Pumpkin Bread (Chocolate Chips optional)

October has been unseasonably warm (and smoky) here in the Pacific Northwest but that hasn’t stopped our minds from moving toward cozy fall foods like pumpkin bread and hot apple cider. Anne loves this recipe for pumpkin bread and makes it every fall. It has a delicately crisp crust when fresh from the oven and is deliciously soft the following days.

Anne likes to make the pumpkin puree from scratch, but mostly just to make roasted pumpkin seeds and fill the house with pumpkin scented steam. If you don’t want to make the pumpkin puree from scratch you can use canned pumpkin. We recommend you make sure you are getting canned pumpkin or canned squash and not pumpkin pie filling. The cans can look similar, but pumpkin pie filling usually has spices and sugar in the can which would change the taste of the end product.

Anne always makes this in a bundt pan. If you don’t have this, feel free to use a different pan but know the timing will likely be slightly different. If you try it in another pan and it goes well feel free to share in the comments what timing you used and any tips for your pan.

We are planning to take November and December off from posting to get in a little recharge. We are excited to get back to sharing recipes with you again January 3rd.

Pans required: bundt pan

Serves: 8-12

Time: 1 1/2 hours (1/2 hour active)

Ingredients

1 cup oat flour

2 cups white flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

4 eggs

1 cup neutral oil, like sunflower, safflower, or vegetable

1 cup coconut sugar

2 cups winter squash puree

1 cup plus a sprinkle chocolate chips (optional)


Preheat oven to 325 F.

Mix the oat flour, white flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. Mix the remaining ingredients other than the (optional) chocolate chips in a large bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until mostly combined. Add the chocolate chips and stir until the white powder of the flour just disappears. Don’t overmix or your gluten can get very chewy. Pour into an oiled Bundt pan and bake 1 hour.

Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before carefully inverting the cake onto a serving plate. Delicious hot or cooled completely.

Arugula Pesto Pasta with roasted Brussels Sprouts and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

This meal came out of wanting to use up leftovers and is especially easy to throw together if you’ve already cooked a batch of roasted brussels sprouts. We put together the pesto with arugula because we had some from a previous meal and wanted a fresh pesto. Many different greens or herbs could be substituted to good effect so if you don’t have arugula on hand, feel free to use the herbs/greens that you do have. We used the almond pulp because it was left-over from making almond milk. Feel free to use any nuts you have around; cashews, walnuts, or pine nuts would go well in the pesto. The brussels sprouts give this pasta dish a lovely filling feel while the tomatoes have a nice fresh burst when you bite into them. We love freshly roasted red peppers, but we also love to use roasted red peppers from a jar. Either would be a good choice.

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Serves: 4

Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

1 batch roasted brussels sprouts

1 pint cherry tomatoes

1 lb pasta (gluten-free option, vegan-option)

2 red peppers

For the pesto:

1 bunch of arugula

1/3 cup almond pulp

3 cloves garlic

3 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp salt

generous squeeze of lemon


Pre-heat the oven to 375 F.

If you are roasting the red pepper in the broiler, that can be done before the vegetables go into the oven. If you are roasting on the stovetop, you can roast while the veggies are cooking. There are many ways to roast a red pepper. If you have a gas stove, you can place the pepper directly on the burner, turn the burner on and cook, flipping with tongs until all the sides are charred. If you don’t have a gas stove, it can be done in the broiler. Move a shelf to the top of the oven and turn on the broiler. Place the red peppers under the coils of the broiler and allow to cook about 6 minutes before rotating the peppers. The skins should char. Remove the peppers from the oven once the skins are charred on all sides (about 24 minutes). Either way you cook the peppers, once they are charred on all sides, quickly place them in a bowl and cover with lid (this makes them easier to peel). Set the bowl aside.

Roast the brussels sprouts according to the instructions. While these are cooking, boil salty water (should be as salty as the ocean) and cook the pasta according to instructions on the box.

Put the cherry tomatoes on a sheet pan drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake for 10 minutes until the skins pop open and get a little wrinkly.

Remove the roasted pepper from the covered bowl and remove the skin over the sink, rinsing off the char. Remove the seeds and stems. Cut the roasted pepper into strips.

To make the pesto, add all the pesto ingredients in the food processor and blend until smooth. If you need it to be thinner in order to process, you can add 1-2 tbsp of the pasta water.

Toss the prepared ingredients together, serve, and enjoy!

Eggplant Pesto Pizza

Eggplant season is here again and we are eating it every chance we get! With this pizza recipe the time varies widely depending on how you choose to make your pizza crust. You can buy pizza crust from the store to make the process quicker and easier, or you can make pizza from scratch. If you make it from scratch, make sure to check your recipe to get a sense of how much time that will take. Another option one of our friends does is to make dough from scratch and freeze it for later.

Makes: 1 large pizza

Time: 1 hr + additional time if making pizza dough from scratch

Pizza Crust (Anne uses the Joy of Cooking recipe, but any recipe or store bought would do just fine), for gluten-free pizza crust we recommend Simple Mills Brand

1 medium eggplant

1 medium zucchini

1 batch of sun-dried tomato pesto, on the thicker side

3 garlic cloves, minced

(optional) 1/2 bunch of kale, chiffonaded


If you are making the pizza dough from scratch, check your recipe to see how long you need for dough preparation. Prepare your crust for toppings, remembering to take into account any resting or cooling time it might need. Now we will discuss how to prepare the toppings.

