fun--When she inevitably licks the bowl or samples something without permission, there's no raw egg to consider. My recipes usually contain very few ingredients and minimal stove time (a lot of things use a food processor or high speed blender, which makes her cover her ears, but then we move on). The only draw back is waiting for things to solidify in the freezer, but there's always something.

While some recipes rely on nuts and dates and tend to have a similar base (and often a similar taste, which is my vegan-husband's only complaint on plant-based treats), this recipe is pretty close to a traditional cream pie. It's a bit less sugar and uses coconut milk instead of cream, Earth Balance instead of butter--but beyond that, it's not far from the real deal.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cream Pie Bars

Crust:

1 cup Peanut Butter Puffins cereal

2 Tablespoons melted Earth Balance (vegan butter)

Blend cereal in a food processor or high speed blender (I do the latter and make a flour, but it's good course too). Melt the Earth Balance in a pan on low heat.

Line an 8" baking dish or pie pan with parchment and sprinkle the cereal into the bottom. Pour Earth Balance over it and using the back of a spoon, make a sort of "paste" that spreads to the corners of the dish. Once you have an even layer bake at 350 for about 12 minutes (keep an eye on it if your oven runs hot. Cereal flour, it turns out, burns fast once it starts to go).

While the crust bakes, start on the filling.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Filling:

3/4 a cup vegan chocolate chips (make sure they're sweetened, if you go the unsweetened route you'll need to add sugar, honey or maple syrup to taste--and you can do that anyway if you want a sweeter pie).

1 14oz can of coconut milk (depending on what brand of coconut milk you use, you'll get 13.6 oz or 14, sometimes even 15. They all work, just don't over fill the baking dish)

3 Tablespoons unsweetened peanut butter (If you have a good blender you should seriously consider buying dry roasted peanuts and making your own because it's just so much better, but any peanut butter will work).

In a sauce pan on low heat, pour coconut milk and simmer with chocolate chips until the chips start to melt, then add in peanut butter until it melts too (whisk regularly). Once smooth and everything  is melted remove from heat--don't let it boil or you'll burn the chocolate and make it have to sit in the fridge even longer to solidify, you just want to heat the ingredients until they're smooth a mix well. (If your adding honey, syrup of sugar, add that in now too).

Once your crust has cooled and your coconut milk/chocolate/peanut butter mixture isn't hot anymore, pour the filling into the baking dish/pie pan, cover with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for about 4 hours.

*The bars pictured above are topped with a dusting of raw cocoa powder and a "date simple syrup"--(which is 4 dates soaked for about 3 hours until soft, then drained and thrown in a high speed blender with a table spoon of Earth Balance and 1/2 water).

And here's a fun tip: my husband likes this frozen--solid, as in difficult to cut it's so hard. If I try to give him the pudding consistency version I enjoy, he politely asks me to return his to the freezer until it's "done correctly." I think the pudding way is better, so I remove mine from the freezer for about 20 to 30 minutes before I want to eat it. If you go this route it's the consistency of a cream pie, which seems...normal. But I guess we all like what we like.

As I mentioned above, this could be a pie too, I just like bars and the fact that a square shape yields more pie per serving than a triangle. I'll leave it up to you.

carrot & leek soup & kale caesar salad

When I lived in cooler climates, soup season started around the time a jacket was required. It was one of the best parts of the changing seasons. Soup makes for the perfect lunch: it's inexpensive, not too heavy, and diverse. You can eat it for days and never feel bored--there are just too many options.

The only trouble, for me anyway, is I find it so tied to the idea of a brisk, chilly day. Not easy to come by in Southern California. Well, it's been unseasonably cold the last few days--Still close to 70 degrees, but there's a definite chill and even a few yellowing leaves falling from the trees. It could be the drought, but the idea of Fall is far more pleasant. So we decided it was time for a soup and salad combo.

