Ooey Gooey Vegan Mac N Cheeze

Ever since I tasted the super delicious Mac N Cheeze at Kindfood in Burlington, ON, I have wanted to emulate this same dish at home. I think I've come pretty close here, and even though it isn't identical, it was definitely a success! While the one at Kindfood is completely gluten-free, I chose to use some regular wheat flour in this recipe, though I did pick out some brown rice noodles to try.  The recipe that I found online that seemed most like the one I tried at the restaurant was from Vegan Yum Yum, although I did modify the recipe a little bit.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup Earth Balance
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 1/2 tbsp tamari
1 tbsp lemon juice, fresh
1 tbsp sweet/white miso
1 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 1/4 cup soy milk (or other non-dairy milk)
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
salt and black pepper, to taste

Heat the saucepan and add the Earth Balance. Once it is melted, add the flour and whisk constantly until a paste forms. Don't let your pot get too hot. Add tamari, lemon, miso, tomato paste, paprika, Dijon, and whisk. Slowly pour in the soy milk, whisking constantly. Add the nutritional yeast and mix. Cook until it thickens up for about 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper.

Cook a package of macaroni or other shaped pasta, and toss with the sauce. Top with Daiya cheddar cheese and whole grain bread crumbs. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Double Chocolate Super Fudgy Cookies

Last night, I had an urge to bake cookies. So...I did! I looked through some recipes that I had written down and hadn't tried yet. It was also very important that I had all of the ingredients already on hand as I really didn't feel like going out to the store. So here they are, double chocolate super fudgy cookies! They are super chocolatey, soft and moist. I feel like I really didn't need to add as many chocolate chips as I did, so feel free to modify to what suits you. Also, be sure to use a good quality cocoa powder (I use the one by Cocoa Camino) as a higher quality cocoa will make your cookies taste better!

Now, my oven is quite small and on my first batch of cookies with one tray on top and one on the bottom, the bottom ones burnt. The ones on the top rack turned out great. So, you might want to check on these about 6-8 minutes through cooking to see how they're doing. When I baked the second batch on the top rack, I cooked them for 8 minutes and they cooked perfectly. With that said, I'm sure they would cook great for the time recommended in the recipe (10 minutes) in other ovens.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup oil
2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp + 1 tsp whole flax seeds
1/2 cup soymilk
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup Dutch processed cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups vegan chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350. Grind flax seeds until they become a powder. Add the soymilk to them and mix with a fork for 30 seconds. Set aside.

In a large bowl, sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.

In a separate bowl, blend the oil and sugar with a mixer. Add the flax/soy mixture and mix well. Add the vanilla.

Fold in the dry ingredients in batches. When the mixture becomes too stiff to stir, you can use your hands until a stiff dough forms. Add the chocolate chips and mix with your hands.

Roll the dough into 1" balls and flatten into a disk. Place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, about 1" apart.

Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes, and then set on a wire rack to cool completely.

This recipe made about 36 cookies!

A Very Vegan Thanksgiving! Chickpea Cutlets, Mashed Potatoes, Mushroom Gravy, and Roasted Broccoli!

It was Canadian Thanksgiving this past Monday, so we went all out with a hearty traditional meal...vegan-style, of course! Justin and I were in the kitchen for a good while and made this delicious meal together. It was one of those times where all of the pots and burners were used on the stove top and so many dishes piled up in the kitchen sink. But, it was well worth the time (and the mess!). I chose dishes from Isa's holiday recipes over at Post Punk Kitchen because they always turn out so great! We went with Doublebatch Chickpea Cutlets, Fluffy Mashed Potatoes, Savory Mushroom Gravy, Roasted Broccoli & Asparagus, and the Cosmos Apple Pie from the Vegan Pie in the Sky cookbook.

I didn't fully follow the recipe for the broccoli - first of all, we added asparagus, too. Next, we added some fresh and dried herbs and spices as I would typically use for roasted vegetables. We roasted the vegetables in olive oil, along with the herbs, on a baking sheet as per the recipe.

The pie was baked to perfection and was super delicious! For an added amount of yum, I sprinkled some maple sugar on top in place of regular sugar, along with the cinnamon.

And another thing to be thankful for? This was way too much food for only two people! So, we had lots of leftovers to eat. The chickpea cutlets went pretty fast, but we ended up with such a huge amount of mushroom gravy that I'm thinking of making more cutlets and potatoes just to use up the gravy! It is Thursday now and I've still got some leftover potatoes, mushroom gravy, and pie. For the last couple of days, I've had some pretty fantastic lunches at work! Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians, and Early Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!