Vegan Gingerbread Kids

This recipe is my vegan adaptation of a traditional recipe found in the Alpha-Bakery, Gold Medal's Children's Cookbook. It's not perfect eating (boo flour boo), but I've made the recipe vegan using coconut oil instead of shortening and it makes a cookie that you can decorate with icing and/or build Gingerbread tardises out of.

Vegan Gingerbread Cookie Dough

1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of dark brown molasses
1/2 cup of coconut oil (softened, but  not melted)
1/4 cup of water
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp baking soda
2.5 cups of white flour

1. Beat sugar, molasses, coconut oil and water in large bowl with electric mixer until relatively smooth. (Coconut oil will probably make tiny little lumps--s'ok. Deal.)

2. Add rest of ingredients to make dough

3. You can optionally chill the dough for 2 hours to make roll-out cookies.

4. Shape your cookies to be about 1/4" thick.

5. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

6. Makes about 5 or 6 biggish cookie shapes that will stay relatively puffy but will harden as they cool. Once they harden, you can decorate them.

We made gingerbread sonic screwdrivers and daleks. We ate them, though. This is what remains.

Dairy-Free Instant Chocolate Pudding

A lot of recipes for dairy-free pudding require you to have in your possession a ripe avocado. In life, ripe avocados are like four-leaf clovers. But I've recently learned that there is bottled avocado oil!

Dairy-Free Instant Chocolate Pudding

1 14 oz. box of silken tofu (here from Trader Joe's)
1/2 cup avocado oil
3-5 tablespoons of brown sugar
1/2 cup of cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dump all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth (or use an immersion blender). I can't recommend a nutrilbullet enough for this kind of task, though.

Sneaky Sqoodles

So the other day, I showed you how to make Zoodles. Today, I'm going to make Sqoodles, which are julienned squashes. Then, I'm going to sneak them into leftover protein-enhanced pasta that'll I'll use for a stir-fry. Here's my thinking: Sneaky sqoodles get eaten. Plain squashes do not.

First, shred your squash like so. Our squashes are weird and look like cupcakes. Obviously, the straighter and less cupcake-y your squash, the easier this is.

Sqoodle pile!

Mix into pasta and tell no one.

DIY Taco Sauce

During my brief life as a camp counselor, lunch on Tuesdays was pretty awful. It was tacos. And they were awful.

But the worst part of the experience was the song. Oh, god, the song! Kids would run up to the front of the cafeteria to sing the damned taco song:

Tacos, burritos

What's coming out of your speedo?

You got trouble (uh oh)

You got bubbles (uh oh)

 Every week. For months.

Anyway, this recipe is about taco sauce. This taco sauce I'm presenting to you is easily customized. I'm making it here as mild as humanly tolerable as it will be served to children who have told me at least once that chocolate is too spicy. You should add cayenne. Probably Sriracha. I'm biased.

DIY Taco Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 6oz. can of tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons of cornstarch
• 1/3 cup of white vinegar
• 4 teaspoons of chili powder
• 2-3 teaspoons of salt
• 3 cups of cold water

1. First, in a sauce pan, add the cornstarch to the water and make sure it's all dissolved. Goopy cornstarch is the worst. Not your friend.

2. Then add all the other ingredients, bring to a boil then lower the heat. Simmer.

3. The sauce will be done after about 10 minutes. You can let it go longer if you want a thicker sauce. Three cups of sauce is a lot of sauce. 

Zoodles

What do to with zucchini? Zoodles! Shred your bounty of zucchini into little noodles using a julienne peeler.

Transfer to a skillet and stirfry with a little olive or coconut oil.

Transfer once more to a strainer and squeeze out any excessive moisture.

Voila.

Chocolate "Trust Me" Black Bean Fudge

This is a recipe that requires a special title. Tell someone you made black bean fudge and they're probably going to go Mr. Yuck on you and totally shoot it down. So, you know, trust me. It's fucking awesome.

This fudge contains no dairy. It contains two cans of black beans. It's high-fiber, high-protein, dairy-free and a great, nay, excellent source of coconut oil fats.

