Category Archives: Dessert

Mar12

How to De-Pit Dates and Stuff Them with Goodness

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How to De-Pit Dates and Stuff Them with Goodness

I like surprises: birthday gifts, parties, weather, babies, and puppies – pretty much any surprise where fun is involved!  With food I find it funny when things are stuffed in things.  Pickles and pimentos, stuffed peppers, stuffed tomatoes, stuffed shells, even burritos and spring rolls!  When I found organic dates in the bulk section the other day I brought some home and wondered what to do with them.  After taking out the pit and seeing that perfect hole in the middle I knew I had to stuff them!  But with what?

Here’s where I started, inventing a new way (for me anyway) to remove the pit.

 

Cut!

Cut!

I cut across one end to remove the top.  I could see the top of the pit, but couldn’t grab it with anything and using my teeth would just be a little gross if I were to share these with anyone  :)

Find the pit!

Find the pit!

I retrieved my tweezers from my bathroom (is that worse than using my teeth) and promptly sanitized them.  I stuck the tip of the tweezers into the tip of the date and pulled the pit right out!  Easy, peasy!  I now have a need for a dedicated pair of tweezers in my kitchen!!  Turns out kitchen tweezers have already been invented, but had I seen them over at Bed, Bath, and Whatever before this occasion I would have laughed at the idea!

Slide out the pit!

Slide out the pit!

Stuff

Stuff

I started with vegan chocolate chips and moved on from there.  This was the prefect project for my son to help with – he can eat the chocolate chips that fall on the floor and he’s good at stuffing things in things.

Use a chopstick to push chocolate to the bottom

Use a chopstick to push chocolate to the bottom

Stuff more

Stuff more

Squeeze to seal

Squeeze to seal

Of course you can stuff whatever you want in the dates.  My next idea was raspberry jam.  Then I did raspberry jam AND chocolate chips.

Jam Syringe

Jam Syringe

I had an old baby feeding syringe  in the drawer and spooned some jam into it.  This might be a great halloween “bloody syringe” too!  You can pick up a free baby feeding syringe at most pharmacies.

Heat through

Heat through

Place the stuffed dates in a dry pan and heat over medium heat.  I flipped them after about 3 minutes – the dates started making a quiet sizzling sound.  If the pan gets too hot you can add a tiny bit of water.  Then I kept the dates in the pan for another 1-2 minutes.

Making sure the chocolate melted

Making sure the chocolate melted

Sweet Treat

Dessert is ready!  Be careful to not eat them immediately and scald yourself with molten chocolate – let cool for a few minutes  :)

Speaking of stuffed food, I have a strange respect for the “Turducken,” not for the dead meat, but for the hilarious (except for the dead animals) concept of stuffing a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey.  In the UK they have something called the “Royal Roast,” which is a pigeon stuffed with sausage, stuffed into a pheasant, into a chicken, into a turkey, and all put into a goose!  Whew.  No, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole, but it’s creative and unexpected.

What if I stuffed a pimento into an olive and stuffed it into a date?  My next thoughts are to create a hilarious vegan style Turducken.  Any ideas??

Other ideas I’ve been pondering for these dates:  vegan cream cheese would be good, other vegan cheeses, fake bacon, or almonds.  What would you stuff dates with?

 

Jan27

Rum Balls

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Rum Balls
Rum Balls

[Disclaimer: We moved across the country immediately before Christmas, so our holiday decorating and treat making were a little delayed and hurried.  This blog post is about a month overdue - I know everyone is way past thinking about the holidays!  But I really did just make the rum balls this weekend.  I'm late!]

I don’t know that this is universal, but when I think of Rum Balls I think of Christmas.  Rum balls have always been a holiday delicacy in my home.  Some of my earliest memories are of eating rum balls with my Dad and sitting in the living room looking at the lights on our Christmas tree.  I believe the recipe came from my Dad’s mother.

One year when I was in elementary school, somewhere between 1st and 3rd grades, I was asked to bring a treat to share with my classmates for the class party before our winter vacation.  While discussing it with my mother I asked if we could make rum balls together.  Some smiles and laughter erupted and it was explained to me that it would be frowned upon to bring treats that contained alcohol.  I was a bit saddened because I wanted to share my favorite holiday treat with all my friends – I knew they would love rum balls too!  I don’t remember what I did bring to class, but it was probably something not nearly as memorable or delightful.  Finally, finally, finally I get to share my favorite treat with my friends here!  I should hit Facebook to connect with all my old classmates to share with them too!