Turn on your broiler. Peel the eggplant and cut it into long slabs about 1/2 inch thick. Brush both sides with olive oil and place on a broiler pan. Broil about 7 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. When broiling, it’s very easy to burn the eggplant, so make sure to set a timer each time and listen to the timer. When the eggplant is soft and browned on both sides, remove it from the oven and set aside. The browning may be splotchy, but that is ok.

Pre-heat the oven according to your pizza dough instructions. If you need to do any more work on the crust before adding the toppings, now is a good time to do that.

Next, mince the garlic and then slice the zucchini into long thin strips. Heat up a pan with oil and sauté the zucchini until it is golden brown on one side, and lightly browned on the other side, about 15 minutes. Then add the garlic and cook an extra 3 minutes until the garlic is fragrant.

If you have a pizza peel and a pizza stone, you will build your pizza on the peel sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina flour and cook it on the stone. If you don’t, it is easy to cook this pizza on a cookie sheet. Or to use a cookie sheet, pizza stone combo.

If you are adding the optional kale, you can wilt it in a pan with a little oil while the pizza is in the oven.

Spread the pesto onto the pizza crust. Cut or tear your eggplant into long strips and cover the pesto with the eggplant.  The combination of eggplant and pesto will make everything hold together nicely.  Top with the zucchini and put in the oven.  Bake about ten minutes and then optionally add the kale.  Continue to bake until the crust is golden (about 5 more minutes, but can vary a lot depending on the crust). Remove from oven, let cool slightly. Slice, serve, and enjoy!

Potato Salad

This potato salad recipe is the foundation that Camille uses to start a potato salad. She then adds other ingredients based on what she has in the house. If you make it just as it’s written it is delicious just like that, and feel free to experiment and add more things in as feels good to you. They love it because it’s fast to make, delicious to eat, and can be mixed up to use up whatever you have on hand. You can also substitute some of the ingredients to match what you have available, for example if you don’t have the garlic aioli you can substitute mayo, or you can use other fresh herbs in lieu of dill.

Serves: 4 as a side

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

1.5 lbs waxy potatoes

salt

2 small dill pickles, or 1 large dill pickle

3 tbsp vegan garlic aoili

1 tsp minced raw onion (optional)

2 tbsp fresh dill, minced

1 scallion, minced

1/4 jalapeno, minced (optional)


Wash and chop the potatoes into small bite sized pieces. Boil them in very salty water (like the ocean) until they are tender. Strain and rinse. Slice the pickles into bite sized pieces and chop up the rest of the ingredients. Combine and Enjoy!

Taste for salt on this first bite. If you salt the water a lot you may not have to add any salt to this dish once you combine it. If it’s not salty enough, add salt. If it’s too salty, make some more but under-salt the second batch of potatoes. Alternately you can add in other un-salted ingredients like boiled potatoes or freshly chopped veggies (eg. celery, carrots, or minced cabbage) which will dilute the salt. The more you practice with salting water when you boil potatoes the better you will get at salting perfectly to your liking.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

We love this sun-dried tomato pesto on pizza. It also goes great on pasta (as pictured below) or served as a dip. When it’s in season we like to eat a pesto that is heavy on basil. We’ve also made this with just a couple of sprigs of basil and it still tastes great, so if you don’t have much basil feel free to make the dish with less. This pesto is a delicious spreadable sauce good for pizza or sandwiches without adding the optional water. However if you want a thinner sauce for example for a dip or for pasta sauce, then all you need to do is add the optional water.

Serves: makes about 10 oz of pesto

Time: 30 minutes, 5 minutes active time

Ingredients

1/2 cup sundried tomato

1/2 cup cashews

basil, we used 1.5 cups packed

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 garlic cloves

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

(optional) up to 1/4 cup of water depending on the consistency you are going for


If your sun-dried tomatoes are dried, soak them in hot water with the cashews for 25 minutes. If your sun dried tomatoes are packed in oil, still soak the cashews but you do not need to soak the tomatoes. Drain the tomatoes and the cashews and put them with all the other ingredients into a food processor. Blend on high until smooth, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl down if necessary. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

Massaged Kale Salad Extraordinaire!

On a vacation in 2019, Anne found themself in Bath, England for a couple of days. The first night they discovered that all the restaurants closed really early and so they had to throw together something from a small, local grocery store. There were delicious, fresh, local veggies and avocado (not local). They had bought a bag of dried fava beans to snack on at the train station, and those ended up being an amazing crispy topping for a massaged kale salad. Since returning from the trip, Anne has been trying to find a crisp fava bean snack to match that memory, and we really like the ones we include in this recipe.

Because this salad has such a minimal dressing, the olive oil you use will significantly impact the taste. If you have some fancy olive oil available, this is the place to use it.

Camille and Anne have slightly different methods for massaging kale. Camille puts a small amount of salt on the kale and massages it just a little bit. This is faster and the kale won’t lose much liquid so no need to squeeze the liquid out, however the kale will be a lot chewier when you eat it than if you do Anne’s method. Anne salts the kale really generously and massages until the kale gets much darker in color and much softer in texture. They they squeeze as much liquid out of the kale as possible. This process removes a lot of liquid from the kale, so it shrinks a lot and the texture change is significant. The results are soft to chew and seasoned nicely.

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Serves: 2

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

4 large leaves lacinato kale

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp lemon juice

handful of cherry tomatoes, cut in half

1/2 a medium cucumber, chopped

1 medium carrot, chopped

1 small avocado, sliced

1/2 bag of Good Bean Sea Salt Crispy Favas and Peas


Wash, de-stem, and chiffonade the kale. put it in a large colander and sprinkle with salt. Massage over the sink until the kale is a darker green color, softer in texture, and when you squeeze it liquid pours out. Squeeze as much liquid out of the kale as you can, and set aside. Chop the tomatoes, cucumber, carrot, and slice the avocado. Place the kale and chopped produce on plate(s), drizzle with lemon juice and olive oil. Sprinkle with crispy beans and enjoy!


