VeganMoFo - MoFo has left the building

[begin somber music]

It's the end of the MoFo as we know it. MoFo has left us with hundreds of blog posts, countless recipes, and invaluable anecdotes and stories . Now it's time to say goodbye.

I am celebrating MoFo's life with a few of my own MoFo goodies. Ah, MoFo brought us much chocolate!

This graveyard cake is topped with the tombstones from my Graveyard Cupcakes, Happy Halloweegan Pumpkins (though they forgot to say cheese there), Chocolate Spiders, and the little Happy Vegan Ghosts who started the whole Halloweegan insanity. There are only three ghosts on this cake, the Ghost of MoFo past, present and future! :P

YAY! I made it! 20 posts! This month has been so much fun, thank you again for ALL your wonderfully sweet and inspiring comments! You have no idea how much I appreciate all your kind words!


If you're reading this in 2009, you can find my entire Halloweegan series here. Here's a list of amazing Halloween inspired food posts from awesome MoFo-ers:

Kittee's UPS guy's brains and Sushi Candy

Kittee's Halloween Sushi

Melisser's Spiderweb Cake

Melisser's Candy Corn (this one is from last year but how could I not link to it!)

Bethany's Jack-o-Lantern Pizza and Candy corn

Sal's Pumpkin Cookies

Brooke's Maple Cake With Chocolate Buttercream

Bianca's Sugar cookies

Diann's Monster Burger

Diann's Black Bean Soup with Ghostados

Diann's Witch Salad

Veg-a-Nut's Frankenstein's Chickenless Nuggets

Krys' Pumpkin cookies

Lisa's Eyeball Martini

Shellyfish's Scary Skeleton Cookies

Lauren's Sugar Cookies

Tofufreak's Pumpkins

Vegan_Noodle's Mummy and Spiderweb Cupcakes

Vegan Noodle's Dia de los Muertos Cupcakes

Janessa's Halloween Cupcakes

Monique's Dirt Cake with Gummy Worms

Mandee's Gluten Free Gingerbread Cookies

Amey's Pumpkin Muffins, Pan de Muerto and Eyeball Cupcakes (and the funniest Halloween video ever)

Stacey and Sergio's Cockroach Cupcakes

Jeni's Spider Cake


I know there has to be more awesome Halloween bloggery that I missed. Please let me know if you made something Halloweeny and I'll update this list!

Google Reader just stuck its hand out of my computer and slapped me. Means it's time to catch up on my final MoFo 2008 reading! Hope everyone had a great Halloween! :)

VeganMoFo - Happy Halloweegan Vampire Cookies

YAY! This is my 19th MoFo post, so unless something unexpected happens tomorrow, I will reach my goal of 20 Halloweegan posts!

Tomorrow, I would like to create a post with links to everyone that has made any fun Halloween vegan dishes and treats this month. If you've posted about something Halloween-y that you cooked and you want me to link to it, just post a comment here - in case I missed it.

Today I made Happy Vampire Cookies! And of course one Mr. Cranky Pants Vampire to balance things out.

Any sugar cookie will work for this, I had to make shortbread because I'm shortbread's #1 fan. I used a regular confectioner's sugar icing for the faces. White for the fangs, spinach juice instead of water for the green part, and extra dark cocoa powder for the black stuff. Mr. Wing-it ate Mr. Cranky Pants first. Poor Mr. Cranky pants, he never had a chance.

P.S: I'll probably post late tomorrow, so have a super Happy Halloween everyone!!

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Eyeball Cupcakes with Whippy Cream

You guys are the sweetest! Thank you so much for all your wonderfully kind comments on my previous post! They made me feel all soft and mushy! :)

By popular request, I made some whipped cream again and measured all the ingredients this time so I could share a recipe. I said I didn't have a recipe before, because I always eyeball it, so...

Teehee! Creepy eyeball cupcakes! These are chocolate cupcakes with whipped cream eyeballs and raspberry centers. The raspberries are filled with chocolate.

I guess I should call this vegan whippy cream, it's more like a very soft buttercream. There's also a coconut milk whipped cream version that I made a couple of times and it was really really good. I'll make that again next month and post a recipe.

Vegan Whippy Cream

Ingredients
1/4 cup Earth Balance (or whatever margarine you use)
1 to 2 tbsp maple syrup or agave

1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup soy milk or other non dairy milk

1- Cream the EB with an electric mixer.
2- Mix in the syrup and vanilla.
3- Add about a half of the milk and mix on high until it doesn't look lumpy anymore. You will need a pretty powerful mixer, not an industrial type but something with some power. I use this bad girl.
4- Add the rest of the milk and mix on super hyper hold-on-to-your-socks turbo high until creamy and smooth.

This whippy cream is an off white color. If whiteness is a must, replace the syrup with confectioners sugar. This recipe makes enough cream for 6 eyeballs.

If you're making these eyeballs, use a small cookie scoop or ice cream scoop to drop the eyeballs on the (room temperature) cupcakes. Press a raspberry down in the middle of each eyeball. I used frozen raspberries rinsed off in warm water, which made them ooze out red juice that became the little vessels. I just dragged a toothpick from the raspberry juice down several times around each eyeball.

