Treats that don’t make you fat

How do you make delicious treats that don’t make you fat? You get them out of your house!

A friend of Kevin’s was having a vegan out of town guest and wanted to get some goodies. He’d been by the Atlanta Vegan Bake Sale and asked us to do a couple of things for him. Well, “us” is me, but that’s fine. This is the best kind of baking. I get to taste a little, and get the rest out of my house. I mean, how could you walk by these and not shove one in your mouth?

You also need breakfast for an out of town guest, right? How about cherry almond scones? Turbando sugar is the perfect grain to sprinkle on top. Damn, I would totally eat one if these if I had one here right now. See? That’s the problem with keeping that sort of thing around.

How to negate a healthy meal

As the weather gets warmer, I enjoy lighter dinners. After two nights of the avocado grapefruit salad and then sushi at Rusan’s I moved on to a lovely Mediterranean Kale Salad from Raw Food Made Easy. I love raw kale and I don’t know why I don’t eat it more.

So how did I negate any possible health benefits I got from eating this lovely plate of greens? I made peanut butter cookies. With chocolate chips in ’em. And ate four. If you haven’t tossed chocolate chips into your favorite peanut butter cookie recipe yet, you’re missing out.

Lady time food

 

image shamelessly stolen from Cosmo's because all I have left is an empty wrapper
pic shamelessly stolen from Cosmo's

I know I’ve seen at least one mention of lady time food during VeganMoFo. I’m going to add to that. Yesterday was the peak of the unpleasantness that comes with lady time, so I treated myself with a Sweet & Sarah Smore Pie. The peanut butter one to be exact. Now, I’ve never bought the marshmallows because I don’t miss them all that much. But when you slap it between cookies and cover it in chocolate it becomes way more appealing. And it did not disappoint. The peanut butter flavor was fairly mild. The chocolate was outstanding. And the marshmallow texture was intriguing. I can imagine how fascinating this would be to eat stoned, so don’t hit up Cosmo’s or your local Smore Pie carrying establishment while you’re wasted or you’ll spend your whole paycheck on this things.

Sometimes you just need chocolate cake

Eating healthy raw food is great, but sometimes, about one week a month, a girl just needs some chocolate cake. So while we had a lovely, healthy raw dinner of Sunflower Seed Paté on celery sticks and Gazpacho from Raw Food Made Easy:

sunflower seed pate

gazpacho

Afterwards, there was cake. I had bananas I needed to use so I asked the interwebs about chocolate banana bundt cakes. I found Memmaw’s Vegan Chocolate Banana Cake. To make it even more chocolaty, I made a half batch of the ganache from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and drizzled it on top. The cake is moist and lovely with little chocolate chip bombs throughout. I like the texture but will warn you that it’s slightly non cake like, or at least not what you’d expect in a bundt. Maybe it’s all that banana. Anyway, it’s good, but if you’re looking for light airy cake, this isn’t it. This is moist, fudgy intense chocolate yumminess.

chocolate banana bundt

I still dig Vegan Italiano, especially for quick food. The Fusilli with Beets is practically instant beyond cooking the pasta. Obviously these aren’t fusilli, but I liked the idea of little beet cubes ending up inside these guys, so that’s what I picked up.

pasta with beets

And it took me a while, but I finally busted into Healthy South Indian Cooking. It’s been sitting around here for a while waiting for me to get to it. I finally got to Taj Mahal Market last week and picked up prepared Rasam and Sambhar spice mixes just to make life a little easier. This is the Carrot Sambhar and it was lovely. And I even had to leave out fenugreek seeds because I didn’t have any. I used to so I’m not sure where they ran off to. Anyway, it was bright, lovely, complex, not terribly hot. Enough dal to give it some substance, but not so much that it gets heavy.

carrot sambhar

And the “Butter” Tofu made another appearance.

butter tofu

Mexican Chocolate Tart

mexican chocolate tart from my sweet vegan

I finally dove into My Sweet Vegan and tried the Mexican  Chocolate Tart. I haven’t actually cut into it yet, so can’t comment on how it is, but the parts were tasty as I was making it. The candied pecans would even be nice to have around as a munchie.  And of course I cannot resist the chocolate chilie combination. Next time I might either use more cayenne in the filling or switch it to ground red chilies for a little more warmth.