I'm in Love with the Cocoa

One of my favorite things about being a vegan is the pure, unadulterated joy that comes from discovering things that are accidentally vegan. Oreos, Bac'n Bits, and today's Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting are all excellent example - and believe it or not, the latter is much tastier and less chemically than the first two combined!

My mom found the recipe for this dairy-free, egg-free chocolate cake years ago in the Moosewood Cookbook, before anyone in the house was even vegetarian, and it's remained a family favorite. The cake is super light and fluffy, thanks to the chemical reaction between baking soda and apple cider vinegar, and has an incredibly rich, deep flavor that adults and kids will both love. And the recipe is incredibly simple - I can almost guarantee you already have all the ingredients in your pantry.

The frosting is a new addition that comes from Oh She Glows, and only has two ingredients. Two! It's a little time-consuming since you have to chill the coconut cream and the melted frosted before you can actually spread on your cake, but it also keeps well in the fridge so go ahead and make a batch ahead of time, then spread all over anything and everything.

Take a gander at the photos below, and click through for the recipes above - you won't be disappointed!

No bowl necessary. 

Baking soda vinegar swirls.  

Coconut cream and chocolate chips. Heaven.  

This was at 6:30am. I did not plan ahead.  

Worth it. 

Pucker Up

When I was a kid, my dad used to come home from work everyday for lunch, cut up a metric ton of of fruit - peaches, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, whatever he could get his hands on - and make smoothies for me and my sister. California isn't a terrible place to live if you like fresh produce, so these frozen treats were goddamn delicious and packed with the sorts of vitamins that small humans usually hate...win-win. Now I don't need quite as much convincing, but this Cherry Smoothie still hits the spot!

The vibrant colors in this smoothie = so. many. vitamins. Cherries are packed with Vitamin A, bananas are loaded with potassium, and blueberries have a bunch of cool antioxidants that studies have shown can improve your memory. This tangy smoothie will provide you with an impressive amount of everyone's best friend, dietary fiber.

A word to the wise: not all cherries are made equal. And by that I mean that some are delightfully tart while others are so sour they'll make your face implode. If you end up with the latter, just add a little brown sugar to the mix to mellow things out!

Cherry Smoothie
Inspired by Averie Cooks and Natasha's Kitchen

Makes 2 giant smoothies

1 banana
1 cup blueberries
1½ cups cherries
1 cup coconut milk (or soy/almond/rice/hemp/whatever!)
½ teaspoon vanilla
brown sugar, to taste

Carefully slice your cherries in half and remove the pits, then cut up your bananas into chunks. Toss everything, including the blueberries, into a big bowl and pop it in the freezer for about 2 hours. Freezing the fruit means that you can make your smoothie nice and frosty without adding ice cubes and watering down the fruit flavors!

Remove the bowl of fruit from the freezer and dump everything into a blender. Pour in the coconut milk and vanilla, then give it a whirl! You might have to pause a couple of times to scrape down the sides of the blender - use this as an opportunity to taste test and add sweetener as needed.

When you've reached optimal flavor and consistency, pour into 2 large glasses and enjoy!

Coffee Cake Cake Cake

Let's face it: mornings are hard. I naturally tend to wake up pretty early (we're talking 6am on a Saturday), but leaving my warm little blanket burrow is never not a struggle. Luckily, my love of food generally wins out of my love of lazing around, so I'm infinitely more likely to make it to a vertical position if I know there's a delicious breakfast, like Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake, waiting for me.

I don't really have to sell you guys on this too hard, right? Cake is cake, and this one in particular is light, fluffy, and moist. And "streusel" is just a fancy word for "sugar-butter-flour crumbles", which sounds like everything good and holy in this world so of course I'm going to put it on my breakfast. The crunchy topping is a perfect complement to the soft coffee cake, and the combination of subtle coconut flavor and spices smells and tastes incredible.

If cake for breakfast is not your jam (who are you?), rest assured that this sweet treat remains highly edible during Sunday brunches, afternoon coffee breaks, and anytime you need a little pick-me-up!

Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake
Makes 16 servings

1 cup coconut milk (or soy milk, or almond milk, etc)
¼ cup coconut oil 
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 cup flour
½ cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon 
1 teaspoon nutmeg
 ¼ teaspoon salt 

½ cup vegan butter, melted
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour 

Preheat your oven to 375 F, and line an 8x8 pan with aluminum foil. In a small bowl, combine the coconut milk, melted coconut oil, and apple cider vinegar and whisk it up really well. Set it aside for a couple of minutes - it's going to curdle and look kinda gross, but it'll make your cake moist and delicious!