Veggie Mediterranean Pocket

Often, when we decide to make breaded eggplant cutlets, we plan these sandwiches as one of the meals that week so that we have multiple delicious and different way to eat these tasty treats. We wrote “variable” in the serves section because we usually just make as many sandwiches as we feel like eating.

Note: while we’ve linked recipes for breaded eggplant, hummus, and herb cucumber salad, you can also buy pre-made versions in a grocery store. For this recipe, we estimated it taking about 10 minutes to put together the ingredients assuming you either have already made them or are using store bought ingredients. For time estimates on making each of the components, check out their recipes directly.

Serves: variable

Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

Breaded eggplant cutlets

Hummus

Fresh cucumber herb salad

Flat bread or pocket bread, pita works really nicely


Spread hummus on or in your flat bread and layer with cucumber salad and eggplant cutlets. Enjoy!

Herbed Cucumber Salad

We love this summery, cooling cucumber salad. It is herbaceous, bright, and fresh. It is great to put in wraps, stir into hummus, or eat as a side. Quick to make, it adds a real punch of flavor to our summer meals.

Makes: enough to top 6 sandwiches

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup diced cucumber

1 small tomato, optional

1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice

salt

1/4 cup minced parsley

1 tbsp minced green part of green onion

1/4 cup minced mint


Wash and finely dice the cucumber. If using tomato, first cut it in half. If it is meaty, finely dice and add to cucumber. If it has a good bit of water, scoop out the water and seeds before dicing to decrease the liquid in salad. Finely mince the herbs. Toss the herbs, tomato (if using), cucumber, salt and lemon juice in a bowl. Refrigerate before enjoying!

Creamy Gnocchi with Roasted Tomato and Basil

We have recently started using premade gnocchi in our kitchen. We really like having a quick cooking option to add gnocchi to a dish. This dish is one that feels fast to pull together while still feeling luxurious and delicious. We have access to Delallo brand gnocchi and we like it. They make a gluten-free version and a version with gluten. While neither version have dairy products in the ingredients list, the gluten-free version does have an allergy warning saying “May contain milk”.

Serves 4-6

Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

2 box of gnocchi (gluten-free option, dairy-free option)

1 pint cherry tomatoes

2 tbsp olive oil

a handful of basil leaves

for the sauce:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 cippolini onion

3/4 cup cashews soaked for at least 30 min

1 1/4 cup water

1/2 lemon, juiced

1/2 tbsp garlic granules

1/2 tsp salt

1 pinch of red pepper flakes


Cover the cashews with water to soak. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Put on a large pot of salty water to boil.

When the water boils, cook the gnocchi according to the instructions on the package. Meanwhile, rinse the tomatoes and put them on a sheet pan. Drizzle with 2 tbsp olive oil and then sprinkle with some salt. Put in the oven to roast until the skins pop open, about 12 minutes. Next, drain your soaked cashews and add them to a high powered blender with the water, lemon juice, and garlic granules. Blend until smooth. Finally, slice the onion thinly.

Once you have drained the gnocchi, put the remaining tbsp of olive oil in the pan and return to medium high heat. Put the onion in the pan and add some salt. Cook until the onion is soft and starting to brown, stirring constantly. Add the hot pepper flakes and stir in. Add the cashew alfredo sauce to the pan and stir until slightly thickened. Remove from heat.

Add the gnocchi and roasted tomatoes to the pot. The tomatoes will break down and mix with the creamy sauce. Garnish generously with torn basil leaves. Enjoy!


Early Spring Salad with Orange Dressing

We’re still seeing late season citrus in our local grocery store and we love to add that late citrus to spring veggies that are in season here in the Pacific Northwest. Delicious asparagus, spring peas, and purple radishes with freshly picked greens. We didn’t include amounts of asparagus feel free to use as much or as little as you have or as you want to eat. We use the crispy fava beans as protein in this salad, however if you don’t have them boiled eggs or fried tofu would both be good substitutes.

Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

For the Salad:

Leafy Greens - early spring options include arugula, mustard greens, baby chard, spinach, radicchio, and pea greens

Asparagus

Radishes

Snow peas

Crispy Spring Onions

Good Bean Sea Salt Crispy Favas and Peas

For the Dressing:

1/2 cup orange Juice

1 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup water

1/2 tsp mustard

salt and pepper to taste


Move an oven rack to the top shelf in your oven, and turn the oven to the broil setting. Rinse and cut the ends off of your asparagus. Toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Layer the asparagus in a single layer on a cookie sheet and broil for 5 minutes. Flip the asparagus and broil for 5 minutes on the other side. The asparagus is easy to burn on the broil setting, so we recommend using a timer and watching them closely. Remove from oven and make the crispy spring onions.

Chop the remaining vegetables and cut or tear the salad greens (if you want to). Put all of the salad dressing ingredients into a jar with a lid and shake until it’s emulsified/fully combined. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add all the salad ingredients to a bowl (except the spring onions). Toss with salad dressing. Top with spring onions and enjoy!

Crispy Spring Onions

We like to fry spring onions (or scallions or green onions) in olive oil until they are crispy and use them as a garnish for many meals. When you do this, you will end up with olive oil left over. This olive oil will have a delicious onion flavor and is good in so many things! We recommend saving this and using it as a replacement for olive oil in a salad dressing, as oil for roasting veggies and potatoes, or dip bread in it for a snack.

Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

1 bunch of spring onions (or scallions or green onions)

olive oil (varies based on pan size)

salt


Rinse and thinly slice lengthwise the green parts of your spring onion. If there are white bulbs you can save these for another meal.

For this recipe you will need to pour olive oil in a pan until you have a full 3/4 inch of oil in the pan. We recommend using a very small pan so that you don’t have to use as much olive oil. Put your pan at med-low heat and let the olive oil get hot before adding onions. Cook them until they start to brown, turning and stirring constantly to keep them from clumping up. Use a fork to remove them from the oil and cool them on a kitchen towel or paper towel and salt generously. Eat them as a snack, top a salad with them, or use as a garnish in many meals.

At this point you’ll want to keep your olive oil. If you aren’t going to use it immediately, once it cools it would be safer to store it in the fridge until you are ready to use it. Enjoy!

Cilantro Tomato Black Eyed Peas

Hi, Camille speaking here. I love black eyed peas because they are a bean that doesn’t need any soaking to cook from dry! It’s great when I haven’t planned ahead and still want a fairly quick meal (extremely quick if you have an Instant Pot) and still not too long if you are cooking on the stove. When I lived in Senegal, bean sandwiches was a common and delicious breakfast if you had enough money to afford it. This recipe is very similar to the sauced beans that I ate there and would be delicious served on a baguette. We also used them in our Last Chance Veggie Skillet.

Serves: 4 as a side

Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

1 Can Black Eyed Peas or 3/4 cup dried black eyed peas

1/2 onion

olive oil

2 cloves garlic

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp oil from Mama Lil’s Peppers

salt

1 cup vegetable stock (or bouillon cube and water), gluten-free option, soy-free option

handful of cilantro


If you are using dry black eyed peas, cook them according to the instructions at the end of this recipe. If you are using canned black eyed peas then open the can and rinse the cooked peas.

Chop the onion so that the pieces are about the same size as the peas. Mince the garlic. Cook the onions on medium heat with olive oil until they begin to become transparent. Add the garlic for an additional minute. Add the hot pepper oil and tomato paste. Stir to coat the onions. Add the cooked beans and stock. Stir well. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer and cook until it’s the consistency that you like, stirring regularly. Wilt the cilantro in. Stir and enjoy!

*Cooking black eyed peas from dry:

In the Instant Pot:

To cook in an Instant Pot, add 3/4 cup of dried black eyed peas to the pot.  Cover the beans with water (in the small Instant Pot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 1 tbsp kosher salt. Additionally if you happen to have the following add these as well: 1 tbsp cumin, 2 tsp garlic powder, and 1/8 tsp cayenne.  Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for 6 minutes letting depressurize naturally.  Drain and rinse before adding to the dish.

On the stove:

If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily black eyed peas from scratch with no planning. They are a bean that doesn’t need any soaking, yay! Put the black eyed peas in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 45 minutes so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt.

Additionally if you happen to have the following add these as well: cumin, garlic powder, and a tiny amount of cayenne. 

Cook the peas until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take about 45 minutes).  We recommend checking the beans at 20 minutes and then every 10 minutes o cook until they are soft but not disintegrating. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans!

Chocolate Cake with Strawberry Icing

Happy Spring and Happy Birth to Virginia Jean Giopponi, we’re so excited to meet you <3<3<3 We love this chocolate cake with strawberry icing so much. If you love it, you might also really enjoy our chocolate cake with hazelnut frosting.

We have not yet tried a gluten free version of this although we love this gluten-free cake mix, and it would be great with our strawberry icing. While the box mix says cupcakes, it also works great in a cake pan. To make this recipe you would likely want to have two boxes so you could have the two tier cake with frosting in-between.

Pans needed: 2 6-inch round cake pans (if you only have one you can make this in batches it will just take twice as long).

Serves: 4-6 servings

Time: 1 hr

Ingredients

For the cake:

3/4 cup + 2 tbsp all purpose flour

3/4 cup coconut sugar

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp cocoa powder, plus extra for powering the pans

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla powder (option to replace with vanilla extract)

1/2 tsp salt

1 room temperature egg

1/2 cup almond milk

1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup neutral oil

1/2 cup hot coffee

For the icing:

3/4 cup soaked cashews

2 dates

squeeze of lime juice

Lime zest

1 tsp vanilla powder (option to replace with vanilla extract)

3/4 cup pureed strawberries (about 8 large strawberries), plus extra strawberries for topping the cake

1/4 tsp - 1 tsp agave (depending on your sweetness preference)

1/4 tsp salt

up to 1/2 water depending on how thick you want the icing to be. Less water is more fudgy, more water is fluffier. The puree is pretty wet so you may not need any water at all

This cake can be made by hand or with a mixer. We use a mixer because we have one.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F and make hot coffee. Brush oil into your cake pans and add 1 tbsp of cocoa powder and shake until bottom and sides are coated. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla powder, salt). In a separate bowl or in a 2 cup liquid measuring cup combine the almond milk, apple cider vinegar, neutral oil, and the egg. Break the yolk up, but no need to whisk the egg. Add this to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, careful not to over mix. While you are stirring, add the hot coffee and watch it transform into liquid, smooth, velvety cake batter.

Divide the batter between the two cake pans as equally as possible. Bake in a pre-heated oven for about 30 minutes or until you can touch the center of the cake and it bounces back, however it should not be firm and should still have a slight wobble to it. Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool for about 5 minutes.

Wearing hot mitts, pick up the cake and tilt to about 45 degrees. Using the palm of your hand (in the hot mitt) pat the side of the cake pan and then turn the cake pan. Repeat this until you’ve tapped all the way around the pan. Next turn the pan upside-down, turning the cake onto a wire rack, clean counter top, or plate. Then lift the pan off of the cake. Flip your cake over so that the cake is right side up and let it cool completely before frosting.