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I made these as eyeball pancakes with blueberries for my first MoFo post!

EDIT: If you're going to eat the whippy cream right away, you can use only 1/2 of the milk needed.

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Frankenstein-ish Squares

YAY!! Isa from the PPK posted a Halloween Roundup and gave me an amazingly sweet shoutout! Isa is the Vegan MoFo Queen Bee, so I feel like I've just won an Oscar or something! Thank you, thank you!! YAY!! Also featured on Isa's post are Diann's awesome spiderweb soup, Kittee's amazing Halloween sushi, Shellyfish's super adorable Skeleton Cookies, and the cutest furry belly ever!

OK, this is my pathetic attempt at making Frankenstein faces (or like Ambrose Monk would point out "Dr. Frankenstein's monster's faces").

I made them with Happy Herbivore's incredibly delicious banana bread from her Sneak Peak e-cookbook. Since I needed them to be flat, I baked the bread in a cake pan instead of a loaf pan. The original idea was to draw a couple of scars on each face, but that banana bread smelled so good that I just rushed through the whole thing so we could eat it!

To make these you will need to bake your favorite cake in a square or rectangular cake pan. Then sprinkle the top with 1/2 to 1 cup of green colored coconut before baking the cake. Gently press the coconut down with a spoon or spatula so it sticks to the batter. I don't use food coloring, so these are greened-up with spinach juice.

Once the cake is baked, let it come down to room temperature and cut it into squares. Some of the coconut will most likely be loose, don't panic, just press it down again after you cut the cake.

Draw the hair, eyes, noses and mouths with a pastry bag and melted chocolate chips. I'm sure whatever you do will be more Frankensteiny than these! :)

Have a fantabulous week, MoFo-ers! :)

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Meatloaf Scramble With Mashed Potato Ghosts

Remember my Freaky Monday Meat Cakes? This is kind of like that, but instead of baking the meatloaf I made a scramble. Sometimes veggie-loaves can be mushy, this scramble tasted like a veggie-loaf but without that yucky mushy quality. We served them in dessert cups with mashed potato ghosts on top!

Meatloaf Scramble

Ingredients
1 cup rehydrated TVP
1 cup veggie ground beef
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp tamari or soy sauce
1 tsp Mrs Dash salt-free seasoning
1/2 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 cup cornmeal
olive oil for cooking

1- In a medium bowl combine the TVP and veggie ground beef.
2- Stir in the tomato sauce, tomato paste, ketchup, tamari, and Mrs. Dash.
3- Stir in the breadcrumbs and cornmeal and mix well.
4- Preheat a non stick skillet with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.
5- Cook the meatloaf mix like you would cook a tofu scramble. Stir every now and then to cook it thoroughly. Mine took 25 minutes and it was enough for 4 individual dessert cups.

If you're going to Halloween these up, spoon some mashed potatoes on top and use the spoon to mold the ghosts, a la "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Drop ketchup eyes and mouths on with a toothpick.

Have a super happy weekend everyone! :)

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Witches' Hats

Six more posts to go to reach my 20 MoFo posts goal! YAY! I didn't think I was going to make it! Take that, super low self-confidence! :)

Thank you so much for all your incredibly sweet comments! Some of you guys wanted the recipe for the vegan whipped cream, so I'm planning another Halloweegan post for next week using whipped cream and I'll post a recipe then. I always eyeball it so, you know how that goes.

The dinner ghosts I had planned had to wait till next time because we were out of potatoes, so instead I made some little Witches' Hats! The idea came from the Betty Crocker website.

Here's how it all went down. I made my chocolate shortbread cookies as the base for the hats. While they were baking, I prepared the pointy tops. Sorry, I'm sure hat parts have fancy names that fancy hat people know, I'm not a fancy hat person so I will be calling them pointy tops.

The pointy tops... or cones! How about cones? Anyway, the pointy cone tops, are basically peanut butter cups sweetened with maple syrup. Recipe:

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
2 tbsp to 1/4 cup maple syrup (depends on your sweet tooth!)
2 tbsp soy milk or other non-dairy milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix everything together in a small bowl, using an electric mixer for about a minute or until the thing starts looking dryer and not as creamy.

To make the cones, either use a pastry bag to squeeze them out onto a plate, or shape them into cones with your hands. Dip the cones into some melted chocolate chips (about 1/2 cup) and chill (yes, the cones). I decided to spread some melted chocolate on top of each cookie too, which helped keep the cones in place when I placed them on the cookies. The buttons and rim are a simple confectioners sugar icing.

Of course you could take the easy way out and add some cocoa powder to the peanut butter mixture to make it dark, then you wouldn't have to dip the pointy tops in melted chocolate. But then again, what fun is that? :)

That Betty Crocker recipe made me want to play the song "Kiss" (Prince), and listening to Kiss made me want to watch Pretty Woman. I am such easy prey for advertisers!

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Pudding Pies

No more spiders! I wouldn't want to torture poor VeggieGirl anymore! Now I'm in a ghost kick, so it's sweet ghosts today and probably dinner ghosts tomorrow.