Chocolate "Trust Me" Black Bean Fudge
(adapted from Whole New Mom)

• 2 cans of black beans (rinsed), or 3.5 cups of cooked black beans
• 3/4 cup of coconut oil
• 1 cup of cocoa powder
• 1 cup of sugar (can be reduced to your preferences)
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt (to taste)

Blend all the ingredients in your blender, Nutribullet or Vitamix.

Pour into a bowl and chill for at least two hours (longer if your coconut oil is liquid when you started).

 The mixture will be pretty hard (think soft fudge or chocolate icing). 

Whole Flax Crackers

Flax seed is weird. Not as weird as chia, but it's up there. When you soak flax in water, it gets gooey and sticky and spongy. You should try it some time.

So capitalizing on this weird flax phenomenon, let's soak it in water and make a fucking cracker out of it. Again, sorry, this is a dehydrator recipe. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can try sticking these in your oven at its lowest setting for 10-12 hours. Generally, that mimics the idea.

Raw Flax Seed Crackers

• 2 cups whole flax seeds (I got mine from Trader Joes)
• 2 cups of water
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of sea salt 
• 2 tablespoons of Sriracha (optional)
• 1 tablespoon of lime juice (optional)

First things first, you need to soak these seeds for about two hours. That's what's going to allow them to reveal their secrets to you.

Then, you mix in the other crap. Mixy mixy.

Spread out thin on a silicon mat. Don't have a silicon mat? You should get one. They are cheap and awesome. The thickness should be about 2 seeds thick.

Then, pop into your dehydrator. After 4 hours flip them over, like so. Continue dehydrating for another 2-3 hours.

When they are done, you can rip the sheets apart to make crackers. Or you can leave them intact to make GIANT CRACKERS OF LITTLE UTILITY.

Crockpot Quinoa Porridge

Here is an easy, peasy way to eat quinoa for breakfast. This is a convenient recipe to have, because you can swap in virtually any milk you have (especially non-dairy pantry milks such as coconut milk, almond milk and soy milk).

The recipe I'm using here contains no sweetener, with the expectation that you might want to customize it later to your own tastes and preferences (butter, brown sugar, honey, agave, maple syrup stevia, splenda, etc.).

Crockpot Quinoa Porridge

2 cups rinsed (important!!), uncooked quinoa
4 cups unsweetened almond milk (one of those pantry boxes of milk is 4 cups)
1-2 tablespoons of cinnamon

Stir all ingredients into crockpot on high for approximately two hours, stirring about halfway in. Around hour 2, the liquid will all be absorbed and the quinoa will fluff up.

Serve immediately or store in the fridge. It'll keep for about 3 days. You can serve it reheated or cold. I like it better warm.

Two-Ingredient White Chocolate Tofu Pudding

Two ingredients. It's not really clean eating, per se, because come on. White chocolate isn't exactly good for you. Even if it is from Whole Foods. But it makes tofu kid-friendly, so why not?

Ingredients:

1 12 oz bag of white chocolate
2 12 oz boxes of silken tofu (silken, not firm), drained

In a double boiler (fancy-pants way of saying any pan within a pan), melt the chocolate over an inch of water. Ok, what does that mean? Pour an inch of water into a pan. Boil it. Place another pan with the chocolate literally into that pan with the water. Melt the chocolate. I know, it's confusing.

Scrape the molten chocolate into a blender along with the drained tofu. Blend.

Voila. High-protein white chocolate tofu pudding.

Sriracha Kale Chips

After I popped a batch of these into the dehydrator, I climbed onto the roof to watch the meteor shower. I came down about two hours later to find they had been scavenged from the racks.

Sriracha is magic.

Ok, we generously received the bounty of a neighbor's kale harvest. And nature is beautiful and photosynthesis is great and yadada, I smothered the leaves in sriracha and dehydrated it. Yeah, that's it. Rip the stems off, smother in sriracha, and place on the racks.

Desiccate for two hours. Done.

Watermelon Chips

For this recipe, you need a food dehydrator and possibly some silpats. You can dry fruit in the oven (your lowest setting, so usually 180 to 200 degrees) but it's less energy efficient.

