grasshopper pie.

I’ve said it before, but something about the holidays (especially easter!) makes me want to make pie. Last year I made a delicious chocolate pie; and this year its this frozen grasshopper pie (found here). This pie is crazy good. and its made with avocados and marshmallows. Yep. Avocado and marshmallows. Dont knock it. Try it and you’ll see how crazy good it is.

Chocolate Crust:
15 trader joejoes or other chocolate sandwich cookie
4 Tablespoons Earth balance, Melted

Mint Filling:

1 Cup Pureed Avocado (From About 2 Small, Ripe Avocados)
1 Teaspoon Lemon Juice
1/4 cup soymilk
1 10-Ounce Package Dandies Marshmallows
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 Teaspoon Peppermint Extract
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Begin by combining the cookie crumbs and melted margarine in a large bowl, and stir well until there are no dry spots. Transfer this mixture to a 9-inch round pie tin, and use your fingers to press it evenly across the bottom and up the sides. Place the crust in your freezer until firm, at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, you can start preparing the filling. Puree your avocado using a blender or food processor, along with the lemon juice and soymilk. Scrape down the sides of the bowl periodically ensure you have no lumps of avocado. Set aside.

Place all of the marshmallows in a medium sauce pan, and set it over moderate heat. Stir continuously until the marshmallows have completely melted, and quickly transfer the marshmallow goo into your food processor or blender. Pulse to combine, and add in the salt, mint, and vanilla extract. Scrape down the sides once or twice between pulses, until the mixture is homogeneous. Pour into your frozen crust, and return the whole thing to the freezer. Let freeze for at least 4 hours, until set and sliceable. If desired, top with chocolate shavings, curls, or ganache. (recipe to follow)

Ganache
1/4 cup soymilk
4 oz choc chips
2 T maple syrup

In a small saucepan, heat up soymilk until its a rolling boil; remove from heat and stir in the chocolate chips and syrup. Top pie with it, and put back in the freezer to cool.

* I made my pie, and put in the freezer for about 2 hours, then made the ganache, topped the pie with it and put it back in the freezer for another 2 -3 hours before serving.

coffee filter butterflies.

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely starting to get over winter and am ready for spring…Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the winter, I’m just ready for warmer days ahead. That being said, Milo and I worked on making these simple coffee filter butterflies in anticipitation of the first day of spring ahead. They are super easy to make and will keep your toddler or preschooler entertained for a bit.

You need
Coffee filters
Watercolor paints
Pipe cleaners

Lay the coffee filters flat, and paint the whole thing with different colors using the water color paints. Make sure to let the paint absorb the filters. Let them dry, and then accoridan fold the filter, about 1/2 an inch, each fold, and then secure with half a pipe cleaner. Display and hope that spring is on its way…

granny stripe blanket….complete!

the granny stripe blanket is complete! (see progress, here, here and here). I’m so happy; this is my biggest yarn project to date. The pattern I used is found here. Although it looks like its an intimidating project, it really is super easy. Any beginner can do this. I ended up buying 15 skeins of yarn total (three skeins of each color) and used about 2 1/2 of each skein. I used black for the edging, and just did 2 rows of single crochet around. I’m so so happy with how it turned out. Special thanks to milo, who pushed the button on the timer to help make the photo about possible; training them young

So what are you waiting for? Get started on making yours and show me your progress!

raw brownie truffles.

I’m intrigued by raw deserts, but they seem like they can be kind of expensive, considering all the ingredients and time that goes into them. I have been pinning a few here and there lately that have peeked my interest and might start giving them a try….These were a simple treat to make, made with ingredients I had on hand. ( I seem to have alot of almonds on hand currently so I used those!) They are fairly healthy for you too, considering they have no refined sugar! They should satisfy a craving for something sweet and chocolatey. And you can roll them in all kinds of goodness – and make a whole variety of truffles.

Place 1 cup almonds in a food processor ( i used my vitamix) (you can also use any kind of nuts or combination of nuts here) and get them chopped up (not too fine). Add 1 cup pitted dates and mix until it starts to stick to the blade.  Add 4 T shredded coconut and 5 T cocoa powder and mix. Then add 2 T agave and mix until combined.  Roll into walnut size balls and then roll them into your topping. I rolled mine in cocoa powder and cinnamon.

dinosaur hoodie.

Every kid needs a dinosaur hoodie! These are so easy to whip up! All you need is a hoodie and some felt, and a sewing machine (although you could probably easily do this by hand, it would just take a little bit longer). I had this thrifted hoodie sitting in milo’s closet, and I dug into my felt stash to make the spikes.

I glanced at this tutorial, and then I went to work. You can download a template for the spikes here, or you can just wing it. Fold on a seam, and cut enough spikes to cover the back of your hoodie. ( I ended up using only one sheet of felt for this 3T hoodie)

1. Fold your hoodie in half. You can iron it to make a nice crease – you will be using this as your guide to pin the spikes.
2. Pin the spikes to your hoodie – the middle of the spike should line up with the crease.

3. Once all your spikes are pinned, sew each one down the middle of the spike.
4. Once all your spikes are attached to the hoodie, then fold the spikes in half and sew up the sides of the felt.

granny stripe: another update….getting close!

Here we are almost the end of two skeins…As you can see from the last update, I more than doubled what I left with…I’m definitely close to finishing, but thinking of going a bit more. i probably wont do a FULL three skeins, but thinking about 10-15 more rows.  Then I need to think about if I’m going to do edging or not (opinions? experiences? do share!) …I probably would have gotten this done on the recent trip to china – but on our way home our 6 hour layover became almost no layover thanks to a very kind United ticketing agent who got us on a direct flight back to chicago almost immediately after landing -  Happy to be home – but a good chunk of crocheting became void.  Hope to have a finished blanket very soon though….I’m hoping to at least do 2-4 rows a night…Stay tuned!

granny stripe: update.

