Category Archives: Desserts

Dec 05 2015
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Desserts, Recipes, Uncategorized

It’s My Annual Vegan Cookie Baking Day!

I don’t like baking. This is well-documented. I would say that I tolerate it now and I do find it a little cathartic, but that’s because I have finally had some success in my baking. Still, I try to avoid it altogether! But during the holidays, I’ll dust off the cookie sheets and bake some cookies to share with my pals.

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I first posted about these cookies a couple years ago. I’ll make a bold statement and say the cookies are better, but the recipe is the same!

Vegan German Chocolate Cookies
adapted from Bake and Destroy

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups sugar
⅔ cup vanilla almond milk or soy milk
⅔ cup canola oil
2 tablespoons ground flax meal
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ⅓ cups rolled oats
¾ cup vegan chocolate chips
½ cup shredded coconut
½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, milk, oil, flax meal, and vanilla extract. Whisk for about 2 minutes, until the mixture thickens.

4. Stir the wet ingredients into the flour mixture until just mixed.

5. Fold in the oats, chocolate chips, coconut, and walnuts.

6. Drop by tablespoons (I used a cookie dough scooper thingy) onto the prepared baking sheets and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set up.

7. Let cool on the pans for 5 minutes, then let cool completely on wire racks.

Hope you guys enjoy and have a great holiday season! -Melissa

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Jul 18 2015
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Desserts, Uncategorized

A Restful Weekend with Bonus Fruit Salad

I know it’s been awhile, y’all, but don’t worry:

From tumblr.com

Life has felt busy lately and not the exaggerated “I’m soooo busy (marathoning television shows)” kind of busy but the kind that involves having a ton to do at work, traveling a lot for work, and having a lot of family and friend stuff going on. It’s the “I haven’t done laundry in like three weeks” kind of busy. Gross.

Anyway, this weekend is finally a quiet one where I have zero plans other than catching up on my life, vegging out, and doing laundry. I can’t complain too much: I did go on one non-obligatory, 100% for myself vacation last month and visited Jen, my sister from another mister.

smarterrestSide story: I had to sneak into Jen’s place in the middle of the night and scared the crap out of her since she was asleep on the couch. (Don’t worry about why I had to sneak in. I just did. MYOB!) Along with screaming very loudly, Jen threw her eye mask at me. I’m so grateful it was just that and not a lethal weapon. Maybe things would have gone better if she had the Sleep Mask Eye Mask By Smarter Rest, which I had the opportunity to try out. This mask blocks out the light better than any other eye mask I’ve used AND it comes with ear plugs AND comes with its own storage bag. It’s also adjustable so it’ll fit no matter how giant or tiny your head is.

One of the highlights of the weekend was making a Filipino dinner for my friends and that included this easy throwback for dessert:

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Yum… lychees! Again, this super simple fruit salad consists of canned lychees, a can of fruit cocktail and almond jello. You can add a can of lychee juice if you want it to be more soupy, or ice cubes to keep it cold. Such good stuff! You should be able to find all the ingredients at any Asian grocery store. If you’re in the Charleston area, we picked up our stuff at the H&L Asian Supermarket. BTW–Jen froze, blended and used it to make a refreshing cocktail after I had already gone home. Sounds freaking delicious!

That’s all for now. I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!

-Melissa

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Oct 14 2014
1 Comment
Desserts, Lazy Vegan, Uncategorized

Easy Vegan Fudge from Decadent Gluten-Free Vegan Baking

Fork and Beans by Cara Reed is easily one of the best vegan cooking blogs out there. Cara finally published her first book Decadent Gluten-Free Vegan Baking in August and I was lucky enough to get my hands on it! Being the lazy vegan that I am, I gravitated toward her recipe for Easy Vegan Fudge. I mean, it’s got “easy” in the title and requires no actual baking!

I made these treats for a fall potluck hosted by What’s Cookin, Chicago and Bears in the Kitchen. If you’re in the Chicago area, check out these guys for upcoming food blogger events! Definitely check them out if you like food (and you know you do).