These were originally going to be pumpkin pudding pies, but my mother in law brought us some strawberries and who I am I to say no to strawberry pudding pie? No official recipe - I was chatting away and not paying attention to what I was doing, so the amount of arrowroot powder that I used is a complete mystery.

Anyway, the general idea is to line up individual mini pie dishes with graham crust, or shortbread crust, or whatever floats your boat. Pour your favorite pudding onto the pie crusts and chill for about an hour. This means chill the pies, not that you should sit back and have some wine while you read Little Women and listen to some Kenny G with your cat napping on your lap. Although that sounds pretty good right now! :)

See, I'm chatting away and not paying attention to the pies again. Once you and your pies have chilled, use a pastry bag to squeeze out a little vegan whipped cream in the middle of each pie. There you have your little ghosts, now draw the eyes with some melted chocolate chips.

See the little ghost in the little bowl back there? That's leftover pudding, I had more pudding than crust so that one was crustless. They are good like that too, just the pudding and the ghost.

These would be cute made in a muffin pan, really tiny pies! Speaking of cute, check out Shellyfish's best-ever Scary Skeleton Cookies and Kittee's awesome Halloween Sushi! Wasn't there another cool Halloween post that I forgot to mention?

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Cinnamon Rolls!

So, I had some leftover spiders in the fridge from last week's spider cupcakes. What to make? What to make? It turns out that making spiderweb anything is super easy and very Halloween-y! You can make spiderweb cupcakes, cakes, cookies, puddings, all kinds of sweet goodies. You just need some icing, frosting, or syrup and a toothpick, like I described on my previous post.

You can even make spiderweb soup! You must check out this post by Diann at Eat'n Veg'n, it's too cool for words!

I had a humongous craving for cinnamon rolls, so instead of drizzling the icing on top, I drew circles from the center down, but the toothpick trick didn't really work here, so I had to draw the straight lines myself.

When I was drawing the spiderwebs, I wanted to kick myself for not thinking about making Pumpkin Cinnamon rolls from Don't Eat Off The Sidewalk instead. Oh well, there's always next time!

Wanna make some chocolate spiders? All you need is either a pastry bag with a #3 round tip or a small ziploc with a tiny cut in one of the corners, and of course some melted chocolate chips. I'm not sure how many spiders I got out of 1/4 cup of chocolate chips, maybe about 12. It's best to make them on wax paper, but I didn't have any so I sprayed some cooking spray on aluminum foil and used that instead.

1- So, you draw a "U" shape, squeezing the chocolate out of the tip/hole.
2- Draw a smaller U shape inside.
3- Flip the wax paper over so the U shapes are facing down.
4- Repeat steps 1 and 2, the two sets of you can touch if you want, it's just going to be a shorter spider.
5- Draw a circle in the middle like shown in the picture.
6- Fill in the circle with a generous amount of chocolate.

Here is a step by step picture to draw the spiders. You should chill them for 30 to 45 minutes in the fridge before you peel them off the wax paper. Keep them refrigerated until you're ready to use them.

I have some ghost goodies planned for the next couple of days! No more spiders, I promise! :)

Vegan MoFo - Halloweegan Spider Cupcakes

Thank you for all the sweet comments on my I Love Lucy post! So many of you guys are Lucy fans! YAY!

My lady time left me with no inspiration for a couple of days. Now I got my second wind and I'm ready for more MoFo and Halloweegan! I'm on a spider kick, so here's some spider cupcakes and tomorrow I'm making something else spider-y!

I used this recipe for the chocolate cupcakes and a pumpkin butter cream frosting. The frosting had a very mild pumpkin flavor, increase the amount of pumpkin if you want it more pumpkin-y.

Pumpkin Butter Cream Frosting

1/2 cup Earth Balance
1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 maple syrup (add more to taste if you like a very sweet frosting)
1 tsp vanilla

1- Cream the EB with an electric mixer.
2- Mix in the pumpkin puree, maple syrup, and vanilla and keep mixing for a minute or two or until smooth and creamy. This is enough frosting for 12 cupcakes.

I love this frosting, it's very mild for my hyper-sensitive taste buds! It must be on chocolate cake, I won't have it any other way! :)

The spiderweb is made with melted chocolate chips Using a pastry bag squeeze out four or five chocolate circles from top to bottom. Use a toothpick to draw a line, running it from top to bottom to create the spiderweb effect. Repeat 6 times around the cupcake. The spider recipe is coming tomorrow, because I'll making more spider goodies!

Now here's the contents of our freezer! The fabulousness that is Sal from Alien on Toast has tagged me, which means now I have to show you what's in our freezer.

Please note the veggie "bugers". There are also tortillas, pitas, whole wheat buns and hamburger buns in the back. We have fruits and veggies on the door. That's chopped celery on the ziploc bag below, we don't eat the whole thing before it starts getting funky so I just chop it up and freeze it for later.

Off to read all your MoFo-ings! :)

Vegan MoFo - What? No Halloweegan?! You got some 'splainin to do!

I had to take a break from Halloweegan to celebrate I Love Lucy's birthday! It's on my top five list of favorite TV shows ever, and I just had to make an I Love Lucy cake!