I head to china in the morning, so I wanted to share the progress I have made on the granny stripe blanket. I just about used up one skein of each color, so I’m thinking its going to take three skeins of each yarn, not two, like I originally thought. So it looks like I’m a third of the way there. Hopefully after 26 hours of travel tomorrow I will make some nice progress…Have a great week!

king cake.

Happy fat tuesday!

Fat tuesday is the kick off to mardi gras; meant to be a day of indulgence to be followed up with days of fasting and giving up thing that are bad for you. Kind of silly if you ask me – but it didnt stop me from indulging in some king cake!

I have never had a king cake. Haven’t ever seen a vegan one for sale, but I do remember that Kittee seemed to be the queen of vegan king cake, so I gave her recipe a whirl.

This recipe seems intimidating because it uses yeast and you have to let it rise. But don’t let that stop you. It’s not hard at all. And it turned out delicious. I used some tofutti cream cheese topped with cinnamon and sugar as my filling. It has a hint of orange in the dough, and something about that keeps making me want to go back for more.

I didn’t know how easy it would be to find the traditional mardi gras colors for the sprinkles, nor did I feel like going to the store specifically to try to find out – so I made my own! I just mixed food color with regular sugar. That was easy!

So enjoy your fat tuesday! What do you plan on indulging on today?

original recipe found here:

• 1 cup whole wheat bread flour or whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup unbleached granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup (four tablespoons) Earth Balance
• 1/4 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk
• 1/4 cup tepid water
• 1/2 cup non-dairy yogurt
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch or Ener-G egg replacer (dry–don’t mix with liquid)
• 2 teaspoons organic orange zest, divided
• 1 1/2-2 cups unbleached white flour
• 1-1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and more non-dairy milk for glaze.

What You Do:

1. In the bowl of a mixer with a dough hook, combine the whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, and 1/4 cup of the granulated sugar.
2. Heat the Earth Balance and non-dairy milk over medium low heat, until the Earth Balance is melted. Remove from heat and add the warm water. Bring the temperature to 110F.
3. Add the warm liquid to the flour and and beat to combine. Add the yogurt, Ener-G and zest and continue to beat until well blended.
4. Add in 1/2 cup of white flour and mix to combine. Continue to add the white flour in 1/2 cup increments until the dough is soft and firm, but still a bit tacky (mine only needed 1 1/2 cups).
5. Knead for ten minutes by hand or five with a dough hook, until the dough is smooth and elastic (it will be slightly tacky to the touch).
6. Gather the dough into a ball and let rise in a large bowl covered with a tea towel in a warm area, until doubled in size about 2 hours. (I put mine in the oven with the pilot light lit).
7. Once the dough has risen, punch it down, preheat the oven to 350F.
8. Lightly flour your counter and rol lthe dough out into a long rectangle about 26″X20″ (keep the wide end facing you). The dough should be about 1/4″ thin.
9. Once the dough is rolled out, it’s time to fill it. Spread your choice of filling over the whole thing, but leave a 1″ margin at the top and sides to help prevent the filling (see below) from squirting out when you roll it.
10. Starting at the bottom edge, carefully roll up the dough, jelly style–don’t forger to hide a tiny baby in the cake somewhere (you can use a dry bean, too). Pinch the seam really well, and connect the ends to form an elliptical ring. The sides will need to be pinched extremely well too, because they often leak.
11. Carefully transfer to the dough to a parchment covered cookie sheet and bake until brown about 35-45 minutes.
12. Let cool ten minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool more.
13. While the dough cools, make the sugar glaze. Sift the sugar in a bowl, and add just a tiny bit of milk-teaspoon by teaspoon- until it’s a thick but pourable consistency. Pour over the mostly cooled cake and decorate with purple, gold and green sugar**.

funfetti cookie for one.

After dinner tonight, we decided we needed something sweet. Dj suggested a chocolate chip skillet cookie, but since it was just three of us, I thought that would do TOO much damage (doesn’t mean it wont be coming in the near future…), So i opted for this funfetti cookie for one – in our case…three.

It totally satisfied the sugar craving, and we were able to whip it up in no time. We each got a little taste, and I’m not left with two dozen cookies calling my name all weekend….Probably not the healthiest habit to get into, but it sure was tasty!

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp earth balance
• 4 Tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tspn egg replacer, plus 2 T warm water, combined
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 6 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp sprinkles

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray cookie sheet with nonstick spray.
2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, stir the earth balance and sugar together until creamed. Mix in the egg replacer and vanilla.
3. Stir in flour, baking soda, salt, and sprinkles until just combined. Do NOT overmix.
4. Place the dough in the center of the prepared cookie sheet into a big ball. flatten a little bit -  Bake for 14-16 minutes until the edges are browned. The center may appear undone but that’s what you want. It will firm up. Allow to cool completely ON the baking sheet. Enjoy!

almond joy bites.

Lots of food posts lately….I need to start crafting soon. Well, this is another food post until then…

Almond joy bites! these were so easy to make, and I had everything on hand!

3 cups of shredded coconut
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
about 2 cups of chocolate chips
1 T coconut oil
Almonds

mix the coconut and the brown rice syrup in a bowl. (add more if your coconut is too dry- should be coated, but not drenched in it) roll about a tablespoon or so of the coconut mixture and place on a pan with parchment paper. Top with an almond and put in the fridge for about 30 minutes to get cold. Meanwhile, start making your chocolate. in a double boiler, melt half of the chocolate chips, stirring often.  Add the rest, and then whisk in the coconut oil. Dip the coconut balls into the chocolate and let cool in the fridge a few hours, or over night. Serve at room temperature. Tastes just like an almond joy!