Drain your cashews and add them, with the rest of the icing ingredients, to the bowl of a food processor. Blend, scraping down regularly until you have a smooth creamy icing. If you find you need to add water, add it 1 tbsp at a time until you have the consistency that you like. The less water you use the more dense it will be, the more water you add the more fluffy the icing will be.

Once your cakes have cooled, place the first cake onto a plate. Using a serrated knife, cut the rounded top of the cake off, just enough to create a flat surface. Generously spread icing onto the top of the first layer. Put the second layer on top, cutting off the top for a cleaner look or leaving it on for a rounded top. Spread icing over the top and sides. To get a smooth finish on your icing, use an icing spatula or knife to spread the icing onto the cake. In between strokes, wipe the icing off the spatula or knife and rinse in hot water. The hot knife will smooth the icing more effectively and stop the knife from creating a peak when you lift it off the icing.

Optionally top the cake with fresh cut strawberries. Cut into slices and enjoy!

Spring Rolls

Spring rolls are one of our go to meals because we can use up any veggies we have in the fridge! It does take a while to roll these, especially when you are new to it. However we have now become faster at this and deeply enjoy it.

In this recipe we chose not to list specific amounts of vegetables as we will often cut up a lot of veggies and then wrap up as many as we feel like eating. We often wrap more the next day when we want to eat more. Additionally, because we use this to clean out the veggies we have in our fridge, we use this as a template and then adjust how much of each vegetable we use. For example, we have cabbage heavy spring rolls if we have lots of cabbage and not a lot of carrots, etc.

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Prep time: 20 minutes, total time depends on how fast you are at wrapping and how many you make.

Serves: we didn’t write this recipe with a specific portion size in mind, feel free to make as many as please you. If you are new to this, start small and then size up from there.

Ingredients

Spring roll wrappers

lettuce

grated carrot

sliced cabbage

mint leaves

basil leaves

bean sprouts

for the scrambled egg:

4 large eggs

1/4 cup almond milk

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

for the sauce:

1/4 cup avocado oil

1 inch ginger

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup almond butter

2 tbsp tamari

2 tbsp coconut aminos

1 tsp sriracha


Whisk all the “for the scrambled eggs” ingredients in a small bowl. Preheat a large frying pan with some olive oil to medium or medium high heat. Pour in the egg and scramble to your liking.

Rinse the lettuce, pat dry, and tear into 3 inch long rough ovals. Grate carrots. Thinly slice cabbage. Rinse mint and basil and remove leaves from stems. Rinse bean sprouts.

To make the sauce, start by mincing garlic and ginger. Heat a pan to medium high with oil and add the garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring constantly, until they are fragrant. Either turn off the heat (if using electric stove) or turn the heat very low (if using gas stove). Then add the almond butter and stir until it melts into the oil and becomes soft and liquid-y. Add the tamari, coconut aminos, and sriracha. Stir, put in a bowl, and set aside.

Next, make a spring roll station. Fill a wide shallow pan with 1/2 inch water. Using cold water the spring roll wrappers will take longer to soften, hot water makes the softening process faster. Make this choice based on how much time you want to roll the spring rolls. For example, if you want to move at a slower pace, cold water could be a good option. If you want to and are able to fill and wrap quickly, hot water is a good choice.

Next to the water, clear a surface to roll on. We like to do this on a large wooden cutting board. Then next to the cutting board place a large plate to put the finished spring rolls. Along the top and sides of this set up, place all of the fillings you prepared above (except the sauce) for easy reaching!

To roll, soften a rice wrapper by fully submerging in the water. Most spring roll wrappers have a subtle raised texture on one side. Once the wrapper has mostly lost its surface texture it is soft enough to work with. It should be soft enough to work with but not so soft that it sticks to everything a ton/breaks easily. Experiment until you find something that feels easy(ish) to work with. At first this task might feel challenging however it gets easier with practice. Once it is soft enough, spread this in front of you on the cutting board. If you’ve spread it on the cutting board and realize it isn’t soft enough you can wait 30 seconds or a minute as it will continue to soften — running your finger along it will help. Also note if it is very soft it will continue to soften as you assemble the ingredients so if you are slow to put all the ingredients on the wrapper you will want to pull it out less soft to account for that time. As you get fast at layering the ingredients you can work with a softer wrapper since it won’t sit there as long.

At the bottom, we have a video of how to roll these, and we will also describe it here: place a piece of lettuce in the center of the wrapper. Then make a log shaped pile of cabbage on top of the lettuce. Add pieces of scrambled of egg on top of the cabbage. Then add a couple of bean sprouts and then the grated carrot. Add mint and basil leaves across the top. Lift the part of the wrapper closest to you and fold up over your pile of vegetables. Fold in each side. Then roll away from you until completely rolled. Then place on plate and start another one!

Serve with sauce and enjoy!

Herbed Ranch Dipping Sauce

We love this herbed ranch dipping sauce. It’s great for fresh cut veggies, deep fried tempura tofu or veggies, or anything you would want to dip in ranch sauce!

Serves: dipping sauce for 6-8 people

Time: 45 minutes (15 min active)

Ingredients

1 cup cashews soaked in water for 30 min

1/4 cup water, plus additional if needed

1 and 1/2 tbsp lime juice

1 tsp of lime zest

1 and 1/2tbsp scallion

1/4 cup parsley

2 cloves of garlic, finely minced

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 pinches (or some freshly ground) black pepper

pinch of cayenne


Mince the garlic and then sprinkle it with kosher salt and smash it with the side of a knife (being careful not to cut yourself). Then mince the parsley and the scallions.