It was my Mom who made the rum balls each year, she also made my grandmother’s recipe for fruit cake.  I’m not a big fan of fruitcake, but she did make the best fruitcake I’ve ever tried.  When my parents got divorced I somehow acquired the rum ball recipe and I kept making the rum balls every year for my Dad.  I just mailed out his box yesterday, he’ll be very surprised to receive them this week!  I can’t wait to get the phone call from him.  They’ve always been his favorite treat too and I thought it would be comforting to him if I continued our holiday tradition of scarfing down rum balls by the tree.  Freud may say I’m just trying to take my mother’s place and wanting to marry my father, but that’s a topic for my shrink…

Decorating our tree on a rainy day.

Now that my son is 3 I believe it’s time for him to start acquiring a taste for rum balls.  He’s already in love with chocolate and didn’t hesitate to try a rum ball this year.  He made short work of it by biting it in half and finishing it all in two bites.  I wasn’t raised with a lot of family traditions, but I like to think that rum balls at the holidays is one of them and I hope when my son is older we can recount our time around the Christmas tree eating rum balls and admiring the pretty lights and baubles.

Christmas morning

I’ve altered the recipe somewhat to keep out the eggy Nilla Wafers, light corn syrup, and I use vegan sugar and chocolate, but I’ve otherwise stayed true to my grandmother’s recipe. Read the rest of this entry →

Nov1

Crisped Rice Treats

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Crisped Rice Treats
Crisped Rice Treats

Have I been talking about comfort foods enough lately?  If not, here’s another favorite of mine!  Believe it or not, I hadn’t seen someone make Rice Crispy Treats until I was 13-years-old while staying at my cousin’s house for the summer.  His wife asked me to help her and I was afraid of screwing something up – I’d only assumed it was some laborious process and I was sure to screw it up!  I could not believe how incredibly easy it was and why the hell hadn’t my parents been making these for me??

I love it when they’re soft and gooey, better yet, when they’re warm.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Yummy Dandies!

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Oct25

Chocolate-Chili Pudding

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Chocolate-Chili Pudding
Chocolate-Chili Pudding

Pudding was something that went right out the window when I went vegan – the same with Jello, but I was never into that anyway.  I couldn’t use soy milk or almond milk to make pudding from one of those instand pudding mixes – it just doesn’t work, or it didn’t for me anyway.  Who knows what else is in that box of powder anyway?  Nothing I want to consume at this point.

I was thrilled when I started seeing recipes for pudding shortly thereafter.  It’s another one of those comfort foods; something soft, creamy, sweet, and I can slowly suck it off the spoon while I savor it.  I started working with organic tofu and vegan chocolate chips, it was good, but it wasn’t great until I decided to add a little spice!  When one is wanting spicy chocolate, there is nothing that can sate that craving.

Chocolate-Chili Pudding

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Chocolate-Chili Pudding

Ingredients

  • 1 pound Organic Silken Tofu
  • 3/4 cup Sugar
  • 3/4 cup Water
  • 8 oz Vegan, Semisweet Chocolate - I use chocolate chips
  • 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 1 1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • 1 tsp Chili Powder

Instructions

  1. In a small pot, mix the sugar with the water and bring to a boil. Cook until sugar is dissolved.
  2. Set aside.
  3. Melt the chocolate in a small pan over medium heat, stirring constantly. If you are using a bar of chocolate, break it up into small pieces before putting over the heat.
  4. Place all ingredients into a blender or food processor and mix until smooth. Pour into small serving dishes and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
  5. Serve chilled.
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This pudding is quite rich and makes a lot, so I always use very small serving dishes.  I just found this awesome set of 8 tiny glass plant-pot style dishes with tiny spoons at TJ Maxx for $8 – another amazing find!

Enjoy your pudding!

Oct17

Zucchini Bread

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Zucchini Bread
Zucchini Bread

Today is the 17th of October, the month is more than half over – I’m calling it “almost Halloween.”  This zucchini bread just might raise the dead – it’s so damned delicious!

Not long ago, I was buried in a load of zucchini from my CSA and I can only stir fry so much of it before I turn my thoughts to fall breads.  I’m not one to “hide” vegetables in food to make sure my family gets their veggies, but sometimes it’s just a yummy combination and I can’t resist.  In this version I can even see green zucchini pieces when I slice it.

Great for gifting!

