Vegan MoFo Day 12: Turkey Cookies

That isn't as bad as it sounds, I swear.

Here's the scene -- you, the kind hearted vegan, plan a lovely vegan Thanksgiving feast for your family. At first they all say "That sounds nice" and then as the date approaches it turns into "There really won't be turkey?" I solved that problem by making sure everyone at my Thanksgiving got their Very Own Personal Turkey!! (sugar cookie)

Turkey Cookie cutters are readily available on the internet. With some clever decoration, you can give everyone a humane turkey treat for Thanksgiving! This is the same sugar cookie recipe I use at Christmas, so when it's time to Deck The Halls with Yummy Goodies, just roll out a batch and use your favorite Christmas Cutters! I don't really have an icing recipe, honestly. What I do is put a bunch of powdered sugar in a large bowl. Then I add a good squirt of corn syrup, a bit of flavor extract (vanilla, usually), and then add milk a tablespoon at a time, stirring well in between each addition, until it reaches the consistency I want. Then add some food dye and you're good to go!

These are wrapped up all cute as a place marker!

Sugar Cookies
3/4 cup Earth Balance Margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup pureed silken tofu or nondairy yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract (or lemon, almond, whatever flavor you enjoy)
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

1. Cream together margarine and sugar. Add tofu or yogurt and extract and mix well to combine.

2. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until a dough ball is formed.

3. Wrap the dough ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour

4. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll the dough about 1/8" thick. Cut into shapes using cookie cutters. Bake for 6-8 minutes, or until golden brown.

Vegan MoFo Day 11: Pumpkin Soup

That last recipe was my favorite Mom recipe for Thanksgiving. This recipe is my Mom's favorite Thanksgiving recipe that I make. I scoured my hard drive for a picture of this Pumpkin Soup, but I couldn't find one anywhere. I found something that might have been pumpkin soup, but the quality was terrible, so instead, I leave you with this artist's rendition of Pumpkin Soup.

This soup takes a little while to put together and cook, but the end results are worth it. It's really rich and creamy and delicious. This is a recipe I actually use onions in because they're cooked down pretty well. A little extra Mimicreme to swirl into the soup at the end is a perfect touch to a beautiful orange soup. Prepare this soup a day in advance and then heat on Thanksgiving. Not only does it make it easier day of, the flavors really develop if you let them sit overnight.

Pumpkin Soup
2 lbs pumpkin
1 lbs sweet potato
2 tbsp earth balance
1 onion, sliced
1" piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 liter (4 cups) vegetable stock
1 tsp agave
1/4 tbsp cinnamon

1. Peel the sweet potato and pumpkin and cut them into roughly equally sized cubes. Set aside.

2. In a large soup pot, melt the earth balance over medium heat. Add the onions and cook for 5 minutes.

3. Add the pumpkin, sweet potatoes, ginger, caraway seed and vegetable stock.

4. Cover and simmer until the pumpkin and sweet potatoes are tender. This could take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on how big you left the potatoes and pumpkin.

5. Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender, or puree in batches in a regular blender.

6. Return the soup to the pot, add the cinnamon and agave, adjust salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot, with a swirl of mimicreme if desired.

Vegan Mofo Day 10: Sweet Potato and Apple Bake

Before I begin this post...

I MADE IT TO DAY TEN!!! One third of the month complete!! I'm so proud of me for keeping up with my blog for the past ten days!! I've even kept with the Thanksgiving theme for this long. Still not sure how much longer it will last. I don't think much longer, but I'll come up with something else, I'm sure.

Phew, ok.

A lot of people grew up eating the sweet potatoes baked with marshmallows on top for Thanksgiving. I have never in my life had such a concoction. I'm pretty sure my parents would have never permitted Marshmallows to be part of dinner, and my father would not have allowed Marshmallows to be part of food he was eating, and really, the thought of eating it kind of makes my teeth hurt. Instead, we had a conceptually similar, but infinitely healthier (albeit not completely healthy, cause it's got heaps of sugar), Sweet Potato and Apple Bake, which is a recipe my non-cooking mother bastardized from a recipe in a really old edition of Betty Crocker. I LOVED this more than anything. It's sweet potatoes with brown sugar and cinnamon topped with apple slices and baked. All I needed on Thanksgiving was this and stuffing and I was a happy girl.