Blend the cashews, water, lime juice, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, and cayenne until it is smooth and creamy. For this, start with 1/4 cup of water and then add additional water if needed to make it blend well and to achieve a thick liquid texture. Now stir in the minced garlic, parsley and scallions and serve!

The Greatest Vegan Croissants

Anne has loved croissants since they were a small child. They have been working to perfect this recipe for a few years now, and have enjoyed each step of the process. This version makes about a dozen flaky and fluffy croissants completely free of dairy. Making these tasty croissants is quite expensive as it takes more than a block of Miyoko’s. For other recipes we usually suggest Miyoko’s with the option to replace it with another kind of vegan butter. In this recipe the Miyoko’s is essential as we have not had as good a result with any other butter alternative, flavor or texture. Like many pastry recipes, this one requires a lot of control over the temperature of the ingredients. Chilling the butter and dough at regular intervals is essential, as is having a kitchen that is not too warm. It would be difficult to make this recipe on a day that it was warmer than 70 degrees F unless you were working in effective air-conditioning.

Anne used these two (not vegan) recipes as a jumping off point for our recipe:

All Butter Croissants by Sorted Food

How To Make Proper Croissants Completely By Hand by Joshua Weissman

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Makes: 12 croissants

Time: At least 13 hours (1 hour active)

for the dough:

2 tsp active dried yeast

1/4 cup warm water

1/4 cup coconut sugar

3/4 cup almond milk (room temperature)

2 tbsp melted Miyoko’s butter

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

for the beurrage:

1 cup cold Miyoko’s butter (this is one whole block)

for the wash:

3 tbsp full fat coconut milk (if you don’t want to open a can you can use powdered coconut milk and water for this)


Put the active dry yeast in a small bowl. Add the warm water (should be warm to the touch, but not hot) and a pinch of coconut sugar. Give it a quick stir just to combine. Let it sit on the counter about 5 minutes. It should get a small amount of foam that shows you the yeast is still alive/active. If the yeast doesn’t change at all, you will want to start over using new yeast. This is why water temperature is important, too hot can kill the yeast but too cold won’t activate the yeast. Water that is warm to the touch should be perfect.

Put the flour in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the flour, and add the yeast mixture. Add the remaining coconut sugar, the almond milk, the 2 tbsp. of melted Miyoko’s butter, and salt. Stir to combine until a sticky dough forms. Rest this dough in the fridge for about half an hour. Once it has rested, you will roll it out into an 8 inch square. To do this, start by sprinkling flour on the countertop. Next put the dough in a ball on this floured surface and sprinkle the ball with flour. Pat the ball into a square-ish shape. Now roll it out, using a rolling pin (or wine bottle), and in between each roll-out use your hands to push the dough back into a square-ish shape. In this manner, the ball turns into a cube and then slowly into a thinner square. Stop when you have approximately 8 inches on each side. At this point, you can wrap the dough tightly with plastic wrap or beeswax wrap and put back into the fridge while you make the beurrage.

To make the beurrage you will pound your butter into a 6-inch square. To do this, get a piece of parchment paper and, using a pencil and ruler, draw a 6-inch square on the paper. Then, put the paper, pencil side down, on the counter (this way the pencil marks won’t touch the butter but you can see them through the paper). Cut the block of butter in half to make two slabs. Place these slabs on the parchment paper inside of the 6-inch square that you drew. You may need to cut the slabs into more than two pieces to fit them into the square, this is totally fine. Now, fold the parchment paper at the pencil marks so the extra paper (that is not the 6-inch square) creates an envelope around the butter. You will use this to help guide you in beating the butter into a 6-inch square shape. Next, use the rolling pin (or wine bottle) to gently hit the butter until it fills up the empty space thus creating a 6-inch square. Once the butter has spread to the edges of the envelope (aka is at a 6-inch square shape, but probably bumpy) keep the parchment paper envelope and now gently roll the butter slab to even it out into a 6-inch square of consistent thickness. Refrigerate your beurrage aka slab of butter for about half an hour.

Next we will describe how to put the dough and butter together and roll it out. We found it helpful to watch How to Make Proper Croissants Completely by Hand. We will describe the process below as well, and give you time markers for applicable parts of the video. Starting at 5 minutes and 57 seconds and ending at 8 minutes and 57 seconds will walk you through the next two paragraphs. Note: in this video there is a lot of attention to detail on having the perfect square however the croissants don’t actually need perfection to be delicious and delightful.

Flour the counter. Take your dough out of the fridge, and place it on the counter like a diamond, with a corner toward you. Carefully roll the corners out to stretch them just a bit, and then roll gently to flatten the whole diamond. Unwrap your slab of butter and place it so that the corners of the butter are in the middle of each side of the dough. Fold the corners over the butter so that all four corners meet in an x-shape over the butter. Pinch to seal the edges. Now wait for about 2 minutes so that the butter softens enough that when you roll it out it won’t break apart.

Now you will roll and do your first turn. First, add a bit of flour to the dough and butter packet to keep the rolling pin from sticking to the dough. Next, gently tap and rock your rolling pin (or wine bottle) over the surface of the dough and butter slab packet, first in one direction and then in the other. Then, using long, single direction strokes, roll the dough and butter slab packet out until you have an 18-inch long rectangle. Fold the end closer to you up the rectangle about 3/4 of the way. Fold the end that is further from you to meet the first end. Then fold the nearer end to the further end. Gently tap the dough to bind the layers. Rest in the fridge for one hour. After an hour, remove the dough from fridge and repeat this entire process, but in the opposite direction. When you get to the part where you fold the dough, this time you will only fold the dough in thirds. Wrap the dough again, put it in the fridge, and refrigerate overnight.