Oddly enough, I became a Lucy fan only a few months ago. Before that, I used to find her character very annoying and over the top. Now I love her "over-the-top-ness"! I guess I had never really seen a whole episode, and I must have mainly based my dislike on annoying Lucy impersonators that are even more over the top!

Lucy rocks!! She's a woman in the 1950's who does whatever she wants to do and never listens to her husband. She never does what Ricky "tells her" to do or not to do. She knows what she wants and she's going to do whatever it takes to get it. Of course, she always finds a way to get in trouble and make a big mess of things, generally with the help of oh-so-underrated Ethel!

So here's my tribute to Lucy, Ethel, Ricky, and Fred. Sorry about the terrible pictures, it was late and I had to use artificial light. Bummer. It's a vanilla cake with raspberry frosting. Check out my new Lucy mug!! :)

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Spookitty Heads

Chocolate post!! Figured I posted something with veggies yesterday, so that entitles me to more sweet goodies! :)

Halloweegan Spookitty Heads

It sure seems like I'm obsessed with making balls, I'm always rolling a chunk of something between my hands and making it into a ball. Peanut butter balls, coconut balls, veggie balls, and now chocolate balls.

Ingredients for the ears, noses, and whiskers:

24 whole almonds
12 almond slices
a few raisins or dates (frozen)

1- Carefully cut about 1/4 inch off the tips of each whole almond. Just the "pointy" ends, these will be your kitty ears like in my picture. Use a sharp non-serrated knife and a cutting board, it will save you time! You won't need the other ends of the almonds, so don't fight the urge to eat them! :)
2- Cut about 1/4 inch off the tips of each almond slice to make the little triangular-ish noses. Keep using your non-serrated knife. Go ahead, you know you want to eat the leftover almond pieces!
3- Cut the raisins into slices, and then into strips. They are easier to cut if they are frozen and less sticky. These will be your little whiskers, you will need 48 whiskers for 12 kitties.

Now let's make some balls! Ingredients for the "heads":

1 1/2 cup graham cracker pieces
1/4 cup chocolate chips
2 tbsp coconut milk OR 1 tbsp of other non-dairy milk

1- Grind the graham cracker pieces in a food processor. Give it a few pulses until most of it looks like breadcrumbs but leave a few bigger chunks in there. After they are ground, you will end up with about 1 1/4 cup of graham crumbs. Transfer them to a medium sized bowl.
2- Melt the chocolate with the coconut milk. I use the microwave for melting, microwave for 10 seconds, stir, cook 10 seconds more, stir again, cook 10 seconds more, you're done.
3- Stir the melted chocolate mix into the graham cracker crumbs and knead it until it feels like firm play-doh. The heat from your hand will make it smooth. If it's too dry and crumbly, add a bit more milk.
4- Here we go! Take 12 chunks off the graham dough and shape them into squares. Oh no, I mean balls! :P

Done with the heads! Time to attach the ears, noses, and whiskers!

1- Stick two almond tips on top of each "cat head" as the ears.
2- Stick 4 raisin strips on the front of each ball, 2 on the left and 2 on the right, as the whiskers. This is when those kitchen tweezers come in handy! I found it easier to attach the noses if the whiskers don't quite meet in the middle, so leave a little gap in between for the noses. I'm sleepy, I hope that makes sense.
3- Stick an almond slice in between the two sets of whiskers as the noses.

Now we give them kitty eyes! You will need:

3 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp coconut milk (or other non-dairy milk)
4 or 5 melted chocolate chips

1- Mix the powdered sugar and the milk and stir to make a smooth icing.
2- Using a decorating tip, draw the white part of the eyes on each cat. If you don't have a decorating tip, you can use a mini Ziploc bag or just drop the eyes on with a toothpick dipped in the icing. It helps to have the cats facing up to keep the icing from running down.
3- Dip a toothpick in the melted chocolate chips and draw vertical lines down the middle of the eyes.

This makes 12 kitties and they go fast! I don't like overly sweet things, but if you do, you can replace 1 tablespoon of milk with a tablespoon of agave or maple syrup (for the graham mix, that is).

And now here's the best Spookitty of all! This is our kitty friend that visits us every day. She lives in the neighborhood, we just don't know where because she's very mysterious! Doesn't she look spooky here?

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan One-Eyed Veggie Monsters!

Well, now that I've grossed you all out with those disgusting (but yummy!) Finger Dogs, I here's some less revolting goodies! :)

These are chickpea-veggie monsters with green bean legs, celery mouths, and chickpea eyes (with ketchup centers). Their mouths are smiling, but you can make mean monsters by flipping the celery slices upside down for a mean frown (see Mr. Cranky Pants on the bottom-left).

The recipe is great for improvising with whatever veggies you have on hand. I didn't measure any of the spices so you're gonna have to wing it!