Vegan Fudge

Click here to see the recipe and much more vegan goodness on Fork and Beans

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 c non-dairy chocolate chips – I used dark chocolate morsels (about 1 1/2 packages) by Enjoy Life
  • 1/2 c. coconut cream – see below for my notes on coconut cream!!
  • 1/2 c. non dairy milk – I used almond milk
  • Dash salt – um, I totally forgot to add salt and nothing imploded
  • 1 c. chopped nuts, optional (or more!) – I skipped the nuts for the batch above, but I love me some walnuts!
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:

  1. In heavy saucepan, over low heat, melt chips with coconut cream, non-dairy milk, and salt.  Remove from heat.
  2. Stir in nuts if desired and vanilla.  Spread evenly into wax paper lined small square pan — or stick them into cute little cupcake thingys like I did.  Place more chopped nuts on top if desired.
  3. Chill 2 hours or until firm.
  4. Turn fudge onto cutting board, peel off paper and cut into squares.  Store covered in fridge.

Here’s what you need to know about coconut cream: They’re not all made the same or equally. This recipe requires something that actually says “coconut cream” on the label. Cream of coconut won’t cut it! But it will result in a heavy chocolate pudding-like treat. Coconut cream from Trader Joe’s is what works!!

Chocolate: I really like products from Enjoy Life because they are exactly like real chocolate chips and are not only dairy-free but also soy-free. They aren’t messing around with their dark chocolate, either! So grab their “milk” chocolate chips if you like something sweeter.

Don’t forget to visit Fork and Beans and pick up Cara’s book if you like what you see!

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May 23 2013
3 Comments
Desserts

Apple Bake!

This was something that happened because I wanted to lighter breakfast and didn’t want to fuss with it too much. Did you know apples have almost the exact same nutritional value cooked as raw? I guess that makes sense.

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I cut up 2 pounds of apples and tossed them with 2 cups of Cascadian Farms Berry Cobbler granola. I baked it for 30 minutes at 350F and then set it out to cool a little before we ate it. This is just as good for breakfast as it is for dessert!

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If you’re wondering why the apples look so pink, it’s because they’re mountain rose apples. I love them because they’re visually stunning and taste like honey crisp apples. Yay!

 

This is Christie, signing off!

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May 11 2013
30 Comments
Desserts

Mango Margaritas!

This is an incredibly simple drink and mango is in season here in Florida. I figured I’d honor our local bounty and make something really fresh (like from the tree in our backyard) and that’s sure to please. We typically collect our mango as they’re available and peel and then freeze the flesh in 16 ounce containers.

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Place the frozen fruit into your trusty blender with or without tequila (one ounce per person is my rule), 1 cup of orange juice and juice from half a lime. Before you pour your beverage, you’ll want to coat the rim of your beverage receptacle with salt. There are 2 ways to do this. I recommend using fine sea salt but ordinary table salt is fine. You’ll gently dip the lip of your glass into your margarita and then into a bowl of salt OR rub the other half of that lime around the edge of that glass and then do the same with the bowl of salt.

IMG_2544Blend it up to smooth perfection and get ready to enjoy your vitamin A and vitamin C with enough fiber to make a vegan blush.

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Thank-you for visiting the Virtual Vegan Potluck 3.0! Please visit the blogs before and after us in the potluck! They’re also amazing. This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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Apr 02 2013
2 Comments
Desserts, Lazy Vegan, Main Dishes

Breakfast Wrap

This particular item more resembles dessert than breakfast but the nutritional profile doesn’t disappoint. All I did was take a flax gluten-free tortilla and topped it with the following

1 tbsp chocolate peanut butter (I used Peanut Butter and Co. but really any vegan nut butter will do)

2 tbsp dried blueberries (dried cranberries or raisins would work well too)

1/2  banana, sliced

1/4 apple, sliced

1/4 cup granola (I used Cascadian Farms)

I microwaved it for 20 seconds so it would soften and then ate it… It kept me full until lunch time. The crisp acidic apple and the soft sweet banana were perfectly balanced with the chewy blueberries and nutty chocolate crunch of the granola and peanut butter. Next time I might add some slivered almonds.