Roll the dough into a rectangle 8-inches by 25-inches. Cut into triangles 8-inches in height and 4-inches along the shortest side. Roll the triangle not too tightly (because it needs room to rise). Optionally, you can at this point and curve them slightly into the traditional croissant shape. Place on a sheet pan lined with a Silpat. This section can be seen in the video starting at 10 minutes and 58 seconds. Note that he is making his croissants larger than ours, so use our measurements above but you can check the video for some technique tricks. This section of the video ends at 13 minutes and 11 seconds.

Let the croissants rise on the counter until they are slightly bigger, fluffier, and softer. They have a bit of a ‘jiggle’ to them at this point. If you don’t let them rise all the way some of the butter will melt out onto your baking sheet as they bake (the croissants will still be delicious). This process takes about an hour. Preheat the oven to 425 F about 40 minutes into the rise. If your kitchen is cold, allow longer for the rising and start the heating of the oven a bit later.

If you are using powdered coconut milk, mix about 1 tbsp of powder with 2 tbsp water. Once the croissants have risen very carefully brush their tops with coconut wash, being careful not to push any air out of the newly risen croissants in the process. Once the oven is fully heated, bake the croissants on the center rack for 15 minutes. Make sure to turn the cookie sheet halfway through the baking process. Be careful, it is easy to leave them in a few more minutes to brown and they can easily burn on the bottom. Let cool before enjoying!

Pierogies

This recipe makes a whole mess of pierogis.  After boiling them, if you want to freeze them, you can do this on a greased cookie sheet or a piece of parchment paper. Then once frozen, transfer to a plastic freezer bag. Do not freeze them all together in one bag without first freezing on a cookie sheet or they will clump together and be impossible to separate.

Our favorite way to cook them from frozen is to fry in a pan on medium heat and they get a bit crispy on each side.

In these photos, we served the pierogis with roasted broccoli, caramelized onions, and some vegan butter. That’s not included in this base pierogi recipe, but it is delicious! Would love to hear what you serve these with in the comments.

Serves: about 10

Time: 2 hours

Ingredients

For the Pasta Dough:

3 cups all purpose flour plus more for dusting

1 cup water

1 egg

2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

For the Potato Filling:

1 3/4 lb Idaho potatoes

1 head of roasted garlic

salt




If you haven’t roasted the head of garlic, do so now. Pre-heat the oven to 350 F. There are many ways to roast garlic. Anne cuts the top of the head and pours some olive oil over the garlic and then puts this in a garlic roaster in the oven (if you don’t have a garlic roaster you wrap the head in tin foil). Camille peels the garlic cloves and puts them in a cast iron pan with olive oil and puts the pan in the oven to roast. Roast the garlic until golden brown (about 20 minutes if the garlic is bare in a cast iron pan and about 40 minutes in a garlic roaster).

Peel the potatoes (we don’t often peel potatoes, but for this recipe it makes the texture more delightful for us) and cut into large chunks. Boil the potatoes in a pot of very salty water until tender. Once tender, strain and mash in a bowl with the roasted garlic and season with salt.

While the potatoes are boiling, put the flour and salt from the dough ingredients in a large shallow bowl.  Make a well in the center and put water, egg, and oil in well.  Mix the liquid into the flour slowly until a ragged ball forms.  Knead the dough on a flour dusted surface for about 8 minutes, until smooth, elastic, and supple, dusting with flour as needed to prevent sticking.  Overturn a bowl on the dough and let sit for 20 minutes.


To shape the Pierogis:

Fill a large pot with water and put it on the stove on high to boil.

Roll out the dough until thin on a cutting board dusted with flour (if you are lucky enough to own a pasta roller this is when to use it). Cut rounds about 3" in diameter (I use a cookie cutter, but a wine glass would work as well).  Put between one half and one tsp of potato filling in the center of each round. Wet the edge of the dough with a wet finger. Fold the dough over the potato, forming a pocket and tuck the corners in. Seal closed with your fingers and then crimp the edges with a fork. Once all the pierogis are shaped, drop them one at a time into the boiling water, about ten pierogis can cook at once.  Stir the pot with a slotted spoon once at the beginning of cooking to prevent sticking, and allow to cook about 3 minutes.  The pierogis should be floating when you remove them from the water.  Drain them.

Note: if it feels good to you, you can also start cooking some of the pierogis before you’ve finished shaping so that you are shaping and cooking pierogis at the same time. If this feels hard, feel free to ignore.

Now you can freeze these for later, or cook up whatever you want to serve with them and enjoy!

Hummus

If you have a food processor (or blender) this is both easy to make and usually much less expensive then buying it at a grocery store. Plus, you can add your own flavors/toppings to mix up the experience. Check out our suggestions for this below and we’d love to hear in the comments your favorite additions to a basic hummus recipe.

Serves: 4

Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

3/4 cup dried chickpeas* or 1 can chickpeas

3 cloves garlic

1.5 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp olive oil

Water

2 tbsp tahini

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp Hot sauce or to taste

Pinch salt


If you are using dried beans, cook them*. Once you have cooked the beans, drain and rinse them. Add all the ingredients to a food processor (or blender) and process until smooth.

You can add all sorts of delicious things to this hummus, or keep it plain and top with something yummy. Some examples of things you can add to the hummus or top it with are pine nuts, fresh herbs, roasted red pepper, roasted garlic, harissa, or olives! Serve with bread, crackers, or fresh vegetables or use on a sandwich. Enjoy!