Halloweegan One-Eyed Veggie Monsters

Ingredients:

1 cup of chopped spinach
1/2 small onion - chopped (use more if you're an onion fan)
2 stalks of celery - minced
1/2 small bell pepper - chopped
2 carrots
1/4 cup of water or veggie stock
1 can of chickpeas (1 1/2 cup)
salt, pepper, paprika, adobo, parsley, whatever herbs and spices you love - to taste
1 cup of corn flake crumbs or breadcrumbs
olive oil for sauteing

cut green beans for the legs (frozen)
celery slices for the mouths
whole chickpeas and ketchup for the eyes


1- Saute the spinach, onion, celery and pepper in a little bit of olive oil.
2- Using a food processor, puree the carrots with the water.
3- Add the spinach mix to the carrot puree and process until smooth-ish. At this point, it will look like alien's vomit. Hey, this is Halloweegan after all! :)
4- Transfer the pureed veggies to a medium bowl.
5- Process the chickpeas until there are no big chunks left. You don't want to make it so smooth as to make hummus, just not too chunky. Remember to save a few whole chickpeas for the eyes!
6- Stir the chickpeas into the veggie bowl and add whatever spices you heart desires! I used adobo, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt, and fresh parsley.
7- Knead in the the corn flake crumbs.
8- Form ping-pong sized balls with the chickpea mix (it seems like I am always making balls).
9- Stick two frozen green been pieces into each ball, a small slice of celery as the mouth and a whole chickpea as the eye. Really press them in there!
10- I pan-fried mine in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, but I don't see why these couldn't be baked. If you pan-fry them, flip them over on each side to cook them thoroughly. Cook each side for at 2-3 minutes.
11- Remove from heat and use a toothpick heavily dipped in ketchup to "tap" the red-eye on. Serve on couscous, rice, or quinoa with your favorite sauce!

This made a lot of little monsters, not sure how many, about 20 maybe. I also made some "normal" ones that are just shaped like nuggets. No eyes or mouths or little green bean legs. Boring, but easier and quicker for a non-halloween occasion! :)

For firmer monsters/nuggets reduce the water needed for the carrot puree and add more crumbs.

You can also skip all the veggie pureeing for chunkier nuggets. Maybe not as kid friendly. Is this even kid friendly?

Anyway, there might be some spooky black cat goodies tomorrow! Thank you so much for all your sweet comments everyone!! :)

EDIT: I'm not sure about baking time and temperature. If you choose to bake them, and you've baked falafel before, then bake them like you would bake falafel. My guess would be at 400 degrees (preheated) for 15 minutes, then flip them over and bake for 10 more minutes, but that's just a guess because I pan fried these! Hope this helps! :)

VeganMoFo - What's In YOUR Hot Dog?

The spirit of Halloween is taking over the blogosphere! Check out Lisa's (Show Me Vegan) Eyeball Martini and aTxVegn Witch Salad! YAY!! Pure Halloween awesomeness!!

So what's with the hot dog title, you ask? We all know how disgusting hot dogs can be (except for veggie dogs!). Who knows what kind of mystery meat they put in there, right? On the movie "The naked gun" some guy even found a finger in his hot dog. Now THAT would be sick!

Mwahaha! The cute food has left the building! If you find anything cute about this, then you should have your head checked out by a professional.

Ha! That's sick! OK, you've probably seen those cookies that look like fingers, I think they call them "witches' fingers" or something like that. That's what I was going to make. But I was in the shower last night, and for some reason I was thinking about how disgusting hot dogs were, and remembered that scene from the naked gun where the guy takes a bite off his hot dog and finds a human finger. YUCK!! Most of my ideas come when I'm in the shower or lying in bed trying to fall asleep at night.

So here's how to make these disgusting-looking, yummy-tasting little treats! The fingers are pretty much the same as the Happy Vegan Ghosts and Pumpkins minus the chocolate (yes, I eat a lot of peanut butter).

Halloweegan Finger Dogs

Ingredients and method for the cookie "buns":

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup soy-milk (you can use any milk, or orange juice, or water)
2 tbsp applesauce
1/2 tsp vanilla

You know the drill. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Whisk the wet ingredients together in another bowl. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Spoon the batter on a (sprayed) cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes.

You should use a large spoon, and drop them "horizontally" or sideways onto the cookie sheet. They shouldn't be round, they should be oval. Like this:

Remove the cookies from the oven and transfer to a cookie rack. Let them cool down for about 10 minutes and cut them in half - lengthwise.
Note: For a fluffier, less dense cookie replace the applesauce with Earth Balance.

Ingredients and method for the fingers:

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter (cold)
2 tbsp maple syrup (or other syrup to taste)
2 tbsp to 1/4 cup of soy milk or other non-dairy milk
1/4 tsp vanilla

Mix the peanut butter, syrup, and vanilla with an electric mixer. If the peanut butter mix is too dry and difficult to handle mix in the milk by the tablespoon. You don't want it to be too soft and sticky though, just soft enough to handle. It should feel a little like play-doh.

Take small chunks off the peanut butter mix and roll them between your hands to form six logs. The logs should be about 3 inches long and 3/4 inches wide.

Take one of your cookie halves (rounded side up) and gently press the log onto the bottom of the cookie. This will be half of your "hot dog" bun. Take another half and press it on the other side of the log to add the other half of your "bun". Both halves should meet (or come close) at the bottom like on my picture. Repeat with all six logs.

Now to shape the fingers, simply pinch one end of each log to make it more narrow and finger-like.


Ingredients and method for the nails:

almond slices
strawberry jelly/jam (or other red jelly)

Dip almond slices in strawberry jelly and stick them to the pinched end of the logs. Press them down gently.