This is Christie, signing off!

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Nov 01 2012
23 Comments
Desserts

Virtual Vegan Potluck: Guava Cheesecake!

Today is a special one because you’re visiting a page that’s part of the Virtual Vegan Potluck! This is the second one that Turning Veganese has been fortunate enough to participate in and it’s a great way to look at lots of vegan food blogs and even some non-vegan blogs that are participating by presenting a vegan dish. I definitely recommend exploring. Use the “go forward” and “go back” buttons at the bottom of the page to participate.

I wanted to be sure that Florida culture came out in my Virtual Vegan Potluck contribution so I decided to include some local flare. Guava pastries are a staple in our Cuban heritage, coconut and lime are ubiquitous in Caribbean cuisine so I wanted to include them in this recipe, and pecans are here to represent the Southern elements in South Florida culture. This is an incredibly easy recipe and shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes to prepare. All you need is a good spring form pan and the ingredients.

First prepare the crust by combining the following in a bowl:

1 cup of medjool dates, soaked overnight in water, drained and blended until smooth

1 cup of shredded coconut, preferably unsweetened

1 cup of crushed pecans

1 cup of almond meal

1/4 tsp of vanilla extract

a pinch of cinnamon

Mix these until uniform, adding extra water if it’s dry. It should be crumbly and a little sticky.

Once you like the texture, moosh it into the bottom of your spring form pan.

Now that you’ve got your crust, we’ve got to make the ‘cheese’cake part. It’s simple too:

1 carton of silken tofu

1 tsp starch (we used arrowroot) dissolved in 1 tbsp of lime juice

7 ounces of guava paste

Put all of that into your blender and blend until smooth. Pour it over the crust and put it into your freezer.

I sprinkled mine with some additional coconut to make it extra pretty. It’ll be ready in 4 hours.

Remove the wall of your spring form pan and serve. It will get gooey as it melts so put your spring form base on a wide plate to catch anything that falls off the edge.

This concludes my part in the Virtual Vegan Potluck event and I hope you’ll visit all the other posts in the chain. If you’re new to Turning Veganese, I hope you’ll visit again. Click on the “go forward” or “go back” button below to see what else the Virtual Vegan Potluck has in store for you!

This is Christie and Brent, signing off to head to the Potluck!

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Oct 18 2012
3 Comments
Desserts

Like a crepe but not.

I was feeling peckish and didn’t know what to make. I found some currants, chocolate peanutbutter and some corn tortillas. I threw them into the pan and got it all hot and toasty.

I made this: the chocolate ummm…. what do I call it!? It was worth sharing. Next time I might include strawberry jam and chopped pecans. Enjoy!

This is Christie, signing off!

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Jul 09 2012
2 Comments
Desserts

Easy Breezy Refreshing Dessert

This is one of my favorite things. It brings back memories of summer picnics in the park. I remember helping my mom cut the almond jello into squares. We would add ice cubes to the bowl to keep it cool.

All you need is a packet of almond jello, a can of fruit cocktail, and a can of lychees. You make the jello first. Once it’s formed, cut it into cubes and throw it into a large bowl with the other items. The jello will glide right out of the pan you put it in.

You should be able to easily find almond jello in any Asian supermarket. The brand we use is agar-based. I found a recipe for making almond jello on HapaMama if you can’t find the mix.

Yum! Let me know if you try this refreshing summer treat! –Melissa

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Jun 10 2012
5 Comments
Desserts, Snacks

Cantaloupe Bowl of Berries!

Summer is here and local fruits are ripe and gorgeous. There aren’t any words for how delicious this was so I’ll let the visuals speak for themselves.

Enjoy your summer bounty!

This is Christie, signing off!

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