Vegan Pumpkin Pie

 

I was so excited to try out this recipe at Thanksgiving! It turned out really good and I would definitely make it again! There are two ways to make this - with pre-made crust or to make the crust yourself.

What you'll need

Filling 

(you can used canned pumpkin pie filling, but that isn't any fun!)

• 2 cups canned pumpkin
• 1 cup soy milk
• 3/4 cup agave nectar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 tablespoon dark molasses
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

Crust 

(we used pre-made crust)

• 1/2 cup unbleached flour
• 7 tablespoon whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 teaspoon. salt
• 1/2 teaspoon agave nectar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoon canola oil
• 3 tablespoons soy milk plus 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 3 to 4 tablespoons water

How to make

*If making the crust yourself, preheat to 425F. If using pre-made crust, heat to 350F*

We used a pre-made crust! Completely vegan and made of graham crackers 

To make the crust, mix all ingredients together and roll into a ball. Roll flat into a 11 inch circle with a rolling pin and line a 9 inch pie plate. Crimp the edges by hand or with a fork. Cover and refrigerate. 

Agave nectar was one of the ingredients we used instead of sugar. If using this, reduce the amount of liquid by a tiny tiny bit - about a tablespoon or two - and increase cooking time by 3 minutes or so.

Mix all of the ingredients together for the filling. Make sure you mix thoroughly.  Pour gently into pie pan and bake! 

*If making the crust yourself, you must bake for 10 minutes with filling at 425F, then reduce to 350F and continue to bake for 50 minutes. If using pre-made crust, simply bake for 50 minutes at 350F*

When finished, cool for 10 minutes, refrigerate, and enjoy the next day! 

Where we went wrong... 

Don't get me wrong, it tasted GREAT the first bite, but it was wayyy too sweet! We couldn't figure out why until I looked at the pictures I had taken - We used Pumpkin Pie Filling instead of pumpkin! Oops!! The next one tasted great, although there were no pictures of that :)

Coming soon...

Sorry for the lack of updates and recipes lately. We've been away on a family trip and haven't had time to cook! 

Coming soon on the list of posts...

• Vegan Chocolate Pudding
• Electronic Cigarettes - What are they, how to use them, and how to buy one
• Vegan Thanksgiving ideas
• Eating on the go - What to pack
• Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Tofu and Broccoli

This is my go-to recipe when we are short on time and hungry! From the sound of this blog, it sounds like we are always starving and rushed for time but I swear we are not. 

This is also my daughter's favorite recipe ever. She never says no to it. This recipe involves two basic, cheap ingredients - tofu and broccoli. This recipe reminds everyone of Chinese food, probably because it uses soy sauce.

You'll need

 Extra firm tofu

Broccoli

Salt/Salt substitute

Pepper

Vegetable oil

Lemon juice

Soy Sauce

Garlic

How to make

Start the broccoli in a little water and oil. While that is cooking, start on your tofu. Cut it into blocks and press out the water. The dryer the tofu, the better. Toss that into a second pan with lemon juice, soy sauce, pepper, salt, and garlic. Put as much as you want of each - There is no wrong way to make this recipe. 


After about 5 minutes of cooking the tofu, add the broccoli in. You can add some more soy sauce so the broccoli tastes of it too. We use low sodium soy sauce. You can also season this with stir fry sauce but we like the taste of the soy sauce.

When everything gets a bit of a golden brown hue to it, you're done. The tofu will firm up a bit and turn a golden brown and the broccoli will turn brownish from the soy sauce.

That's it! You're done. Cut it up into small pieces if you are feeding it to a child.
 

Mmmmm Cookie Dough

If you are an ice cream eater, try Purely Decadent ice cream! Its absolutely vegan, organic, and delicious. We love the cookie dough one!

 

What's for lunch?

Our local grocery store finally started carrying this! Its delicious, although expensive and a pretty small serving. You could easily eat two of these in a sitting, so they are great for lunch when you're not too hungry but still want to eat something. Oddly enough, this is the one food my daughter won't eat.

Dinner for Three in Under Fifteen

Yesterday was one of those days where cooking really didn't have a spot on my list anywhere. I had roughly twenty minutes until my hungry boyfriend would be walking through the door and about five minutes before my one year old exploded from 'I'm hungry right now FEED ME' syndrome. While she had a little pre-dinner snack, I quickly whipped up a delicious dinner. It was done and on the table within fifteen minutes and even my meat-eater boyfriend loved it.

You'll need

Boca Chicken Nuggets

Mashed Potato Flakes

Vegan Stuffing mix

Vegetable broth or water

Earth Balance Butter

Salt

Vegetables of your choice

Basically, there is no instructions with this one. All of it was heated up according to the directions on the boxes. The boca nuggets were cooked last in the microwave along with the mashed potatoes. The stuffing was cooked first and made with vegetable broth. I made real chicken (more like heated it up without touching it at all) for my boyfriend. We used broccoli and green beans for our vegetables. It was delicious and everyone enjoyed it! 

This stuffing was the only vegan one I have found. It is really delicious, although a little dry. I added a lot of the butter substitute to it to moisten it up. We don't really use gravy although I may invest in finding a good recipe for a vegan gravy to use. This whole bag was more than enough for 3 people and we have a whole container left over!

