The Proof is in the Pudding

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I were at Urth Cafe in Santa Monica, waiting in an extremely long line for the privilege of paying $6 for a cup of coffee (which we gladly do, because it's worth it). The line takes you past a very full and very delicious looking pastry case full of non-vegan baked goods. Now don't get me wrong, Urth does a decent job of having some vegan options. However, their vegan cookies taste like cardboard ground into dust and then stuck back together with glue. Even though I know they don't taste good, I sometimes end up with one of these cookies to quell the cravings brought on by that hellish pastry case. If I thought that I could get away with it, I would certainly bring my own delicious dessert to accompany what has to be the most perfect latte in the universe.
That particular time, I happened to notice a bread pudding. OK, I was probably staring at that bread pudding the way a Manhatten Socialite eyes the jewelry counter at Harry Winston's. Logically, I recognized that that bread pudding was full of butter and cream which were produced at the expense of baby animals everywhere. On the other hand, my mouth was telling me I was hungry. I decided to do what I always do, which is put together my own vegan version of said bread pudding.

A Little Help from My Friend Amy

So yes, it is always good to make your own chocolate cake with applesauce and cocoa powder, and the end result is always something deliciously low in fat and almost good for you. On the other hand, sometimes you are willing to take a break from your diet and are looking for something delicious to round out a low-fat dinner. Last night, I had a failed attempt at gnocchi. I'm not sure what really went wrong, but the end result was a lumpy, sticky potato-mush on the counter. The upside was that I was ready with brown rice pasta as a backup, which ended up going very well with my oil-free vegan pesto. Since we started the meal with a tomato bruschetta (which used a very teensy teaspoon of olive oil), I felt more than justified in taking a major shortcut with dessert.
Cue Amy's. for those of you not in the know, Amy's is a brand that produces natural, organic packaged foods, which are largely available in the frozen section of grocery stores. Even Ralph's carries Amy's products. Yesterday, I was at Whole Foods trying to improvise a dessert. We were in the frozen section, checking out a selection of raw gelato and ice cream. After checking the ingredients on the raw ice cream, I realized that it had just as much oil as any other dessert. and I reasoned that if I was going to break the McDougall plan, I was going to do it for something I knew would be delicious. Cue the improvisation. I debated the idea of baking a lemon-poppy seed cake and wrestled with the notion of baklava. I was considering a lemon tart when, like a shining beacon of hope, Amy's frozen cakes jumped out at me. I originally went for the lemon poppy seed, but it was not vegan. Our choices were limited to orange or chocolate, and the boyfriend made the right choice with the chocolate. I also snagged a bag of Whole Food's frozen berry medley, making this quite possibly the easiest dessert ever created. As a bonus, it was also delicious.

Wine pairing: an entire bottle of Almond Creek Champagne :)

Oil-free Chocolate Pie

Going into the Great McDougall experiment, I knew that I had to be prepared with some serious dessert. Despite trying to give it up many times, I have come to the very simple conclusion that dessert is what makes dinner worth eating. It's something to look forward to at the end of a long day (that and an over-sized glass of red wine). Luckily, I found a great recipe on the McDougall forums and tweaked it to better suit my tastes and aversion to sugar.
 As you can see in the picture, I artfully arranged sliced kiwi and cherries on top of the pie. If I were Oprah, cherries would be on my list of favorite things. The pigment in cherries may reduce swelling and inflammation, plus they look really cute on rockabilly dresses and accessories. In all seriousness, I don't think I had ever eaten a non-maraschino cherry until a few weeks ago. I don't know how I went 25 years without them. I also don't know what I'm going to do when all of these fruits and vegetables stop being new to me. Maybe I'll have to start shopping the produce aisles of ethnic grocery stores?

Maple Icing

OK so I have something to confess. I have been having "performance issues" when it comes to vegan cookies lately. Mostly I have been trying too hard when it comes to replacing the fat. I made some cookies 2 weeks ago and tried replacing all of the fat with applesauce, and it was kind of a disaster. I have never thrown out an entire batch of cookies before, but these particular ones were hard as rocks and left me with no choice. After the first disaster, I was actually able to piece together a decent oatmeal cookie recipe. The only problem is that I baked said cookies halfway into splitting a second bottle of wine. As it so happens, I did not write said recipe down, but I know that I replaced about half of the recommended oil with applesauce and that there were raisins and cinnamon involved. It really is a shame that I'm not a more responsible cook, because these cookies were some of the most delicious low fat cookies in the existence of humanity (*these claims represent the author's opinion as an amateur vegan baker). I will be trying very hard to re-create said recipe, but in the meantime what I do remember is how to make the maple glaze pictured above.

