Tag Archives: vegan

Homemade Maple Pecan Butter

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Homemade Maple Pecan ButterYou know how maple syrup is the greatest?

(Along with golden syrup and blackstrap molasses?)

And you know how pecans are the greatest?

(Along with almonds and cashews and pistachios?)

And you know how homemade nut butters are the greatest?

(Along with puppies? Yeah, there was no connection with that one.)

And you know how Sarah is the greatest housemate?

(I lost the rhythm a bit there.)

Homemade Maple Pecan ButterWell, I made Sarah a batch of Homemade Maple Pecan Butter before I left Toronto, and it was the greatest.

So great, in fact, that we were at risk of eating all the maple-roasted pecans straight from the tray before turning them into nut butter.

And so great that, once turned into nut butter, the entire batch disappeared in little more than the blink of an eye.

This nut butter is ridiculously easy and quick to make, as the high (good-for-you!) oil content of pecans means they butterise (shhh, spellcheck, let’s pretend that’s a word) more swiftly than do almonds or cashews.

Go forth and make this incredible roasted maple pecan nut butter, my friends.

Because this world is the greatest.

Homemade Maple Pecan Butter

Homemade Maple Pecan Nut Butter

Makes 3/4 – 1 cup

  • 1 1/2 cups raw pecans
  • 2-3 tablespoons maple syrup, depending on your sweetness threshold
  • few pinches of salt
  1. Preheat oven to 160C/325F, and line a baking tray with baking paper (trust me; the clean up is far easier this way). Toss the pecans with the maple syrup, then spread out on the baking tray.
  2. Bake for 8-10 minutes, stirring once, until the pecans are starting to toast but aren’t burning.
  3. Let cool for five minutes, taking sneaky bites of pecans here and there when no one’s looking.
  4. Tip nuts into a food processor along with a few pinches of salt, and process until turned into silky smooth drippy-town nut butter. This took five minutes in my powerful food processor (scraping down the sides once), but it may take you longer, depending on the strength of yours. Have faith! Deliciousness awaits!

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend.

Vegan Chocolate Coconut Ice

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Vegan Chocolate Coconut Ice

I miss primary school fêtes. I miss how the schoolyard looked and felt different when visited on the weekend in the sunshine, how the tables in the quadrangle adorned with homemade treats or “trash and treasure” seemed more alluring than any shopping mall ever could, and how much fun it was to run around wildly with friends without having to worry about a teacher yelling at us for going out of bounds.

I miss putting so much tomato sauce onto my sausage sizzle sausage that the flimsy white bread beneath grew soggy (but tangy!), and I miss buying a toffee cup for ten cents; I miss those toffee cups in muffin cases that were nothing more than caster sugar, water, and food colouring boiled together into discs then topped with sprinkles, ready to be sucked on for hours (or until accidentally dropped it in the dirt while playing tag).

Vegan Chocolate Coconut IceThere would always be at least one plate of coconut ice on the tables selling homemade goodies. A uniquely Australian treat, coconut ice is traditionally a pink and white layered confection made from coconut, copha, red food colouring, and either sweetened condensed milk or icing sugar and egg white.

Coconut ice is sweet, so sweet, and pretty, so pretty, and coconutty, so coconutty.

A few months ago, I remembered the existence of coconut ice and could suddenly think of naught but veganising it with the help of my enormous jar of coconut oil. In a vague nod towards being a Grown-Up rather than an seven-year-old girl with a sticky disc of half-licked toffee in her hand, I replaced the food colouring with cocoa powder and took the resulting gluten-free, dairy-free, definitely-not-sugar-free treat into work.

My colleagues may not have the same school fête memory associations with this vegan chocolate coconut ice as I do, but they seemed to love eating it all the same.

Vegan Chocolate Coconut Ice

Vegan Chocolate Coconut Ice

Makes 16-20 squares, or more if you prefer teensy bites.
Adapted from Taste

  • 250g desiccated coconut
  • 500g pure icing sugar, sifted
  • 200g coconut oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
  1. Line a 20cm (8 inch) square pan with non-stick baking paper, allowing paper to overhang the sides. In a large bowl, stir together the coconut and icing sugar.
  2. Melt the coconut oil in a medium saucepan over low heat, then add the vanilla extract. Immediately pour this over the coconut and sugar mixture, then stir stir stir stir stir! It may take a bit of elbow grease to get all the sugar and coconut incorporated into the coconut oil.
  3. Once the mixture is combined and cohesive, divide in half. Press one half smoothly and evenly into prepared pan. Add the cocoa to the remaining half, and mix well until the coconut is evenly coloured.
  4. Press the chocolate coconut mixture over the layer already in the pan, then cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 1 hour or until set.
  5. Remove the coconut ice from the pan, and use a sharp knife to cut into small squares. Store in the fridge. You can either serve this straight-crispy-hard-cold from the fridge, or let it soften a little at room temperature first.
  6. Are you done yet? Have you finished eating? Can we go play Red Light, Green Light in the schoolyard now, please?