Basically, all you do is slice the watermelon into slices only a hair thicker than 1/4". Any thicker and you'll get chewy watermelon taffy that looks like this:

 Not a bad thing, just different.

These need to dehydrate for about 8 to 10 hours.

They are delicious. 

Lemon-Infused Honey

Honey comes in all varieties with a whole slew of adjectives--raw, local, unfiltered. It also changes flavor based on what plants the bees are collecting nectar from. The honey we ended up getting is pretty bitter, so I'm going to fix it.

My house mother has had a sore throat for some time now so today I am making lemon-infused honey. Lemon-infused honey is pretty simple for a big pay-off: the perfect stir-in for hot tea.

Lemon-infused Honey

• 1 lemon
• 1 cup of honey (any variety)

Grate the lemon peel into a sauce pan. Slice the remaining lemon and toss those in, too. Cover with 1 cup of honey. Stir constantly over low heat for about 5 minutes.

Place in a jar and allow to sit for at least a few hours. The flavor with intensify with time.

Add to beverages at your leisure.

No-Bake Almond Oat Coconut Date Bars

Long hiatus. Moved to California. Now have access to a bigger and grander kitchen that came already stocked with all kinds of exotic flours and dried beans and nuts and shrugs as to what to do with them. Yay for me! Yay for you. Yay for us.

Anyway, so today I found a bag of dates in the pantry. Dates are basically ugly balls of natural sugar with pesky little seeds that you have to take care to remove. To be frank, I've never actually used dates before. These are not in my usual repertoire of food objects, so today is an experiment.

To make these bars, you'll need a food processor. I used my brand new Nutribullet which I love because when it's not being used to create edible things, it's being used to facilitate my consumption of absurd amounts of greens that I would otherwise never put into my system. I'd dedicate a blog entry to it, but honestly,  "handful of spinach and a banana..." not very interesting. 

So, right, food processor. 

No-Bake Almond Oat Coconut Date Bars 

(adapted recipe from Oh She Glows)

• 1.5 cups of almond meal (ground almonds)
• 1.5 cups of oats
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt (or kosher salt or any salt, whatever, who cares)
• 10 pitted dates
• 1/4 cup coconut oil

Filling (make separately)

• 30 pitted dates
• 1/2 cup water

1. Process the almonds, oats, 10 pitted dates and salt until you get a crumbly meal. Then add the coconut oil (melt first if solidified). 

2. Press about 1/4 of the mixture into the bottom of a glass-bottomed 8x8" pan. 

3. Process the remaining 30 pitted dates with 1/2 cup of water until you get a sticky date goo. (Mmmm, goo.)

4. Press the goo into the pan, over your pressed meal layer. 

5. Press the remaining meal over the goo layer.

6. Refridgerate at least 1 hour, preferably 8-10 hours.

7. Don't do what I did which was to wait 45 minutes and be super impatient about it because you're wicked impatient because you'll get something crumbly and messy like what you see below and not the professional-looking bars that other bloggers seem to achieve. But it tastes good.

(mmm. goo.)

Fridge Tea

No posts from me lately mostly because I've just not been eating much this past week or so. Hard to blog about eating when you're dumb and don't eat. Don't do that. Don't be like me. Do as I say, not as I do.

And given my emotional and practical stupidity, here's a non-food post about fridge-brewed tea. I have a system for this that involves old peanut butter and applesauce jars. I recycle a lot of jars. 

Fridge Tea

- Cold water

- Teabags

- Clean Jars

Basically the rule of thumb is 1:1, one teabag to one cup of water. A pint jar is obviously two cups and a quart jar is four cups. I usually make stronger tea, so 3 teabags in a pint jar, 6 in a quart jar. Your preference.

Fill the jars up, throw the tea in and leave in your fridge over night. Tea does go bad, so don't leave it in there more than a few days. That's why I like to make small jars like this because I don't have to worry about an entire pitcher going rancid. Also, I'm so obviously hipster it fucking hurts.