Sweet Potato and Apple Bake
2 lbs of sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup melted margarine
1 tbsp all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (plus extra for sprinkling on the apples, if desired)
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into 1/4 inch slices

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

2. In a small bowl, stir together the sugar, margarine, flour, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Toss with the sweet potatoes until they are coated, then arrange them in a baking dish.

3. Top with apples, sprinkle with cinnamon, if you like that sort of thing

4. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until the sweet potatoes and apples are tender.

Vegan MoFo Day 9: Spicy Spritz Cookies

Ahh Spritz Cookies. Nothing brings back warm holiday memories of Christmas as a child like Spritz Cookies. These memories specifically involve my brother, sister, and I decorating trays of Spritz cookies in the dining room, while my father cursed up a blue streak in the kitchen about the ineffective Spritz gun, and the *&(%ing dough is too cold or the $%(& gun trigger won't go. Epic, I'm telling you. As we got older, my sister and I just did all the spritzing ourselves. Saved everyone some trauma. For that matter, we also started putting up the tree, putting lights on the tree, and putting lights on the house ourselves too. Again, reduced the cursing and yelling around the holidays. That's not to say my dad is a crazy man, or abusive, or bad in any way, really. He's maybe just not so good at holidays.

He did have one thing right. Spritz guns can be a bitch. It's very difficult to find a good Spritz gun. Last Christmas, beeps and I tried to make Spritz cookies with a Pampered Chef Spritz Gun she inherited. Here's a tip: Don't buy a Pampered Chef Spritz Gun. It is completely useless. I registered for the Cookie Pro Ultra II Cookie Press for my wedding, and got it, and it is FABULOUS!! You DO need some hand strength, for sure, but man does it spritz nice. They have a bunch of different models, and I've tried some of them like their cordless battery operated cookie press, and that one was TERRIBLE. It just couldn't produce the force necessary to spritz out a cookie. The Cookie Pro Ultra II, however? The Cadillac of Cookie Presses. Buy one. Or two.

I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where this recipe came from. No joke. I wrote it down years ago in my recipe notebook, and later veganised it. It is a Spicy Spritz Cookie and is lighter and tastier than the buttery mess I remember eating as a kid. (Honestly, I didn't like Spritz cookies -- they tasted like a stick of butter rolled in flour. I was a sugar cookie kid all the way. I just liked decorating and traditions.) For this batch, I stuck dried cranberries in some of the cookies and it really made a nice contrast of sweet and tart against rich and spicy. You can also use sprinkles or chocolate lentils or just leave 'em plain if you like 'em that way!


Spicy Spritz Cookies
3/4 cup margarine, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup nondairy yogurt (plain or vanilla)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream together margarine and sugar. Mix in the yogurt and stir to combine.

3. Sift in the flour, spices and salt and mix to combine.

4. Follow your Spritz Gun Manufacturer instructions for loading the dough into your gun, and spritzing.

5. Add sprinkles/candies/etc... as desired, then bake for 10 minutes or until the edges begin to get golden. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Vegan MoFo Day 8: Harvest Fritters

We are a fritter lovin' household. Over the summer when I had an obnoxious overabundance of zucchini, we ate a lot of zucchini fritters with fresh corn. In the winter potato fritters are a great side dish. I love the Vegetable Fritters recipe out of 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman, and this recipe is extremely loosely based on that (in that I've changed nearly every ingredient and quantity). I guess it can better be described as "inspired by" the Vegetable Fritters recipe. The beets in this recipe give the fritter batter a delightful magenta hue. Keep the oven on warm while you fry these up so you can serve them all fresh and hot when you're done frying!

Harvest Fritters
1 1/4 cup grated, peeled sweet potato
1 1/4 cup grated, peeled beet
1/2 cup apple, cut into small dice
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
pinch ground cayenne
1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk
1 6oz cup plain soy yogurt
1/4 cup canola oil + oil for frying

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, spices and salt.

2. Stir in the wet ingredients to make a batter. It should sort of resemble pancake batter.

3. Fold in the sweet potato, beets, and apples

4. In a large cast iron skillet, heat 1/4 inch of canola oil over medium/high until it bubbles around the bottom end of a wooden spoon when placed in the oil (scientific, right?).