*Cook the chickpeas using an Instant Pot or on the stove. (If you are using canned chickpeas skip to step 2)

In the Instant Pot: Add 3/4 cup of dried chickpeas to the pot. Cover the beans with water (in the small Instant Pot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 1 tbsp kosher salt, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp garlic powder, and 1/4 tsp cayenne. Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for 35 minutes letting depressurize naturally.

On the stove: If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily cook chickpeas from scratch with a little planning. First you will need to soak the chickpeas which can be done one of two ways. 1. you can soak them overnight making sure they have enough water and space to double in size or 2. you can put them in a pot and bring to boil, then turn off the water and let soak for one hour. Again, make sure you have enough water and space that they can double in size. Once you have soaked your beans, rinse them and then put in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 2 hours so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt in the water. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt. For this recipe, also add 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp garlic powder, and 1/4 tsp cayenne to the chickpeas as they cook. Cook the chickpeas until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take 1.5-2 hours). We recommend checking the beans at about an hour and then every 20 minutes until they are soft but not disintegrating. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans!

Orange Chocolate Cupcakes

If you are gluten free, you can substitute the Simple Mills chocolate cupcake mix and add 1 tsp of orange extract, in addition to the ingredients it already calls for, into the batter. Note: we prefer to make this mix with just two eggs not the three that it calls for. Then frost as usual and enjoy a gluten free version of these delights!

Makes: 12 cupcakes

Time: 1 hr

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:

3/4 cup + 2 tbsp all purpose flour

3/4 cup coconut sugar

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla powder (option to replace with vanilla extract)

1 tsp orange extract

1/2 tsp salt

1 room temperature egg

1/2 cup almond milk

1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup neutral oil

1/2 cup hot coffee

For the icing:

3/4 cup soaked cashews

4 dates

1 tsp orange extract

1 tsp orange zest

1/4 tsp - 1 tsp maple syrup (depending on your sweetness preference)

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup orange juice depending on how thick you want the icing to be. Less liquid is more fudgy, more liquid is fluffier.


These cupcakes can be made by hand or with a mixer, however we use a mixer because we have one.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F and make hot coffee. Either grease the cupcake pans with some neutral oil or line with silicone or paper cups. We like to use silicone cupcake cups in our cupcake pan because they make cleanup easier and you don’t have to throw them away every time. Paper cupcake cups work to line the cupcake pan as well.

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla powder, salt). In a separate bowl or using a liquid 2 cup measuring device combine the almond milk, apple cider vinegar, neutral oil, orange extract, and the egg. Break the yolk up, but no need to whisk the egg. Add this to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, careful not to over mix. While you are stirring add the hot coffee and watch it transform into liquid smooth velvety cake batter.

Divide the batter between the cupcake cups as equally as possible. Bake in pre-heated oven for about 22 minutes or until you can touch the center of the cupcakes and it bounces back, however it should not be firm and should still have a slight wobble to it. Remove from the oven and let the cupcakes cool for about 5 minutes. Then transfer them out of the pan onto a cooling rack, if you have one, otherwise the counter or a plate works just fine.

Drain your cashews and add them, with the rest of the icing ingredients, to the bowl of a food processor. Blend, scraping down regularly until you have a smooth creamy icing. For the orange juice, start with 1/4 cup and then add the orange juice 1 tbsp at a time until you have the consistency that you like. The less liquid you use the more dense it will be, the more liquid you add the more fluffy the icing will be.

Spread the icing on the cupcakes,

Enjoy!

Vegan Ranch Spinach & Sausage Pizza

Meaty, cheesy, crispy deliciousness!

Serves: 4

Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

1 box Simple Mills Gluten Free Pizza Dough, option to sub in your favorite dough

apple cider vinegar (for the dough)

olive oil (for the dough)

1 package Beyond Meat Breakfast Sausage links

1 onion

1 clove garlic

.5 lb shitake mushroom

1 handful spinach

1 batch cashew cheese

ranch powder

Salt

Pepper

2 Tbsp high heat oil


Cook the Simple Mills pizza mix according to the instructions on the box. If you have a pizza stone, preheat it with the oven. The first bake on this pizza dough will be done on a cookie sheet. You can also do the second bake on a cookie sheet, but we like how crispy the crust is when the second bake is on a hot pizza stone.

While the dough is baking, slice the shitake mushrooms, onion, and mince the garlic. Heat a pan and fry the sausage links until crispy on all sides (the sausage will release oil as it cooks, so no need for oil in the pan). Once fried, slice the sausages into small chunks.

Fry the onions and mushrooms until the onions are browned and soft and the mushrooms are browned and slightly crispy. Add salt and pepper to taste. This works better if you cook the mushrooms and onions separately, however sometimes do this in one pan if I’m not too worried about getting the perfect texture. Once these are almost fully cooked add the minced garlic into one of the pans (or the one pan if you are doing them together) and stir for about 1-2 more minutes while the garlic browns. Finally, throw the spinach in and stir slightly just to wilt a bit.

Next, make the cashew cheese if you haven’t already.

Now, if you have a pizza stone, transfer dough to the stone, flipping it over. If you don’t have a stone, I like to flip the dough over on the cookie sheet before adding toppings. To top, first spread the cheese in an even layer over the whole pizza. Then, do a heavy dusting of ranch powder over the entire cheese pizza. Next, add the spinach, garlic, onion, and mushrooms. Finally, top with the sausage chunks. Put the whole pizza back in the oven for just 5-10 minutes to get everything warm and melded, but not so much that anything burns (everything is already fully cooked).

Slice and enjoy!