You can sweeten it with whatever, but obviously, if you're going to be authentic about this, you're going to have to suck it up and make simple syrup. Simple syrup is a sugar-to-water ratio of 2:1; heat the sugar with the water over high heat until you make syrup. You can store it separately to use in your tea.

Sriracha-Lime Salad Dressing

I know. Stop it. Don't you eat anything that isn't coated in three inches of Sriracha, Holly?

The thing is when I'm stuck on a flavor combination, I try to figure it out. There's a combo here of Sriracha, lime and sugar that you've noticed has been the theme for the last three entries. I'll probably move on to something else eventually, but I'm trying to knock this out. It's how I work. I get obsessed with something until I feel like I've adequately worked it out and then I move on to a new problem. 

Ok, so salad. Eat to Live Joel Fuhrman says you should eat salad every day. Per ounce, nothing is really more nutritious for you than greens. I buy that. But salad dressing is kinda gross. There are only a few kinds I actually enjoy, most of them made by Paul Newman. And there are no Sriracha salad dressings, so I mean, really, what's the point. So I invented one!

Sriracha-Lime Dressing

- 2 tbs. Sriracha

- 2 tbs. lime juice

- 2 tbs. white sugar

- 1 tbs. minced garlic

- 1 tsp-1tbs. olive oil (I don't really even know if this is necessary. Err on your fat preferences.)

- 2 pinches black pepper

- 1 pinch of salt

Shake it up in a jar.

Stupid-fast Sriracha Peanut Noodles

I received two special requests in the last two weeks. The first asked for something that could be packed in a lunch box. The second asked for something that could incorporate leftovers. Well today's you're lucky efficient (vegan-friendly) day.

This recipe will use leftover pasta. I don't care what pasta. Obviously, I recommend whole wheat pasta over white. But do you care what pasta? No. Probably not. You just have that leftover tupperware of pasta and you're like fuck what do I do with this?

Ok, so this is basically a variation of the peanut sauce recipe I use on everything. Except it's different. It's more Sriracha-y and it requires no immersion blender. You can make this sauce in literally two minutes with a fork. It'll yield a much smaller amount (enough for a small jar) that you can stash in at work to eat over leftover pasta.

Sriracha Peanut Noodle Sauce

(Adapted from here)

- 1/2 cup of peanut butter 

- 3 tbs. of Sriracha

- 1 tsp. minced garlic (or powdered)

- 1 tsp. powdered ginger

- 1 tsp. black pepper

- 1 tbs. sesame oil

- 2 tbs. lime juice 

- 1 tbs. sugar

- 3 tbs. hot water

This is some rich, thick sauce.  It's slightly tangier (because of the lime) than my crack sauce recipe. If you like cold sesame noodles and sriracha, you will like this. If you don't, well, you're shit out of luck, pal.

Sriracha Lime Stir-Fry Sauce (with Tofu)

God, is there any foodstuff more perfect than Sriracha sauce? No. No there is not. 

I've been messing around with stir-fry recipes that rely on Sriracha for their flavor. I finished one today and I'm simply calling it Sriracha Lime Stirfry Sauce. Below you'll see most of the basic ingredients behind a lot of Thai-inspired recipes I'be been researching.

 

I've tried a lot of them this past week and came to the conclusion most people blogging about Thai food in English are 1) have some crazy access to foods I do not have, 2) have really weird ideas of what tastes good, and 3) apparently have unlimited time and money on their hands. No. This will not do.

This recipe is stupid easy. And I'm going to show you how to make it even stupid easier. You'll need a jar.

Sriracha Lime Stirfry Sauce

- 3 tablespoons of soy sauce

- 3 tablespoons of brown sugar

- 2 tablespoons of lime juice (the bottled stuff is fine)

- 1 tablespoon of garlic powder

- 1 (OR MORE) tablespoons of Sriracha sauce

Got it? Great. Dump it all in your jar and shake that shit up. 

Now, you need tofu. Extra-firm is always best for stir-fry. Regular firmness is not firm enough to withstand the trials of being stirred. Cut the tofu into pieces. I recommend little triangles but don't be afraid to go fucking nuts and use cubes. Or rectangles. Or pentagons. See if I care how you waste your time with this endeavor. 