Submitted to Healthy Vegan Friday, Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love and 5 Ingredient Monday.

Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding, Vegan and Gluten-free

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Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding, Vegan and Gluten-freeAt first glance, you may think that the above Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding is nothing more than an innocent sweet breakfast (or quick dessert) that ticks all the vegan, gluten-free, non-threatening, sweet yet healthful, delicious, moreish, and irresistible (particularly when topped with mini chocolate chips) boxes.

However, this breakfast/dessert is more than that. My peanut butter pumpkin pudding is a refutation, or perhaps proof positive (I haven’t quite decided yet), of Bourdieu’s theories of cultural capital and cultural hegemony, as defined and discussed in his seminal work La Distinction.

Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding, Vegan and Gluten-freeOn the one hand, we have ingredients liked organic canned pumpkin, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, coconut flour, and mesquite powder, all of which can be classified as luxury goods available predominately to the cultural elite: those with the money, knowledge, and leisure time to be aware of, value, and have access to products (and “tastes”) classified by society as Healthful, Prestigious and [often thereby] Tied To Moral Virtue (“you are what you eat… and what you eat should by organic/local/ethical/healthy/virtuous”).

On the other hand, I threw in peanut butter-flavoured sugary kids’ cereal, blended it all up, and topped the resulting thick and creamy pudding with chocolate chips. Which is less in line with the Eat Only Homegrown Sprouted Polka-Dot Chickpeas And Foraged-By-The-Light-Of-A-Crescent-Moon Maqui Berries strain of cultural capital, and more, well, trashy, perhaps?

Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding, Vegan and Gluten-freeOf course, you’re more than welcome to simply call this recipe “delicious” and have that be that. It is, after all, a tasty and nourishing creation, with the nutty maltiness of the cereal, mesquite, and coconut flour combining well with the roundness of pumpkin and your chosen extract and sweetener.

But, see, sometimes I miss academic life and how it felt to thread together the theories of Bourdieu, Veblen, Baudrillard, and Foucault in such a way as to cast light on the way our world shudders and moves around us.

So I’m calling this my Capital Pudding. Because it is both capital (ol’ chum!) and potentially reflective of class capital.

Though I still haven’t decided whether it’s more high or low culture.

Pumpkin Peanut Puff Pudding, Vegan and Gluten-free

Original recipe
Serves 1

  • 1/3 cup (heaping; 100g) pumpkin puree, canned or pureed
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk, or any non-dairy milk
  • 1/2 cup (heaping; 25g) Peanut Butter Panda Puffs, or similar peanut butter cereal (*cough Reese’s Puffs cough*)
  • 1 tb coconut flour
  • 1/4 tsp almond extract (or vanilla extract)
  • 1/4 tsp mesquite powder (or cinnamon)
  • pinch salt
  • sweetener, to taste (coconut sugar, maple or agave syrup, or stevia)
  • chocolate chips, to garnish

1. Are you ready for this? PUREE EVERYTHING (except the chocolate chips) in a blender until gloriously smooth and thick. You can now enjoy this straightaway, or put in the fridge for an hour or so, at which point the pudding will thicken up gorgeously and you will be very happy. Garnish with chocolate chips before serving.

2. “Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.” - Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, Volume One.

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend, Healthy Vegan Friday, Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love, and 5 Ingredient Monday.

No-Bake Blondie Gems for Gems

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No-Bake Pecan Blondie BitesLast week, my two current housemates and I, plus the lass whose room I have been subletting, got together for a night of delicious food, laughter, and friendship.

I count myself truly lucky to have found at this sublet not only a bed to sleep in and a kitchen to dance around (ooh! and stairs to get concussed falling down on!), but also three inspiring, passionate, driven, and wonderful women to become friends with.

