Vegan Truffles

It's almost Valentine's Day!  I don't have my own Valentine this year, but it's not stopping me from giving and loving others!  I love making cards and giving little gifts.

Here is an example of the valentine’s day cards i make:

    

From Left to Right: Severus Snape (from Harry Potter), Lyra (my new niece! only a week old now!), Voldemort (from Harry Potter)

Poor Lyra, she shouldn't be between two evil dudes! At least they seem to have changed their ways and started to love things.  If you haven't notice yet, i'm a huge Harry Potter freak... and I mean HUGE.

ANYWAYS

On to the chocolate!

So I wasn't exactly measuring things out exactly when making these - so the recipe is a rough estimate.  A lot of it is just until it "looks right".  But here we go!

Vegan Truffles - x 4! 

Left to right, Back: mint, coconut.  Front: chocolate, peanut butter

Chocolate Filling:

-1 cup melted chocolate

-2-3 tbsp coconut milk

-2 tbsp vegan margarine (melted)

-Brandy (or other liquor) to taste

Mint Filling:

-1 cup melted chocolate

-2-3 tbsp coconut milk

-2 tbsp vegan margarine (melted)

-Mint extract to taste

Peanut Butter Filling:

-3/4 cup peanut butter

-1/3 cup powdered sugar

-1/8 tsp salt

Coconut Filling:

-1/2 cup powdered sugar

-1/2 cup shredded coconut

-2 tbsp vegan margarine (melted)

-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

-1/2 tsp coconut extract

1 tbsp coconut milk

Dipping Chocolate:

-About 1 lb chocolate

-2 tbsp vegan margarine

So you first want to get the fillings all ready!  I did the peanut butter and coconut ones first, since they didn't require any melted chocolate.  Just mix all the ingredients together and then stick those bowls in the fridge to cool - we'll get back to them later!

Next - the chocolate fillings!  I melted chocolate for both, just in the microwave, though you can also do it on the stove (you will need to for dipping eventually).  One thing i learned is to mix the other ingredients into the chocolate as soon as you can, don't get distracted by the Olympics like i did and let it start to get a little hard again, haha.  If you are as absent minded and that happens - just microwave it a little.  Anywho - once your chocolate is melted, mix in the other ingredients and stick it in the fridge.

Now this is the hard part... ready? Sit there and wait.  The coconut filling will be ready first - once it firms up enough, take the bowl out of the fridge and roll little pieces into balls and place them on waxed paper or tin foil, and then stick them back in the fridge until they are ready to dip.  Do the same with the other fillings as well - the peanut butter ones are a little hard because they get soft really easily, so i put them in the freezer when they are done so it's actually possible to dip them!  You have to wait until the chocolate fillings have firmed up quite a bit - i then used a cookie scooper to scoop (more like scrape!) the chocolate and then rolled them with my hands - once again placing them on tin foil or waxed paper, and return to the fridge.  Beware - you get really chocolatey hands!  

Also make sure you keep your fillings sorted out so you know which one's which.  I just drew little dividing lines with sharpie on the tin foil, writing down the name of each section.

Now to dipping.  So there is this whole deal about tempering chocolate so it doesn't try with speckles or grey marks on them.  I had never done this before, so I read about it online - as you can see by my picture, mine turned out pretty well - except my mint ones.  They did get some discoloring (but they still taste good).  All I did was melt about 1 lb of chocolate with 2 tbsp of margarine on the stove in my oh so fancy double boiler way (aka one big pot and one little pot) over low heat.  

Once the chocolate was melted, i just placed my small pot of chocolate on a towel, took one of my fillings out and dipped them.  I used chopsticks to dips them - make sure to try to gently "shake" off the excess chocolate.  After each filling, i had to reheat the dipping chocolate a little just to keep it nice and melted.  I didn't really have any problems until i got to the peanut butter ones.  I strongly recommend only taking ~3 of the fillings out of the freezer to dip at one time, since they are so soft.  I also started using tooth picks to dip them - just stabbing the bottom and sliding if off when i was done since my chop sticks were squishing them too much.

Another note:  if you are going to decorate the tops of them, like sprinkling coconut - do this RIGHT after dipping so it sticks! They dry pretty quickly, so make sure to do it right after you dip each one.

Once again, all my measurements above are rough estimates - don't be afraid to add things until it just "seems right"! 

Vegan Rhubarb Custard Pie

School has started!  Do you know what that means!?

STRESS BAKING!
the most wonderful way to stop worrying about things... well, except worrying about eating too many sweets.

We're only three weeks in and i already had to go into the kitchen to prevent my head from exploding.

So i was surprised to see that the farmers market still had rhubarb, and being awesome i got some mainly to eat raw (with a little sugar) -- cause i'm just cool like that.  But then i started thinking about crisps... and pies... and mmmmm.  So i decided to veganize my mom's yummy rhubarb custard pie recipe.

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Rhubarb Pie after it had been attacked by 5 different people

Preheat your oven to 375 F. 

Crust:

1 cup shortening (butter flavored is best, vegan)

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

6 tbs ice water

Mix the shortening and dry ingredients with a pastry mixer (if you dont have one used two knives) until the mixture is pebbly looking with pea sized chunks of shortening.  Add the ice water and mix with hands until just mixed - no longer!  Split the dough in half -- roll out one half with waxed paper and rolling pin and place in pie dish.  Using a fork, gently poke the fork all over the bottom crust.

Filling:

4 cups rhubarb

1 cup strawberries (optional)

2 tbsp water

2 tbsp cornstarch

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup flour

3/4 cup soy milk

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1/4 tsb nutmeg

Cut rhubarb thinly (and cut strawberries if you decide to use them) and put them in a large mixing bowl. In a smaller bowl, mix together what water and cornstarch until smooth.  Ready for this part... it's really hard... throw the cornstarch mixture and everything else in the bowl with the rhubarb and mix! Phew! Very technical i know

Place the filling into the pie crust.  Roll out the other half of crust and cut it into strips.  Lattice to your hearts content.  Sprinkle top with some cinnamon.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown

Vegan Lemon Scones

2 cups flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup margarine

1 lemon, zested and juiced

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/4 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup soymilk

Preheat oven to 425 F

Mix dry ingredients and then cut in margarine so it is crumbly. Mix in the milk, lemon zest and juice, almond extract and vanilla, stiring as little as possible but still mixing everything.

Put spoonfuls onto a non-greased cookie sheet and bake for 10-13 minutes or until golden brown.

I also tried putting a hand full of raspberries in half. They turned out a little more cakey because i had to stir them more, and you need to watch out that the bottoms dont burn! especially where the berries peek out.

Vegan Banana Muffins

I made these muffins when i was up at the cabin over the 4th. I kept waking up before everyone and got bored, so i flipped through my mom's Moosewood Low-fat cookbook. This is a modified version of their banana muffins to make them vegan. They are delicious!

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder.

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1 cup oats

2 tbs. oil

3 bananas (~1.5 cups)

1/3 cup vanilla soy milk

Preheat oven to 400 F

Mix the dry ingredients together. Moosewood made the oats into the flour, but i just kept them whole. Add the banana's, oil and soy milk to the dry ingredients, smushing the bananas with a fork to mix in. Stir until it's all mixed together. It's okay if there are some lumps of banana, but you wanted it mixed well.

Oil or put in muffin papers and fill ~2/3 to 3/4 the way up (they will rise a little). Bake for 20-25 minutes, testing with toothpick or match, etc. so it comes out clean. I suggest letting them cool down for a while, i thought they were better the next day than still hot form the oven.

Would taste good with a crumble (can try combining some oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, flour and oil for a crumble), but healthier without!