Ok, now before dumping the sauce in, saute the tofu in a little sesame oil (or any oil will do). Just enough so it gets a bit crisp around the edges.

Then dump the sauce in, like so:

When you are done, plate it and the extra sauce over some rice (or quinoa if you're paying attention). 

You could always make a lot of this sauce and keep it in that jar and put it in your fridge. I imagine it'll keep for about at least a week or so.

Instant Berry Sorbet (No Ice Cream Maker Required)

Most people don't own an ice cream maker. Most people don't need an ice cream maker.  Most people don't need ice cream. What they need is some sorbet.


Sorbet is a good way to incorporate high-fiber fruit into your diet, especially berries. Unless you are picking your own, frozen berries are the way to go. "Fresh" berries that sit on the shelf off-season are nutritional garbage and a huge waste of money. Meanwhile, frozen berries are frozen hours after being picked and thus lose very little of their nutrient content. Lots of antioxidants and lots of fiber. And more importantly, they're cheaper. For less than $2, I can buy a 12 oz. bag of blackberries. I think a fresh half-pint of blackberries costs something ridiculous like $5. Rich people are crazy.

Ok, so to make blackberry sorbet (or strawberry sorbet or blueberry sorbet or OMG MIXEDBERRY SORBET), you need the following:

Berry Sorbet

12oz bag of frozen berries
1/2 cup of greek (or whatever you prefer) yogurt
1/4 - 1/2 cup sweetener (Sugar, Honey, Agave Syrup, Splenda, Stevia, whatever)
1/4 cup hot water

Dump the hot water, yogurt and sweetener into your food processor or blender. Blend until well processed. Then add the berries. Pulse blend. Not too much, or you'll have a smoothie. Which I know is totally the worst thing ever.

You're done when it looks like sorbet.

Whipped Coconut Cream

Whipped cream is delicious. It's pretty easy to buy the crap in the can, but at $2 for what amounts to like maybe a cup of actual product, it's not cost-effective (at least not the way I eat whipped cream because come on, that shit is ambrosia). So you want to make it at home to get the bigger bang for your buck (and avoid whatever preservatives and stabilizer crap they put in there).Traditional whipped heavy cream, however, sucks because 1) no one ever just has  a carton of heavy cream just sitting around and 2) it's dairy and sometimes dairy just doesn't sit right with some people. 

So what about whipped cream you can make with a 99-cent can of coconut milk? Oh yeah. Possible.

So next time you go grocery shopping, stick a can or two of full-fat coconut milk in the fridge. Forget about them.

Then when you want whipped cream, you can say, "Oh yeah! I have coconut milk in the fridge. Hellz yeah. Good job, self. Way to listen to Holly. She's so smart and nice and full of good ideas."

So for this recipe you need a can of coconut milk and your choice of sweetener. Today I'm using honey, but you could just as easily swap it out for sugar. Note: though this is plant-based, this stuff is not low-fat. Coconut cream is still cream. 

Whipped Coconut Cream

1 can of chilled coconut milk (hugely important this be chilled because science)

2 tablespoons of honey (or sugar)

The first step is to separate the cream from the water. To do this, just open the can and drain out the liquid into a separate container. You can drink that stuff. Let me tell you: it tastes exactly like coconut water. 

So what remains now is the cream. As you can see, it's thick, fatty, fatty stuff. 

So then we whip it and the honey on your mixer's highest setting for about 10 minutes. If I had a fancy-ass stand mixer, I could leave this sit and go do something more important, but since I don't, I stood there and read about the effect of porn consumption on men on my phone. Oh your mother didn't read about porn while she was cooking for you growing up? THAT'S BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE SMART PHONES BACK THEN.

Eventually it'll whip into whipped cream. You should know what whipped cream looks like but if you don't, here's a weirdly angelic shot of what it looks like sitting with its majestic halo atop some blackerry sorbet.