5. Place batter into pan, about 2 heaping tbsp at a time, spreading a bit so it isn't too thick. When the edges start to look dry, and the bottom is golden brown, flip over. Fry the second side until it is golden. Drain on brown paper or paper towels and sprinkle with salt. Repeat with the rest of the batter until you've used it all up!

Vegan MoFo Day 7: Thanksliving Potluck!!

Today was our big Third Annual Pre-Thanksgiving Vegan Thanksgiving Potluck! It is one of our most anticipated yearly potlucks with awesome traditional Thanksgiving food, all made vegan! Not only does it show that Thanksgiving can be delicious and satisfying without the Turkey, it's also a great early treat for vegans who will be home in front of a carcass in a few weeks. I feel like I'm missing a bunch of pictures that I could have sworn I'd taken, but this is a good sampling of our delicious feast!

Appetizers/Munchies

Homemade Chex Mix - Multigrain squares, rice Chex, Pretzels, Breadsticks, mixed nuts, and bagel chips all toasted with EB and spices and veg Worcestershire sauce!

Super omni-fied Spinach and Artichoke Dip in a Bread Bowl

Crock Cheese Trifecta!! Smokey, with facon bits, Original, and Herb

Seitan Turkey Loaf

Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Onions

Stuffing with Veggies and Gardein "Beef" Tips

Mac & Cheese

Pumpkin Saag

Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Parsnips, and Carrots

Cranberry Sauce

Harvest Fritters. I pretty much invented this. They are really delicious. I'm hoping to post the recipe tomorrow.

Cranberry-Pomegranate Agar Mold with Raspberries and Black Grapes.
This really needs a PSA. Pretty, right? Rubber. Absolute Rubber. Inedible. The instructions on the Agar powder said "2 tbsp to 1 pint of liquid - heat for 5 minutes, then refrigerate to set." This yields a rubber ball. But isn't it pretty? Just don't try to eat it.

Oh man, one full counter of food. Some I don't have individual pics of because I feel like it was taken out when I was frying fritters or something. Anyway, the top row is fritters, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, pumpkin saag. The second row is Mac & Cheese, Roasted Veg, Stuffing with Veggies, Green bean Casserole, Seitan. The bottom row is Cranberry sauce, plain stuffing, and maple-mustard potatoes. Not featured (STILL!) is the multiple boats of delicious, delicious gravy.

I also managed not to get pictures of dessert, except for the apple pie I made (and posted the recipe for yesterday), and the Spicy Spritz Cookies I made, which I think I may blog about later in the week... so maybe I'll hold the picture until then!! I am so full. We also had mulled cider. And crackers. And Soyatoo whip. And Chocolate Chip Cookies. And great friends, good conversation, and we all ended with full bellies. I also have lots of dishes to do.

Vegan MoFo Day 6: Apple Pie

So you've made your pie crusts, now what? The fillings for pies are truly limitless. From a breakfast quiche to a savory pot pie to a sweet dessert, you can't go wrong with pie. Since I'm milking this Thanksgiving theme for all its worth, I thought I'd go with the fall classic, apple pie. When I make fruit pies, I don't use a recipe... or measure. I just throw a bunch of fruit together and call it a pie. This time, I actually measured how much I put in and made a (mental) note of it so I could share it. It's a damn good pie. It's not too sweet, not too tart, with tender apples and nice spicy cinnamon. When the filling is all nestled inside a light and flaky crust, you can't ask for anything more!

There's a lot of difference of opinion on what the "right" apples are for apple pie. I used to always use granny smith apples, but my co-op rarely has local grannies, so I branched out into other things. Now I use a combination of whichever crisp, tart, apples they have in stock when I'm going to make pie. This week I believe I had at least one gala, one spy, a mutsu, and another bright green one whose name escapes me, and a few more that looked food. The combination of a few sweet and a few tart really gives a great depth of flavor to the pie.




Apple Pie
6 Medium/Large apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg

1. Preheat the oven to 425

2. Toss the apples with all the other ingredients until well coated.

3. Put into pie pan lined with pie crust.

4. Top with other pie crust. Crimp the edges to seal. Slice vent holes in the top.

5. Bake for 45 minutes or until apples stabbed through the knife hole are fork tender.

Allow to cool and re-set up. This is very important. Serving it warm is great, but right out of the oven there's no way you'll get a decent looking slice. If that doesn't bother you, then grab a form! The smell is irresistible!