No-Bake Pecan Blondie BitesErin, thank you for sharing your career- and life-wisdom, and for the joy of playing duets together on the keyboard. Maíra, thank you for allowing me to borrow your room, for the Brazilian chocolate, and for always keeping an eye out for opportunities for me.

Sarah, thank you for everything that you are, for every late-night heart-talk and gigglefit, and for being someone I can’t conceive wasn’t always in my life.

Whole Foods TorontoWhole Foods, thank you for your contribution to our spread. Olives, thank you for hiding almonds within your depths; that was a delicious surprise. San Pellegrino, thank you for being so fizzy, both alone and as part of the cocktail I didn’t partake in because orange liqueur was involved.

Medjool dates, pecans, almonds, coconut sugar, and vanilla, thank you for being perfection. Thank you for joining together to create these no-bake vegan blondie gems for my housemate gems. Thank you for being delicious, and for providing a sweet ending to a night that was already very sweet.

No-Bake Pecan Blondie Bites

No-Bake Vegan Blondie Gems for Gems

Adapted from Amber’s Famous Five-Minute Raw Vegan Blondies

  • 1/2 cup raw pecans
  • 1/2 cup raw almonds
  • 2/3 cup rolled oats (certified gluten-free if need be)
  • 1 cup Medjool dates, gloriously squishy and sweet
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons coconut sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • pinch sea salt

1. Process the pecans, almonds, and oats in a food processor until fairly finely chopped (but not a complete powder).

2. Add the dates, coconut sugar, vanilla extract, and salt, and process until the mixture is cohesive and sticks together when pressed between your fingers.

3. Roll into small balls and store in the fridge or freezer, or alternatively on a plate to wonderful friends, right now.

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend, Healthy Vegan Fridays, and Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love.

Homemade Gingerbread Almond Butter

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Homemade Gingerbread Almond ButterHey you! Yes, you, out there, behind the screen.

You’re magnificent.

And by that, of course, I mean that you are extremely wonderful. Tremendously fabulous.

Your responses to my last post? Incredible. Thank you. For your understanding, and your kindness. For reading, and for being you.

Homemade Gingerbread Almond ButterI’ve had a lovely past few days filled with friendship, laughter, heart-strengthening words, cooking adventures, more friendship, and more laughter. I’ve switched back from feeling like sobs are hiding in my chest to sneaking skips on the sidewalk again.

I’m very lucky to have people nestled so deeply in my heart, both here in North America and Australia (as well as a sprinkling of other continents, too).

Soul-friendships are magnificent. And by that, of course, I mean extremely wonderful.

Homemade Gingerbread Almond ButterThe third magnificent and extremely wonderful thing in today’s post is this homemade gingerbread almond butter, which is almost as delicious, almost as uplifting, almost as rich and complex, almost as addictive and almost as wildly glorious as the act of living itself.

Roasted almonds are turned into a thick yet silky nut butter kissed with the dark intensity of blackstrap molasses, dazzled with a hint of smoky-caramel coconut sugar, deepened with heady spices, and rounded out with a little vanilla and sea salt.

It’s impossible to stop at one spoonful of this spiced almond butter. It’s not too sweet, yet it sings with the same joy that dessert brings. Equally at home on toast, a carrot, coconut ice cream, or simply your lips, I think you’ll want to make this soon.

Because it’s almost as wonderful as you are.

Homemade Gingerbread Almond Butter

Homemade Gingerbread Almond Butter

Makes a small jar’s worth; around a cup of almond butter
Original recipe

  • 1 1/2 cups (180g/6.5oz) raw almonds
  • 2 tsp blackstrap molasses
  • 1 tsp coconut sugar
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
  • pinch salt
  1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and roast almonds on a lined baking tray for 8 minutes. Cool almonds for 5 minutes.
  2. Tip almonds into your beloved food processor and process until the almonds have gone through the fine meal stage, the crumbly stage, and the clumped-into-a-ball stage, finally reaching the smoothed-into-drippy-almond-butter stage. Depending on the strength of your food processor, this can take anywhere from 8-15 minutes (My food processor is a whiz at nut butters, so it took a mere 7 minutes, but in Australia it would have easily taken 15.) You will need to stop the processor and scrape down the nuts from the sides every few minutes.
  3. Add the molasses, sugar, spices, and salt, and then resume processing. The nut butter will initially jump back from smooth to clumpy, but after another 5-10 minutes will once more reach the lusciously smooth stage.
  4. Eat. Revel. Love. Dance in joy. Always.

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend, Healthy Vegan Friday, and Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love.