When it comes to making soup, we like to keep things simple. We had carrots, and when are leeks not good in a soup? This one was about as simple as it gets (we literally made it up as we were throwing things in the pot). It turned out amazing:

Carrot, Leek, Ginger and Thyme Soup (Serves 4)

6 cups carrots, leeks mixed (about 2 leeks diced, the rest carrot)
3 cups water
2 springs fresh thyme (some roasted with garlic, others roasted with veggies)
1Tablespoon chopped ginger
2 Tablespoons coconut oil
1 bulb garlic (roasted with 1 teaspoon coconut oil)
1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon salt (to taste, basically)

Roast the carrots, leeks and coconut oil at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. While veggies roast, wrap garlic bulbs with thyme and the teaspoon coconut oil in foil and roast for roughly 45 minutes.

Add roasted veggies to a large, deep pot with ginger and 3 cups of water and simmer for 15 minutes, then transfer veggies, roasted garlic plus cooking liquid to a blender and blend until smooth (make sure to leave the thyme in too--but remove the roasted stems and retain only the leaves). Add more water if it looks too thick.

Full disclosure? We totally didn't clean the blender between making the cashew caesar salad dressing and blending up the soup. Our laziness paid off and gave it some added zest.  Read on for the salad recipe.

A salad made this soup far more substantial, and we mixed them together and ate it as kind of a stew. As far as a salad recipe goes, I generally like to make them up. But this cashew caesar gem is one of the few I didn't create by whisking around spices with lemon and olive oil (those are good too, just different). Like everything I make, it's ever so slightly adapted: I use 2 Tablespoons of mustard, a full teaspoon of soy sauce, no lemon zest (too time consuming) kelp flakes, and freshly made croutons. (toast 3 slices of Ezekiel bread then dice them, toss them in a skillet with olive oil, a generous dusting of salt and pepper and let them get brown on one side, then flip. If you're feeling really ambitious, you can pop the toasted croutons in the oven for about 3 minutes at 400.).














I also add in capers and sub walnuts for sunflower seeds. It's a crowd pleaser for vegans and non-vegans. In fact, I often use this as my "bring something to a party" dish. I usually have to tell people it's plant-based because it looks pretty legit.

mac & cheese & nachos!

A vegan cheese sauce used two ways.

This recipe offers a great "alternative" (rather than substitution) to some "cheesy" favorites. While it looks like  the real deal and the finished flavor was remarkably similar, the ingredients were pretty surprising. Made up entirely of "whole foods"like potatoes, carrots and red pepper, we used Veggie's Don't Bite's Ultimate Cheese Sauce (adding a little more garlic, mustard and nutritional yeast, then thinning it out with some almond milk and Earth Balance).

People interested in a plant-based diet often ask how it's possible give up cheese. Eliminating cheese lacked the intense moral implications associated with straight meat (I know they're still there, but it's different), and the taste was always something I liked. In the end I found taking an apples and oranges approach was the best method. When I tried to simply substitute cheese with faux alternatives I was left disappointed (or worse, repulsed). It wasn't until I switched out cheese for something entirely different that it began to be easy.

This cheese sauce has some of the flavors and essence of the real deal--the textures and look as well as the zip of cheese, but it's also entirely satisfying on a different level. Tortilla chips covered with fresh cilantro,  homemade beans, diced avocado, tomatoes, pickled jalapenos, fresh onions and of course, cheese sauce, made this far heartier than any traditional take on nachos.

We used fresh Farmer's Market yellow beans and thinned the sauce with almond milk and a little Earth Balance to give it more of a "nacho cheese" sauce-feel.

And it made for a perfect baked mac and cheese--we used quinoa pasta and finished it by tossing in raw broccoli and crumbled bread crumbs and melted Earth Balance  in a casserole dish and baking at 350 for about 25 minutes (Tip: we suggest covering with foil for the first 15 minutes and removing for the last 10 to brown the bread crumbs to avoid drying out the cheese sauce). A garnish of cashew cheese made it as decadent as the traditional counterpart and just as filling. The broccoli steamed nicely, the bread crumbs browned--delicious.

Of course adult-friendly recipes don't always make the transition into kid-world. My incredibly picky three-year old took one look at the sauce and informed me she only likes crumbled parmesan (she's the only non-vegan in our household, but that's her choice to make if she ever wants to). She ate quinoa pasta with a little olive oil and steamed broccoli, and of course, her parmesan.