To finish it up, I took a toothpick and drew some knuckles on the top of each finger. You could squeeze some jelly on top, as if it was ketchup, but I didn't feel like it.

This would take half the time to make if instead of making your own cookies you could find mini vegan lady fingers. Ha! Fingers! :)

VeganMoFo - Spooky Halloweegan Spiders!

Spooky Halloweegan Spider Cookies! They are smiling, so they're not that spooky, but you can make them spooky if you want. Whoa - it was so weird eating these! That was the only spooky thing about them, I felt I was going to take a big bite off a real spider!

Here's how to make them. Bake your favorite batch of chocolate cookies, I made Happy Herbivore's double chocolate chip cookies from her Sneak Peak e-cookbook. Using a cookie scoop instead of dropping spoonfuls on a cookie sheet makes perfectly round spiders.

The legs take quite a bit of work, but I found it relaxing:

1- Spray a flat plate with cooking spray. You can also use wax paper, but the plate is more Earth friendly!
2- Melt 1/4 cup of chocolate chips, I always melt my chocolate in the microwave in 10 second intervals stirring in between.
3- Using a #3 decorating tip (or a ziploc with a 3 millimeter hole in one corner), start drawing little V letters on the plate. These will be your legs. With 1/4 cup of melted chocolate you should be able to have 64 V shaped legs, enough for 8 cookies.
4- Let the chocolate legs harden in the fridge for 30 minutes or until you can "peel" them off whole with a flat knife. You should have some leftover chocolate in your decorating bag/ziploc. Keep this in a small bowl full of hot water with the tip or hole sticking out (so water doesn't get in).
5- Using the decorating bag again, take a cookie and squeeze a little bit of chocolate in the eight spots where the legs will go. The melted chocolate will work as "glue".
6- Attach eight legs to the chocolate spots, working quickly so the legs don't melt in your fingertips. I bought a new pair of tweezers that are used only in the kitchen for projects like this.
7- Using a basic powder sugar icing (powder sugar and water) draw the eyes and mouths. I used a toothpick dipped in melted chocolate to create a dots in the center of their eyes.

I've seen these made with black licorice legs, which looks WAY easier to make. But I just like to complicate the heck out of my life instead! :)

More spider goodies coming up next week! Thank you everyone for such sweet comments!! :)

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Stuffed Peppers!

VeganMoFo has taken over the world! So many posts, so little time! I don't want to miss anyone's posts, I want to read all of them! It's been so much fun reading about everyone's stories and anecdotes, collecting awesome recipes, and even learning about intriguing German foods that I'd never heard of before (thank you Mihl!).

Let's get this Halloweegan party started! Today I made more phonies, pumpkin phonies. Tomorrow is grocery shopping day, which means today the refrigerator looks quite empty and sad. We were having Improper Cottage Pie for dinner, and I had nothing to post for Halloweegan! And then I see the bell peppers looking at me, lonely in the veggie drawer. They just wanted to make themselves useful, so I picked them up and we had bell peppers stuffed with the cottage pie goodies (minus the mashed potatoes). I carved their faces like jack-o'-lantern before they went in the oven.

I love'em! You can make your favorite stuffed pepper recipe and all you have to do to make them Halloweegan friendly is carve them before baking them. Of course the orange ones are even more "Halloween-y", but multicolor peppers would be fun too!


Here's Liz's survey from Food Snobbery is my Hobbery (that name makes me smile!). Surveys freak me out, it comes with being a weirdo, but this one is fun so here it is!

1. Name a song that involves food in some way.
Does Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band count?
2. What criteria do you use when choosing a new cookbook to buy?
I always look up reviews online before buying.
3. What did you eat today?
Dinner was Halloweegan Stuffed Peppers and dessert was Happy Halloweegan Pumpkins.
4. Name a vegan food that you know exists but you have never tried.
Vegemite
5. The Food Network just called and needs you to start your new show tomorrow. What will the title of the show be?
The title is: "Please don't mind the host hiding behind the counter because she's too shy to show her face" :P
6. Favorite hot sauce or other spicy condiment?
Spicy = heartburn = :(
7. How old were you when you became vegetarian/vegan?
24 vegan (cold tofurky)
8. Favorite vegan cheeze?
Follow Your Heart.
9. Cutest baby animal?
I just can't answer this!! How can I choose from so much cuteness in the animal kingdom!
10. Favorite type of jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves?
Strawberry!
11. Do you take any vitamins/supplements?
I take a multi every other day.
12. What food/dish most embodies the Fall season?
Anything pumpkiny.
13. What food would you have a hard time living without?
Bread!! And chocolate.
14. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?
Decaf coffee.
15. It's 10PM and you're starving. What do you eat?
Must control myself! Must not eat after 8 pm or the evil nightmares will haunt me all night!
16. If you have an animal companion, what is his/her favorite food?
George! He's a Beta fish that used to be my mother in law's buddy. All he wants to eat is fish pellets.
17. Worst injury you've gotten in the kitchen?
I've grated my fingers several times. Not any more though, graters are banned from my kitchen. Those things are the work of the devil!
18. When you have a food-related question, who do you call?
My fellow super bloggers!
19. Summer is ending- What food will you miss most?
Fresh strawberries.
20. What snacks do you keep in your purse/backpack/desk at work?
Luna bars and nuts.
21. Favorite soup to make on a rainy day?
Chicken-less noodle!
22. What's your favorite combination of fresh vegetable and/or fruit juices?
Strawberry-banana is always a winner.
23. Favorite brand of root beer?
Barf!
24. Make up your own question!
What's your favorite kitchen utensil?
Tongs! They are so handy, I feel like "Edward Tong-Hands" :)

VeganMoFo - Happy Halloweegan Pumpkins

Thank you so much for all the kind comments on my previous Halloweegan posts! It's so awesome that some of you guys have been inspired by my posts, I am so moved!!