 I am a huge believer in using mashed potato flakes! It takes way too long to make real mashed potatoes, although I do cook them sometimes. In our produce section, they sell little packets of seasoning for mashed potatoes, so I always grab a pack of the garlic and herb seasoning. Its delicious!

I need to have my boca chicken! I should buy stock in this stuff.

I try to have every meal contain some kind of fruit or vegetable. I am a huge vegetable eater and it seems that I've passed that trait onto my daughter!

The finished product of my daughter's dinner. We were too busy eating to take any pictures of ours :) 

Vegan Sloppy Joes!

I'll start off by saying I haven't had sloppy joes in about 12 years, so I had no idea what to expect. They came out delicious and all of the meat eaters said it tasted very close to the real thing! This recipe makes about 2 full sloppy joes, 3 if you don't pack them completely.

You'll need

1 package of extra firm tofu

1 tsp onion powder

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 cup tomato/spaghetti sauce

1/2 cup ketchup

1 tsp dijon mustard

salt - to taste

pepper - to taste

2 tsp apple cider vinegar 

1 tsp sugar

How to make

Take the tofu and drain it. If you haven't worked with tofu before, you'll need to learn how to press out the water. Its easy and quick, not like some people make it seem. You can cut the tofu into blocks or crumble it and manually press out the water. You can also let something hard sit on top of it and drain it onto a paper towel. I prefer to press it out since its quicker and I know the water is all coming out. 

Once you press all of the water out, crumble it. It should look something like this

Mix all of the ingredients into the pan and toss the tofu in. Depending on how well you pressed out the water will determine how long you cook it for. If it seems too soupy, keep cooking it until the water cooks out. 

Once it is all done, throw it on a bun and serve! 

My daughter loved it on a bun ripped up and spoon fed to her! 

Waffle Breakfast

We are not morning people in my house. Even my daughter struggles to get out of bed at the lovely hour of 7am. We need a quick and easy breakfast for the mornings, and most mornings we choose waffles. Most stores carry the brand Van's if you're like me and can't cook too early in the morning unless it is a weekend. Van's makes delicious, moist  waffles that come in a few flavors (we prefer apple cinnamon). Just toast or heat in the microwave. They are so good you don't even need syrup or a butter substitute!

Cupcakes and Cookies

One big fear that I notice among people who are trying to go vegan is that they don't want to give up cakes, cookies, and cupcakes. Luckily for them, there are plenty of ways to make delicious treats while still maintaining a vegan diet! These are very basic and easy to do recipes here that don't require you to be a super baker (trust me - I'm not). I managed to do these with the help of my daughter, which means you should be able to do them too! :)

We'll start with the cupcakes. I normally use Duncan Hines but the store we were at didn't carry it! So we went with our next vegan option - Pillsbury Strawberry cake mix. Please remember to read the ingredients before buying! Not all of them are vegan. This was the only vegan option available to us so we went with it. 

You will need

One box of cake mix

Applesauce

Earth Balance Butter

Vegetable oil

Cake Beaters

Icing and Sprinkles 

How to make

You'll notice I included applesauce in the list of ingredients. Applesauce is one of those magic foods that can be used to replace egg in a recipe. You can also substitute banana if you are making something that already has a banana taste. Applesauce leaves no taste so you can use it for anything. Substitute one tablespoon for every egg. Another good hint - You can use vegetable oil to replace the butter in a recipe. I like using Earth Balance butter instead of substituting straight vegetable oil, but it works if you run out of butter substitute. 

Follow the direction on the box. Mix the cake mix with applesauce, butter, and vegetable oil (or whatever your box calls for). Use cake beaters to ensure that it comes out smooth. The Pillsbury kind really fluffed up a lot and made it difficult to work with, but it still came out delicious.

Fill up the cupcake papers half of the way to about 2/3 of the way full. This kind was very hard to judge so I just plopped it in. If you use Duncan Hines, you'll be able to smoothly put it into the cupcake papers.

Let it cook for about 20 minutes. Keep checking and use a tooth pick to ensure they are done.

If you fill the cup properly, which I admit is pretty difficult to get right, you'll have a nice cupcake height. This took me a few batches in the beginning when I was learning, but if you mess a few up, don't worry! 

After they are cooled, feel free to decorate however you'd like!

In between making those, I also made some cookies. I used Pillsbury Funfetti Halloween Cookie mix. You can use the regular funfetti mix as well. This brand makes delicious cookies! 

You will need

Cookie mix
Applesauce

Vegetable oil

Earth's Balance Butter

Icing and sprinkles

How to make

Follow the directions on the box! Mix everything together, again substituting 1 table spoon of applesauce for 1 egg.  This is the easiest cookie recipe in the world. All you are doing is substituting non-vegan for vegan. 

We had a separate pan filled with a little bit of flour to cut our cookie shapes out. You can skip this step by rolling them into balls and cooking them. This is a fun, simple project that kids can even help with! I let my 1 year old cut a few cookies with no worries if she ate the dough since it didn't contain egg in it!

When finished, place them on a tray to cook. They will take about 8-10 minutes. When they are done, they will look beautiful and fluffy like this

When they cool down, feel free to decorate however you'd like and enjoy!