Yes, yes. I know. Another raw vegan recipe. Yes people, it is another raw vegan recipe and it is amazing! Getting into raw vegan cooking doesn’t mean I’m only going to ever eat raw or even that I’m only ever going to eat vegan, but I’m looking at it the same way a lot of people look at quitting smoking. Every cigarette a person doesn’t smoke is better for them, right? So I really think that every vegan or raw vegan meal I eat is better for me. Plus with raw vegan desserts like this, it’s pretty hard to go wrong!

This was yet another vegan treat that was happily devoured by a room of non vegans.

Raw Vegan Chocolate Cake via Mama in the Kitchen
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup raw cocoa or carob powder
1 1/2 cups dates, pitted
2 cups soaked oat groats (or oatmeal grinded into oat flour)
6 tablespoons raw local honey

First, process your sea salt, raw cocoa or carob and dates. It’s sticky! Then add in the honey!
After that was mixed as well as I could get it, I mixed in the oat flour (or soaked oat groats). Now grease whatever tins or pans you’re using with coconut oil and press the batter into them. They don’t take very long to set, then you just pop them out and add whatever vegan frosting you like! I used the Deceptively Delicious chocolate pudding recipe I first tried last year. To make it vegan, I used non-dairy margarine instead of Becel.
This recipe is pretty dense, I could only eat one layer of this little cake at a time!

This week, I’m linking up with Polly Want a Crafter, Motivate Me Monday, Made By You Monday, Make It Monday, More the Merrier Monday, Masterpiece Monday, Craftomaniac Monday, Make It Monday, Metamorphosis Monday, Making the World Cuter, Make It Yourself Monday, and Bedazzle Me Monday! Check out the projects in these links, so creative and so fun!

This is one of those projects that’s only hard in your head, once you actually get started on it you’ll find it’s no biggie and comes together really, really quickly. As long as you can sew, even a little, you’re good to go!

I made this for Wee One #2, but the same instructions apply for an adult, just bigger! She love, love, loves to dress up and run around and cause a lovely disaster in her cutest dresses. Making an inexpensive but adorable tutu for less than $10 makes a lot more sense than dropping $40 on one – especially if your wee one runs into the backyard and rolls around in the grass and/or dirt while playing princess and pirates!

Tutu via Prudent Baby
4 yards of tulle
matching thread
safety pin (I ended up using a hair clip!)
2ft elastic (to fit around your wee one’s waist)
sewing machine duh
scissors double duh

First, fold your fabric in half, widthwise so you have a wiiiiiide strip of tulle that is as long as you want the skirt to be. Now sew a small loop in the very top of all the layers to make a waistband. Then attach your elastic to a safety pin and feed the elastic through to the end. DO NO use a hair clip like I did. It was a bit of a nightmare.
Make sure you sew the end in place once you have fed the elastic into the waistband.
Keep feeding the elastic through to the end, it’ll be a little harder to work with the further through all the fabric you get. The wider your piece of tulle, the puffier the skirt will be. Puffier is always better when it comers to tutus. When you reach the other end, sew the elastic in place and then sew up the two ends to officially make it a skirt!
Next time, I’d use about twice as much tulle to make it even puffier!

Today, I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie and Life as a Lofthouse for Menu Monday and with KD Buggie Boutique, Mom Blog Monday and Tough Cookie Mommy for Mingle Monday.

One of the best intros to a vegan diet, or even just helping people to be less put off by vegan food in general, is with vegan desserts. Strawberries are always amazing, whether you think bacon is a good idea or not. Amirite?!

I made this for dessert one day and my husband wasn’t really interested in it. He’s a trooper though so he tried and it he was sold! He ate one individual pie and asked for a second one. Then he insisted Wee One #1 try one, and as reluctant as he he, he tried it too and also loved it! Hooray for strawberries!!

As with the grapefruit pancakes post, I’ll go on a little about why this recipe is a healthy choice.

In order of appearance, let’s start with coconut oil! Coconut oil is a saturated fat, and we all know that saturated fats are bad for us, so what’s up? MSN Health does a decent job of covering both sides of the debate, while The Huffington Post explains that not all saturated fats are equal and Care 2 Make a Difference lists six healthy uses. The truth is that the jury’s out on this one. That may not have been helpful, except to confuse you further. Sorry (and welcome to the club).

Honey is a an anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal substance. Um, so I take that to mean we should all be rolling in it?! There are also studies that claim honey can promote better blood sugar control and insulin sensitivity! Plus as many of us with hippie parents know, it works pretty well as a natural cough suppressant! Though that last point is moot with honey as an ingredient. Moving on!