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Zucchini Bread

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour
  • 3/4 cup Unbleached White Flour
  • 3/4 tsp Baking Powder
  • 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
  • 1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
  • 1/4 tsp Salt
  • 1/2 cup Nuts - toasted (optional) - I use walnuts
  • 2 Tbsp Canola Oil
  • 1 cup Sugar
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp Ground Flaxseed mixed with 4 1/2 Tbsp Water
  • 1/3 cup + 1 Tbsp Applesauce
  • 1 1/8 cup Zucchini - grated
  • 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla

Instructions

  1. In a large bowl mix the flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and nuts (optional).
  2. In a medium bowl mix together the canola oil, sugar, and flax and water. Stir together well.
  3. Add the applesauce, zucchini, and vanilla to the wet mixture - stir well.
  4. Slowly mix in the wet ingredients to the dry being mindful not to over-mix the batter.
  5. Pour batter into a standard loaf pan.
  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 325 degrees for 1 hour - or until tester comes out clean.
  7. Cool on wire rack.
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Oct9

Amazing Chocolate Torte

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Amazing Chocolate Torte
Amazing Chocolate Torte

Again, like the Gardein Beefless Tacos, this is an anomoly – an amazing recipe found in the company’s own pamphlet of recipes.  I never, never, never trust the free recipes one finds at the grocery store or on the package of a product; it seems they’re always crap – total crap.  Why would a company shoot themselves in the foot like this?  If I were going to send out a recipe with my product as an ingredient I would pretty much spare no expense in hiring an awesome chef to create the most mouth wateringly delicious (and beautiful) recipe possible…to wow my customers and get them buying my product as often as possible.  The fact is, in my experience, that product recipes seem to be an afterthought; someone said, “Hey, we have a blank space on the packaging about 3″ x 4″ and we don’t know what to print there.  Let’s make up a recipe and throw it on there – STAT!”

Maybe that’s just me?

This recipe from Earth Balance is a favorite in my house!  It’s easy, another throw-it-all-in-the-food-processor recipe, turns out gorgeous and tastes, well, amazing.  I keep it as my special occasion dessert for guests and holiday parties.

I’ve changed the recipe a bit to make it work better, they had a few extra instructions to make it more complicated than it needed to be and the cooking time was way off.

Everyone in the pool!

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Oct2

Oatmeal Raisin Muffins

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Oatmeal Raisin Muffins
Oatmeal Raisin Muffins

I’ve been  making these muffins for ages – I got the recipe from my Mom probably 15 years ago.  At the time, we were making them with eggs and butter, but when I was ready, that was the easiest thing in the world to replace!  I’ve also done some changes and upgrades along the way.  These are my standard go-to muffins when I’m in the mood for muffins.

These muffins are the perfect thing for a yummy breakfast treat, but I eat them all day and for dessert until they’re gone…about 2 days.

Muffin Batter

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Apr22

One Word: Orange Cream Popsicles

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One Word: Orange Cream Popsicles

I know it’s not quite summer, but we have had some warm days already this spring and I just LOVE the flavor of anything “orange cream.”  Do you remember orange flavored baby aspirin?  I could eat those all day.  No, really, I could – and I’ll tell you it’s for my heart condition.

I found a recipe in Karen Solomon’s book, Can it, Bottle it, Smoke it that contained actual Heavy Cream so I decided to make the recipe vegan with what I had on hand.  Instead of real cream I used plain soy yogurt, it didn’t dissolve perfectly, but no one minds little pockets of frozen yogurt while eating a popsicle, do they?  Anyway, I know I don’t, and if my family does, then I’ll just have to eat them all.

Delic Orange Juice

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Feb17

Chocolate Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

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Chocolate Oatmeal Cookie Recipe
Chocolate Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

After a few experiments, trials, and errors I’ve come up with a delicious vegan chocolate cookie.  It was inspired by my old favorite, German chocolate cake.  Please let me know what you think!

Ingredients:
2T Earth Balance or other butter replacement
3/4 cup Coconut Palm Sugar
2T Apple Sauce
1/2t Baking soda
1/8t Salt
1 Egg Replacer (I used 1T flax seed meal mixed with 3T water)
1t Vanilla
1/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour
2/3 cup minus 4T Unbleached White Flour
2/3 cup Rolled Oats
1/4 cup Flax Seed Meal
1/4 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
3 oz vegan Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
1/3 cup Flaked Coconut (plus more for sprinkling, if desired)
1/3 cup Chopped Almonds, toasted (plus more for sprinkling, if desired)
 

Preheat over to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl beat the Butter with an electric mixer for 20-30 seconds.  Add the Coconut Palm Sugar and Apple Sauce, mix again.  Add the Baking Soda and Salt, mix again.  Add the Egg Replacer and Vanilla, mix again.  Add the Whole Wheat and White Flours, mix again. Read the rest of this entry →