Frozen Greek Yogurt

So frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt is sort of healthy. Kinda? I mean, it's better than eating a pint of heavy cream and egg yolks, sure, but it's still not really doing anything for you. A normal 1/2 cup serving of Pinkberry with no toppings weighs in at about 120 calories--virtually all of it carbohydrates that your body can't really distinguish from sugar anyway. And there's almost nothing in it nutritionally except a smidge of calcium. And me being the white-trash wunderkin, I can't understand how people throw away $5 on fancy coffee drinks let alone this shit. At least coffee is a drug.

And as my friends like telling  me, I am known for saying, "Hey, I can make that better at home" a lot. I'm kind of a dick about it. Mostly because I hate when people throw money away on stupid things but also because I can make that at home. Cheaper. And better for you.

How am I going to do it? Chobani. We're basically just going to take a container of Chobani and dump the entire thing into my ice cream maker. (Ok, you know how I said earlier this week I don't own any fancy kitchen crap? I lied. I have an ice cream maker. I have this one, specifically. It's pretty awesome because I make this recipe a lot. Maybe once a day in the summer time.)

Frozen Greek Yogurt

32 oz container of plain Greek Yogurt (fat-free or low-fat, doesn't matter)

1/4 cup sugar (optional)

1 tbs. vanilla extract (optional)

If you're using my ice cream maker, you just place the frozen ice cream chamber (what the hell is it called?) into your ice cream maker, dump the yogurt and other crap in and let it transmogrify. It'll look like this after about 20 minutes.

Then you can put stuff in it. Any stuff. Here I put in some stewed blackberries. Nom.

No fat and a cup of this stuff weighs in at maybe 200 calories and 24 grams of protein (OR HALF OF MY RECOMMENDED PROTEIN ALLOWANCE NEED FOR THE DAY, PEOPLE. FUCKING VEGETARIAN POWERHOUSE, HERE.)

Holly's Secret Almond Milk Red Curry

Curry is delicious. But as traditionally prepared with coconut milk, it's super fatty. How can you get all the tastiness of curry without the fat? You wanna know the first secret of this post? Do you? 

Unsweetened almond milk. 

At about 40 calories a cup, 3 cups of almond milk weighs in at 120 calories and 9 grams of fat compared to the 63 grams of fat contained in a can of coconut milk. And, actually, compared to coconut milk, ounce for ounce, it's a lot cheaper.

So that's the first secret. 

The second secret has less to do with secret ingredients than my secret for preparing a ridiculous amount of vegetables that can be thrown quickly into the prepared curry. It's not really a secret so much as no one ever seems to fully realize the potential of stackable bamboo steamers. These things are golden for those of you who need to prepare lots of vegetables for lunches over the week. Works like a dream on frozen or fresh, so get out those bags of frozen broccoli. Cut up that sweet potato. Whatever you got? Steam it. Let's go, bitches. Let's do this.

Almond Milk Red Curry

3 Cups of Unsweetened Almond Milk

1/2 Cup water

3 tbs. Red Curry Paste

1 tbs. brown sugar

1/2 tsp. Cumin (optional)

1/4 tsp. Coriander (optional)

Sriracha sauce (Do what your body tells you to do with this one)

Bring the milk and the water to a boil. Stir in the curry paste, sugar and the spices until blended smooth. Simmer to reduce to a thickness you prefer. 

MEANWHILE, THE VEGGIES.

My suggested veggie combo here is wilted spinach (one lb. package), sweet potato (2 small), carrot (about 5) and tofu cubes (one package).  Wilting spinach is stupid easy so I'm going to not going to waste your sweet-ass time describing it here. But to use the bamboo steamers, simply chop up the sweet potatoes and carrots into chunks and arrange in your steamer shelves. Place baskets over boiling water (a wok or stockpot work equally well) until the veggies are tender. How do you tell if they're tender? Stick a fork in a veggie. It should be soft. That's what tender means. 

Veggies ready? Ok, dump all that crap into the curry and mix it up. It's going to make an insane amount. Probably at least 3 or 4 normal human servings. I don't know how to tell you what normal people eat. 

I threw some leftover cooked quinoa in here, too. It's a good recipe for throwing crap like that in. I hear normal people eat curry over rice. You could try that. I like eating curry over more curry though.