Almonds are one of those foods we’ve been reading about as a ‘superfood’ for so long we’ve accepted it but what’s so super about almonds? They’re high in mono-unsaturated fat and that has been linked to lowering LDL cholesterol and a reduction in the risk of heart disease. The heart disease reducing ability comes from the vitamin E in almonds and of course almonds are also a great source of magnesium (amazing for your veins and arteries) and potassium (important for nerve transmission and contraction of all muscles including your heart).

Orange juice, yes, is full of vitamin C. The phytonutrients in oranges are helpful in lowering both blood pressure and cholesterol!

Cashews, another seriously healthy nut, have the same mono-unsaturated fat that lowers cholesterol and heart disease risks as almonds have. They are also linked to a reduction in coronary heart disease and of course, the elimination of those little bastards we call free radicals.

Strawberries are the star of this show, both in taste, presentation and health benefits. Not only are they amazing for all the reasons we already know they are amazing, like their off the charts antioxidant scores, their combination of phytonutrients, cardiovascular support, prevention of cardiovascular diseases, improved regulation of blood sugar, decreased risk of type 2 diabetes and prevention of of certain types of cancers (like breast, cervical, colon and esophagel) – they are a very good source of fiber (duh) and iodine (really?!) which can help protect us from radiation exposure of iodine-131.

So eat up!!

We are moving long distance in just a couple of weeks. I don’t want to jinx it so I’m not going to talk about it until we are on our way, but it means we are eating from our pantry, and while well stocked, it’s going to be funny next week trying to use up what we have!

This week’s menu (March 12 – 18)
I mentioned last week, I make two separate dinners most nights because I’ve made some dietary changes and I’m not pushing it on my family. They tend to join in with a healthy May-style breakfast and lunch and I make their faves for dinner.

Sunday – Chicken Alfredo for the fam, Chick Pea Salad and Flatbread for me

Blend all of the crust ingredients together in your food processor until it’s mushy. Grease whatever molds you’re using with coconut oil and then press the crust into the molds. Put these in the freezer for a while. You can leave them in for as little as it takes you to prep the rest of the recipe and hope for the best or do this part earlier in the day and make the rest later. I did mine all at once.
Drain all the water from your soaking cashews and pulse them till you have cashew butter!
Mix your cashew butter with the orange juice and the honey till it’s smooth.
Wash and chop your strawberries.
Now the magic. Assembly time! Pop out the frozen crusts and layer them crust, strawberries, orange cream, strawberries.
Honestly so good and refreshing!

Last year I fell head over heels for vegan food blogs, and one of my hands down faves is The Domestic Vegan, and though she hasn’t posted anything new since September, it’s a kick ass blog and is FULL of great recipes! Plus, I have at more than one point, gone months and months without blogging only to resurface so you never know if she’ll pop back up again!

Usually in baking, I’ll use 1 tablespoon of ground flax with 2 or even 3 tablespoons of water to replace an egg. This is part of vegan baking 101, you generally grind up the flax seed and let it sit with the water for a few minutes so it can ‘set’, or you know, so it can get sort of goopy and be able to hold things together like the egg impostor we need it to be. In this recipe though, it all goes in together. I think it’s because it’s heated. Not totally sure why but look at the finished donuts! They look amazing! They puffed up as if they were made with eggs!

Not so surprisingly, since my kids seem to love things baked with almond milk, these donuts are now their most asked for after school treat! Even more than the deep fried donuts and donut holes I made for them last year that they loved! I swear it’s the nutmeg, nutmeg makes everything magic!

Vegan Donuts via The Domestic Vegan

1 cup spelt flour 1/2 cup unrefined sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon sea salt dash cinnamon

1/2 cup almond milk 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/4 teaspoon maple extract (optional) 3 tablespoons Earth Balance nondairy butter 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed + 2 tablespoons water

Preheat to 350F. This recipe is wonderfully simple. Mix all your dry ingredients in a bowl (spelt flour, unrefined sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, sea salt and cinnamon). Then mix all your wet ingredients in a saucepan (almond milk, apple cider vinegar, vanilla, maple, nondairy butter, ground flax and water). Set aside the bowl of dry ingredients and warm up the wet ingredients until the nondairy butter melts. Don’t let it get hot, you’re not trying to cook it!
Now pour the warm wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix it all up. It’ll be really soft, but not runny.
Spread the mixture into your (greased) donut pans. Cook for about 15 minutes. The originally recipe said 16-18 minutes but mine were done at 15 minutes.
Voila!!

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baking, donuts, the domestic vegan, vegan