Maple Glaze

• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 1/2 c. vegan powdered sugar
• 2 TBSP earth balance
• 1 TBSP maple syrup

Begin by mixing together the earth balance, maple syrup, and vanilla until smooth and fully incorporated.
Add the powdered sugar 1/4 a cup at a time, blending fully after each addition. If you are using this recipe as a glaze, stop adding sugar when the glaze will drip from the back of a spoon in a steady stream. If you are using it to ice a cake (which would be an excellent idea), add more powdered sugar until it is thick enough to spread.

Brownies

As anyone who is a regular reader knows, I have been on a lot of dates lately. Most of these dates have not gone right, for one reason or the other. Emotionally, I've really been through the ringer. First dates are very, very draining, because you have to put in a good deal of effort to put your best foot forward. I feel a lot of pressure to put on the Nicole Williams Show, that is a version of myself who is charming, witty, and entertaining, even in the presence of near-strangers. I think that I do an ok job of this, although my call-back ratio would suggest otherwise (there aren't that many).
After getting through the initial challenge of the first date, assuming that I have made someone like me enough, there is the second date. Over the past few months, the second date has marked the point at which I start evaluating the other person. I start to imagine what it would be like to really date them and I apply my critical thinking and logical reasoning skills to determine if there are any flags or deal-breakers. I've had a lot of trouble finding guys who have everything I am looking for. I need someone who is attractive, kind, intelligent, articulate, and confidant. It would be nice to have someone who is also health-conscious, considerate, and a hard-worker. There are some things that I just consider a bonus, for example being a vegan or living the music lifestyle.Yes, I stack-rank the things I am looking for, because I am just that good of a Project Manager.
I've recently read some articles that call out girls my age for having too many requirements for men. One urged me to settle for Mr. Good Enough. Reading these articles, I wondered if I should just settle. I had a major problem though. My Mr. Right existed, and I knew it because I was lucky enough to be friends with him. 
I know that a lot of my readers enjoy my bad date stories and that they are a constant source of entertainment for my friends and co-workers. That is why I hope that no one here is too disappointed that after going out on dates with 24 different men since the beginning of the year, I have ended up with the same one who was standing next to me on New Year's Eve.
 After the jump, please enjoy the reduced-fat vegan brownies that I brought along on what turned out to be our first date.

Healthy Fried Ice Cream?!?

I know what you're thinking right now: "What kind of drugs is she taking, or more importantly what kinds of drugs should she be taking?". I know it sounds crazy, because the term deep fried ice cream calls up visions of fatty frozen balls of ice cream rolled in a crunchy cinnamon mixture and deep fried in oil. I used to love me some deep fried ice cream, as you can see in this picture. You can also see my flabby arms and chubby little face. To channel my favorite vegan authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin would say: that is not the way to a sweet ass. Not only is that dessert as big as my head and following several margaritas, it's also a perfect storm of fat, milk (the intended purpose of which is to fatten baby cows), and tons and tons of sugar. However, it also tastes like heaven on earth, so I was in quite the conundrum the other day when I started craving it.
 Sometimes, part of being vegan is using a little ingenuity. I found a great recipe in a cookbook called College Vegetarian Cooking, which I picked up hoping to find some quick, easy, and tasty meal ideas. I was not disappointed, and they had a great recipe for what is essentially an ice cream cake with cornflakes on top of it. It was delicious, but their recipe still called for a bit more sugar than I would use and of course ice cream, so I made a few adjustments of my own and ended up with a delicious frozen treat.

Pumpkin Pie Wontons

Sure, every good food blogger has a pumpkin recipe that they save and publish in the fall, when pumpkin is a staple on American dinner tables. Not me. I'm a loner Dottie, a rebel, and that means posting my pumpkin pie wonton recipe in May. It also means making my pumpkin pie wontons whenever I want, and just because I love pumpkin. I first used this recipe to bring to a New Years Eve party, and the filling was a hit, but the actual wontons tasted like crap. This is because I tried to make my own wonton wrappers, which was a mistake because I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't really have a choice at the time, because both Trader Joes and Whole Foods were sans-wonton wrappers. Literally 2 days after I couldn't find them anywhere, I saw an entire display of asian wrappers at Ralphs of all places. So, you don't have to go to any kind of a fancy store to find your wonton wrappers, you just have to carefully check the label to make sure that there aren't any little baby animals or baby animal derivatives in them.
These wontons are super easy to make, except the assembly which can be a little tedious. If you can, I would reccomend engaging a qualified sous chef to assist.

