Tag Archives: holiday

Pumpkin Mousse

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Julie • 0 Comments

It happens to the best of us. You plan the perfect holiday dessert. You go to four different grocery stores to get the ingredients. Maybe you even order something online. You’re so excited to share your kitchen prowess with your family and friends, and then…something goes horribly wrong. The pie doesn’t set. The souffle falls as soon as the oven door opens. The cake doesn’t rise. And what are you left with? The dregs of all the ingredients you worked so hard to find, just enough to be completely useless if you want to remake your failed creation. Your own dashed hopes. Oh, and no dessert.

If you’re like me, and this happens to you often enough that you always, always have to have a backup plan, this is for you. This is your five-minute, failsafe, “look what I just whipped up!” backup dessert. This warmly spiced pumpkin mousse, made creamy with silken tofu and sweetened with maple syrup, can be served in individual ramekins, or spooned into miniature pie or pastry shells and topped with whipped cream for a makeshift pumpkin custard “pie.” It’s also on the lighter side, so it won’t contribute to the almost inevitable post-Thanksgiving dinner sweats.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Desserts, Quick & Easy, Vegan

Vegan Duchess Potatoes

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Julie • 2 Comments

Mashed potatoes are one of the absolute best parts of Thanksgiving. And of life. Seriously, what’s better than a gigantic plate of creamy mashed potatoes?

I’ll tell you what’s better. Creamy mashed potatoes piped into a swirl and baked to browned, crispy perfection. These are just mashed potatoes taken one step further. I’ve always loved twice-baked potatoes, and these are everything great about those, without having to worry about keeping the skins intact to restuff. These are so easy, and they make for an incredibly impressive presentation. The return on investment is high here, people. You don’t even really need to pipe them – you can just as easily spread them into a casserole dish and bake them. The peaks will brown just as beautifully and no one will know that you took a shortcut, because their mouths will be full of delicious potatoes.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Holiday, Side Dishes, Vegan

Healthy Green Bean Casserole

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Julie • 2 Comments

Thanksgiving is a fun holiday for vegetarians, huh?

That sounded sarcastic. But it really is fun! I get a lot of jokes about what I’m eating during the holidays, and questions about what we do when we sit down at a dinner table with a gigantic turkey carcass plopped in the middle. What do we do? We handle it. For me, there are few things more fun than a challenge – and vegging up a holiday meal that can wow even the most devout turkey fanatic is most definitely a challenge.

The ubiquitous green bean casserole was not something that ever showed up on our Thanksgiving table. I’m not sure why – we did the canned cranberry sauce with the can’s date imprinted in the bottom, the mashed potatoes and gravy, and pretty much every other staple. But I had never even heard of this until five or six years ago, and the person who described it to me didn’t do a great job of selling it – I’m paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines of, “You take a bunch of cans of condensed crap and dump it into a dish, and then you mix in mushy cafeteria green beans and try to cover it with enough fried onions to make it palatable. Then you weep in memory of actual food.”

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Holiday, Side Dishes, Vegan

Vegetarian Hot Dogs

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Julie • 40 Comments

The last time I ate a hot dog was upwards of five years ago, on a boiling summer day, at a baseball game. Nothing sounded better than a hot dog and a cold beer, and boy, did they both hit the spot. There’s no denying that, whatever’s in hot dogs (shudder), they taste pretty darn good.

Since then, I think I’ve tried every vegetarian faux-hot dog on the market, and I have never been impressed. Not only are they just as processed as regular hot dogs (albeit without the objectionable animal products), but they just don’t taste very good. They tend to be rubbery and limp and flavorless – not something you want to sink your teeth into at a ballgame, or a barbecue, or anytime at all.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Main Dish, Vegan

Creme Egg Cupcakes

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Julie • 3 Comments

Cadbury egg recipes have been flying around the blogosphere this spring, and each time I see one, I have a little mantra I recite to myself as I frantically click the back button: “I will not make this. I will not make this.” Every day it’s gotten more and more difficult to click away, and today I cracked. I blame these creme egg brownies for pushing me over the edge. I was able to resist all of the recipes that called for scraping out creme egg middles, because it just looked like such a pain, but Lindsay’s super-easy homemade filling took away both the annoying prep work and the suspect ingredients. How could I turn away? I went straight to the kitchen before I even had time to feel ashamed of my fleeting willpower (or lack thereof).

These cupcakes are extremely rich and very sweet. Stuffed with homemade creme filling and topped with chocolate frosting and a Cadbury mini egg, one is definitely enough. I had actually wanted to top these with a thin layer of ganache rather than a buttercream, since the centers are so decadent, but I had no heavy cream on hand and no car – and frankly, rich isn’t always a downside.

… [click for recipe and more]

Filed Under: Desserts