It's pumpkin time! Although these little pumpkins are big phonies - there's no pumpkin in them! It's actually the same recipe that I used for my Happy Vegan Ghosts. It's a bit different because they have different shapes and color, so I'll re-post the recipe below...

Happy Halloweegan Pumpkins

Ingredients

1 cup creamy peanut butter (cold)*
1/4 cup maple syrup (or other syrup - adjust to taste)
1 to 2 tbsp of soy milk or other milk (optional)
1/4 cup coarsely ground chocolate chips**
1/2 tsp vanilla

For the coating:

1/2 cup soy milk or other milk
1 cup finely shredded coconut
2 tbsp carrot juice

For the faces:

Melted chocolate chips (sorry - didn't measure!)

OK - let's get started!

1- Mix the peanut butter, syrup, and vanilla with an electric mixer. If the peanut butter mix is too dry and difficult to handle stir in 1 to 2 tbsp of milk. You don't want it to be too soft though, just soft enough to handle.
2- In a food processor grind up the chocolate chips until they break up into little pieces, but not so much that they turn into a powder.
3- Stir the chocolate chip pieces into the peanut butter mix.
4- Form little balls with the peanut butter mix and flatten the center-top of each ball to give them a pumpkin shape. You can use the back of a wooden spoon to do this, I don't have any wooden spoons. My bamboo spoons have flat handles so I had to get creative and used a frozen green bean!

Now that you have your little pumpkin shaped thingies, it's time to make them orange!

1- Pour the soy milk in a small, shallow bowl.
2- Use the carrot juice to dye the coconut, it might take you more or less than 2 tbsp, keep adding juice until it's orange enough but not "wet". It will be moist though, and this will help the coconut stick to the pumpkins. Rub all the lumpy coconut pieces in so that you get a nice, even color.
3- Dip each pumpkin in the milk and roll the wet pumpkins on the finely shredded coconut.
4- Repeat #3.

Done! Now they need their happy faces! I didn't measure how much chocolate I used, I just melted some chips and used a #2 decorating tip to draw the eyes and mouths. For the stem, I drew an "upward spiral" using the same tip.

Variations:

*You can use other nut butters instead of PB. Mmm almond butter! I bet that would be good!
** Instead of chocolate chips, you can use finely chopped nuts. Macadamias would be awesome!

These could probably be made raw with raw nut butter, agave, etc, right?

Well, I think that's it. I'm sure I'll think of something I forgot to say and update this later!

Vegan MoFo - Halloweegan Pumpkin Goodies!

Vegan MoFo continues Halloweegan style!

We had some mashed potatoes left over from our mashed potato ghosts, and some pumpkin puree left over from another meal that I will post about some time this week. So that meant that it was time to improvise some pumpkin soup!

I thought the soup was just OK, but Mr. Wing it loved it! He always finishes his meals before me and he starts doing the dishes (sorry, he's mine, you can't have him). Anyway, when I looked behind me, he was standing in front of the kitchen sink spooning out the tiny little bit of soup that was left in the bottom of the pot and licking the spoon clean. So, I figured it was blog worthy!

Left Over Mashed Potato Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

1 cup of water
1/2 cup of silk
1 cup of pureed pumpkin
1 cup of mashed potatoes
2 large carrots
1/2 small onion (minced)
1/2 small red pepper (chopped)
1 tbsp of parsley (minced)
salt to taste
dash of black pepper
couple of dashes of nutmeg
dash paprika
olive oil (for sauteing)

1- Saute the onion and the red pepper in a little bit of olive oil.
2- Puree the carrot with the silk in a food processor.
3- Add the onion and pepper to the carrot puree and process for a minute.
4- Add the mashed potatoes and the pumpkin and process until creamy. Add water and process for another minute or until creamy and smooth.
5- Transfer everything to a pot and add the parsley, salt, black pepper, nutmeg and paprika.
5- Simmer until thoroughly hot. This made two bowls of soup.

It has a mild pumpkin flavor, if you want it super "pumpkiny" replace the carrots with 1/2 cup of extra pumpkin puree.
If you want to draw the face on it, you just need to spoon two big drops of a spiced up tomato sauce for the eyes, one big drop for the nose, and one curvy line for the mouth. Then take a toothpick and "drag" the tomato sauce eyes and nose to create triangles. Also using a toothpick, draw a zigzag line across the mouth to create the creepy mouth effect.

