Peanut Butter Pie - The Kind Diet

All the credit for this recipe goes to the wonder Alicia Silverstone. Her book 'The Kind Diet' is amazing and full of tasty recipes. This was one I was dying to try out since I am going through a pie making phase. This is pretty easy to make and much healthier than a traditional full-of-sugar pie.

My pics:

1 vegan chocolate cookie crust (I used a graham cracker cookie crust)

1 (10 oz) bag grain-sweetened, nondairy chocolate chips

1/2 cup soy or hemp milk (do not use rice or nut milk)

1 1/4 cups peanut butter, divided

1 (12.3 oz) box silken tofu (firm)

1/4 cup maple syrup

1-2 tspns vanilla extract to taste (I used just 1 tspn)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Bake the cookie crust for 4-5 mins to make it a bit crispy. Cool completely.

Melt the chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler set over simmering water. If you don't have a double boiler, place a stainless steel bowl over boiling water & melt the ingredients in it. Whisk in the milk until combined & smooth. With a measuring cup, scoop out about 1/4 cup of the chocolate mixture, then pour the remainder into the cookie crust. Place the cookie crust in the fridge to cool completely.

While the filling chills, combine 1 cup peanut butter, tofu, syrup, and vanilla in a food processor or blender; process until very smooth, scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Pour the peanut butter mixture on top of the chilled chocolate filling in the cookie crust, smoothing it out over the pie as your pour, and return the filled cookie crust to the refrigerator to chill for an hour or until firm.

To serve, return the reserved chocolate filling to the double boiler, or stainless steel bowl, and stir in the remaining 1/4 cup peanut butter. Stir until the chocolate and peanut butter are very well combined and very warm. If the mixture seems to thick to drizzle, add some soy milk until it is runny enough to pour. Decoratively drizzle the mixture over the chilled pie in zigzags or swirls, or use a small spatula to spread it smoothly over the whole pie. Refrigerate for 15-20 mins before serving.

Eggplant Parmigiana

No baby cows or chickens were harmed in the making of this parmigiana! Thanks to Keri's blog again (www.ieattrees.com) I made a yummy dinner! This is my eggplant parmigiana!

I cut up one large eggplant into about 5 slices, coated it with olive oil and dipped it into breadcrumbs.

WARNING: Don't buy your supermarket breadcrumbs if you are vegetarian/vegan - they are made with fish! It's so easy to make your own! I toasted some bread and put it into the food processor with rosemary and made some that were perfect for this meal and vegan friendly :D

Cook your crumbed eggplant in the oven for about 10-15 minutes flipping it over once. Then take it out add some marinara sauce (I just used pre-made) and then a slice of toffuti american style cheese slices and bake for up to 20 minutes! Easy!

On the side I put my fave bean salad but made this one without oil becuase I am adding too much oil to my meals so used soy sauce, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar to season it and tossed it with some oven baked broccoli. I baked the broccoli for about 10 minutes with a tablespoon of margarine on top!

:D

Portobello steaks, sweet potato fries and bean salad...

Who needs steak from a cow when you can eat yummy mushroom steaks?! I love Keri's vegan blog at www.ieattrees.com and she did this post here about portobello mushroom steaks which is where I got the inspiration for this meal.

We have here some stuffed portobello mushrooms (keep reading to see what they were stuffed with), a bean salad and sweet potato fries.

First to the stuffed mushies, I kind of got the idea for the stuffing with leftovers we had. Last night we had this dip which was an exotic thai flavour and I have thrown out the packaging but will blog about it when I re-purchase it. The dip was full of basil and lemongrass and I didn't want to throw the leftovers of it away so I mixed it in with some chopped up garlic and spanish onion. Then I had a tin of green beans in the pantry so mixed it in with that and stuffed the mushrooms with it to look something like this:

Marinate the mushies with some olive oil and you have yourself a nice, healthy dish.

The bean salad. We love to eat beans for the goodness they bring to a vegan diet! So this bean salad is inspired by the bf's Mum who made something very similar when she visited last.

Mix in whatever beans you want! For this salad we use kidney beans, chick peas and cannellini beans. Add a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, some soy sauce, olive oil and diced garlic and spanish onion. Mix it all together and with no cooking required you will have this:

And lastly on the plate was some sweet potato fries. I cut the potatos thinly and it chip sized chunks. I put them in the oven to bake with the mushies for about 25 minutes and then to crisp them up I fried them for a few minutes and added some taco seasoning for flavour! So yummy!

Then eat it all up and feel as stuffed as the mushrooms!

Bye for now!

Vegan Caramel Mudcake

Come the boyfriends birthday, it was time to find the recipe for the perfect cake. A simple vegan cake to have made would have been a chocolate cake, but he is not the biggest fan. Caramel is his favourite flavour so caramel mud cake (also being my favourite cake) was the perfect idea!

Do you think I could find a recipe for a VEGAN caramel mud cake? No. So I found one that was easy to turn into a vegan one. You can see it here.

All I did to change it was use vegetable based margarine instead of butter, vegan white chocolate and the equivalent egg replacer.

But what is caramel mud cake without amazing caramel icing to go with it? So I found this recipe here (scroll down to the frosting part) and changed it up a bit as well. I used soy milk instead of the regular milk and used vegetable based margarine again instead of butter!

The result?

Apparently it tasted nice so that is the important thing!