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.

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). 

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.)