Now on to dessert! If you're expecting a super healthful, good-for-you cookie, then turn around and keep looking - this ain't it! These Halloweegan Pumpkin-O's are a smooth pumpkin cream sandwiched between two crunchy chocolate shortbread cookies.

Halloweegan Pumpkin-O's

Ingredients for the chocolate shortbread:

1/2 cup Earth Balance
1/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 to 2 tbsp water

1- Cream the EB and the brown sugar.
2- Stir in 1/2 cup of flour and the cocoa.
3- Add 1 tbsp of water and blend it in.
4- Add the rest of the flour, adding more water if needed. The dough should be just firm enough for you to be able to roll it out and cut out your cookies. Not too firm, but not too sticky.
5- Roll out the dough (no more than 1/4 inch thick) on a floured surface and use a cookie cutter to cut out pumpkin shaped cookies. Round cookies will also work just fine.
6- Spray a cookie sheet (or two) with cooking spray and bake on a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 12 minutes.

This made 4 big sandwiches (8 cookies).

Ingredients for the pumpkin cream:

1/4 cup Earth Balance
2 tbsp pumpkin puree
1 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tbsp vanilla
cinnamon to taste (a couple of dashes was plenty for me)

1- Cream the EB.
2- Add the rest of the ingredients and keep mixing on high until creamy and smooth.
3- Once your cookies are at room temperature, use a knife or spatula to spread the filling on top of half of the cookies. Top them with the other half.

For the faces, I used melted chocolate chips to draw them using a decorating tip. For the eyes and the nose I used a powder sugar and carrot juice icing that I didn't measure at all. Sorry. I gradually added carrot juice to a little bit of powder sugar until it was the right consistency.

UPDATE: Dummy. I forgot to say to keep it refrigerated and eat it cold, so the cream stays put. Also, these have a mild, pleasant pumpkin flavor. Add more pumpkin to taste for a stronger "pumpkiny" flavor.

Phew! That's a long post!

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan - Mummy Dogs and Mashed Potato Ghosts

Day three of Halloweegan! This time we had some Mummy Dogs. My wrapping job sucks, but they were good! Thank you Kittee for the link to 365Halloween.com where I found the recipe!

For the dough, I used the recipe suggested on 365 Halloween, but used whole wheat pastry flour instead.

The dogs are Lightlife Jumbo Dogs cut in halves. We had them with some mashed potato ghosts and a veggie stir-fry. I wish I would have had more time to make the wrapping prettier but I had to get dinner ready and the hungry-belly clock was ticking!

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan - Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Spinach RIP Cupcakes

Yes, spinach. Wait!! Don't leave! The cupcakes don't taste like spinach, I promise!

Here's the thing, I don't use food coloring, so I had to search the fridge/freezer for something green that would tint my coconut.

[Enter the spinach]

I boiled down some spinach in a little bit of water and used the green water as food coloring. Here are the finished cupcakes...


So here's how to make them. Sorry I don't have an official recipe, I was in Captain Wing-it mode big time.

First, bake your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe (here's a good one).

Once your cupcakes are at room temperature, make a peanut butter frosting. The frosting should be creamy but not too soft. Go ahead and slather it on the tops of the cupcakes.

Now you need to make the coconut stuff. If you use food coloring, go for it. If you don't, boil down about 1/2 cup of spinach in just enough water to cover it. Boil it for 3 to 5 minutes, stick the cooked spinach (with water and all) in a food processor or blender and go to town on it. Make it as creamy as possible. Then using a strainer/sifter squeeze all the green juice out into a small bowl. I'm not sure how much juice or coconut I used, so you're gonna have to wing it.

There you have it. Now you can stick tombstone shaped cookies on top of the cupcakes, and if you want, use some watered down and melted chocolate chips to tint some coconut and make it look like brown soil.

There, I hope all that made sense! :)

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan! The Inevitable Pancake Post

October is here! YAY!

October will be a theme month, and the theme will be... well, what else but Halloween! I'll try to make every post about fun Halloweegan foods! I doubt I'll have 20 posts by the end of Vegan MoFo, but I'll try to post as much as possible.

Yes, I am posting about pancakes again. I'm sorry. My name is River and I'm a pancakeholic.

Here's the thing though, it's about Halloweegan pancakes! Fun! I keep picturing a Kodak moment, with a big family sitting at the table, ready for their Halloween breakfast, with a platter full of pancakes and a few little bowls in the middle of the table full of berries, nuts, raisins and chocolate chips. Then everybody can use the goodies to decorate their own spooky pancakes!

OK, these creepy pancakes have vegan whipped cream eye balls with blueberry centers and strawberry jelly eye vessels drew on with a toothpick (veganized pancake recipe from Cooking Lady).


The next ones are vamp-cakes, melted chocolate chip eyes, nose and mouth, and almond slices as the fangs! (same pancake recipe)


And these are my Pankin Pumpcakes. To give them their "pumpkiny" shape, using the back of a spoon "drag" some pancake batter from the top of each pancake as soon as you drop them on the griddle. This makes it look like a stem. Of course if you have a heat resistant pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter, that will work! Decorate them with the goodies I mentioned above.


OK, we got the obligatory pancake post out the way. Phew!