Pumpkin Pie Wontons
1 c. canned pumpkin
2 tbsp. maple syrup
3 tbsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
16 wonton wrappers
cinnamon sugar for dusting (you can make your own with 2 parts cinnamon and 1 part raw sugar)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Mix pumpkin, maple syrup, sugar, and pie spice.
Spoon 1 tsp. into the center of each wonton wrapper. Fold in half an moisten the edges to seal.
Arrange on an ungreased cookie sheet and spray with cooking spray.
Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over each wonton.
Bake for 16 minutes, or until wontons are a golden brown.
Flip them over and bake for 2 more minutes, then let cool completely.

Vegan Easter

For vegans, some holidays can be a challenge. On the one hand, you want to savor the tastes of the season,  but you still want to maintain your commitment to cruelty-free living. For me, easter wouldn't be the same without a basket of chocolate on easter morning, but I was not about to go out and buy snickers eggs, milk chocolate peanut butter cups, and marshmallow peeps. Instead, I spent last weekend doing something that I have always loved: making candy. I boxed up some of these treats and distributed them to friends, both vegan and non, and saved some for myself. I've dutifully kept said candy stored in the freezer so that I would be able to enjoy a basket on easter morning.
The chocolate eggs pictured are just dark chocolate chips melted with a tiny bit of earth balance and then poured into candy molds. I also made delicious haystacks, peanut butter truffles, and vegan cream cheese mints. Everything came out really nicely. I found the cream cheese mint recipe here, and substituted tofutti vegan cream cheese instead. The peanut butter truffles and haystacks, however, were all my doing. They came out great, and I am pleased to be able to share both recipes after the jump.

Fat Free Carrot Cake!

 Editor's Note: we are up to 991 uniques as of 9 AM Tuesday morning. Please keep coming back and posting links on your facebooks, twitters, and the like. I started posting on February 6th, so this is a huge milestone for me. 

That's right ladies and gentlemen, I am suggesting that there is a way to have your cake and eat it too. Fat Free Vegan is one of my favorite resources to find new vegan recipes.When I needed a cake recipe a couple of weeks ago, it was my first stop. I found a carrot cake recipe that is absolutely out of this world. It doesn't use any fat or butter, and incorporated unsweetened apple sauce and fresh grated carrots. It is the densest, richest, moistest cake that I've ever baked, and no one can believe that it's vegan or fat free. It does use a bit of sugar, but I'm not really sure that you can ever have a completely healthy baked good. However, if any of my readers know anything about that, I would very much like to be clued in.
Now, the reason why I love carrot cake so much is because of the cream cheese icing. The original recipe recommends a lemon glaze, but that would be total bullshit. Everyone knows that the best part of carrot cake is that delectable cream cheese icing. I would eat bowls and bowls of it if I could. So I consulted several different frosting and vegan frosting recipes online, and finally settled on my own combination of soy cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla soy milk, and earth balance.
I've made this cake three times now. The first was for a birthday and was a huge success. The second time I tried to make cupcakes for work, but I got lazy and bought this weird, sticky vanilla frosting from Whole Foods. That was a disaster. The third time I went back to basics, but made a double batch so that I could put together a layer cake for my tea party. That was a win as well. This cake keeps great in the refrigerator, and doesn't lose any of its moisture or deliciousness. In fact, I think that I like it better slightly chilled.

Sometimes you have to show a little skin. This reminds boys of being naked, and then they think of sex.

Alicia Silverstone graced the silver screen in Clueless, a movie that spoke to the mid-90's zeitgeist. Alicia is one of my favorite vegans, and I really do need to get out there and buy her new book, The Kind Diet. Alicia touts the benefits of veganism, including weight loss, improved health, and general good karma. I think that it's great that she is using her notoriety to promote a plant-based lifestyle, especially when there are so many celebrities who are happy to plug fast food restaurants and soft drinks.  I could gush for days about Alicia, but this is my blog (her's is here).

Valentines Day Cookie Recipe

Valentine's Day is coming up this week. Yes, it's a completely made up holiday to promote consumerism. However, it's still one of my favorite holidays. I love the chocolates, the flowers, and the idea of spending a special evening with the person you love. Unfortunately, due to circumstances out of my control, I will not have a valentine this year. But, just because I'm going to die alone doesn't mean I shouldn't post a delicious cookie recipe.

This recipe is a veganized version of my mother's potato cookies. She makes them at Christmas every year, and I absolutely love them. Her version is exactly like mine, except I use earth balance instead of butter and sweet potatoes instead of white. Sweet potatoes are rich in vitamins A and C, so it could be argued that these cookies are good for you.

I think that there's something to be said for giving baked goods instead of a bunch of store-bought chocolate hearts. It's quirky and interesting and more special because of the effort that goes into it. I once had the brilliant stroke of genius to bring a few of these very cookies on a first date. It was a little ballsy, but it was one of those rare first dates (for me anyway) where he actually called when he said he would. If these cookies can get Ms. Unlucky in Love a phone call, they will probably bring the man (or woman) of your dreams to their knees.