In a medium bowl, whisk up the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Slowly pour in the liquid mixture and stir just until combined - don't worry if there are a couple of clumps in there. Pour the batter into the pan while you make your streusel.

For the sweet, crunchy crumble topping, just combine the leftover butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and flour in a small bowl. This is the fun part - you get to get down and dirty with your hands! Work the mixture between your fingers to make little streusel clumps, then sprinkle that all over your cake batter. Make sure to get the edges!

Stick your cake in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean. Enjoy that delightful cinnamony smell, along with some piping hot coffee and tea to start your day off right!

April Showers Bring...Chai Tea Ice Cream

This past January, I moved into a new house in a great neighborhood with awesome people. As the weather slowwwwly but surely gets better, we've been getting to enjoy one of the best features of this lovely place: an enclosed porch, complete with a grill, comfy patio furniture, and a view over the community dog park behind our house. All I want to do is sit out there and bask in the glory of spring, preferably while eating delicious warm weather treats, like the Chai Latte Ice Cream that I'm going to share with you lucky devils today.

Ice cream was one of those things I thought I'd miss as a vegan, but then I discovered coconut milk ice cream and I've never looked back. This recipe combines the fragrance of chai tea and five different spices with the smooth goodness of coconut milk and cashew cream, and the result is heavenly. Even the girlfriend - one of those mythical creatures who can eat a single Thin Mint and be satisfied - gave this the stamp of approval, so I'm going to go ahead and call it a success.

I very seriously considered buying an ice cream maker for the sole purpose of never running out of frozen treats this summer, but ultimately decided to hold off on adding a super specialized gadget to my kitchen for now. Luckily, I found instructions for several different ways to make ice cream without this contraption! If you do have an ice cream maker, crank that bad boy up and let it do its thing. If not, check out the recipe below for details on how to get by without one - all you need is a giant bowl and some serious forearm strength!

Chai Latte Ice Cream
recipe adapted from the brilliant folks at The Minimalist Baker; machine-free instructions are from David Lebovitz

Makes about 2 pints of ice cream.

1½ cups raw cashews
1 cup coconut milk
3 bags of chai tea
¼ cup coconut oil, melted
¼ cup maple syrup
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon each of cinnamon and ginger
½ teaspoon each of ground cloves, allspice, and cardamom

You'll need a little prep time for this recipe; I recommend starting it the evening before you want to serve your ice cream. Start off by soaking your cashews. Just dump them in a bowl, pour in enough cold water so that they're all submerged, and leave them alone for at least 6 hours (overnight is fine, too). Now steep your tea in a mug of hot water for about 3 minutes - it's going to be ridiculously strong! - and leave it in the fridge until you're ready to use it. Finally, grab your largest bowl and put it in the freezer to chill. This will help your ice cream set once you pour it in.

Chai tea and cashew cream. And DIY coasters!

When you're ready to actually whip up your frosty dessert, you'll start by making cashew cream. Throw your soaked cashews (they'll be a little soft and kind of bland) into a food processor or blender, and puree them forever and ever. You should end up with something that looks a little bit like very thick, very pale peanut butter.

Add the coconut milk, coconut oil, brewed tea, maple syrup, sugar, vanilla, and spices to the blender and whirl everything around for at least 3 minutes, stopping every once in a while to scrape down the sides. Your "ice cream" is going to look a little gross at this point - picture a partially melted Frappucino and you'll have a good idea of what you're working with.

Starring: cinnamon.

When you're certain that every little clump of cashew has been demolished, pour the liquid into your pre-chilled bowl and stick it in the freezer. Now comes the hard part: waiting and mixing. Every 45 minutes or so, take your bowl out and whisk the mixture really vigorously for about 2 minutes, then put it back in the freezer while you go watch another episode of The Wire. At first, it'll still be pretty watery; the next time around, though, it'll have a pudding-like consistency, and after about 3 hours you'll be breaking a sweat trying to mix it properly.

Once your ice cream is sufficiently solid, transfer it into a tupperware container and let it sit in the freezer until you're ready to eat it. Or just, ya know...eat it. Add chocolate chips, because life is short. You can also try running your ice cream through the blender one more time before you serve it - this will get you a soft serve texture if that's more your cup of (chai) tea!

Tahini Bikini

Don't worry, this post doesn't include any weird "food as body paint" situations. What it does include, though, is a recipe for unbelievably delicious cookies that I may or may not have made three times in the past two weeks: Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies.

I love tahini (a paste made of ground sesame seeds) and have used it in various savory dishes, but had never thought to put it sweets until I came across this recipe on Hell Yeah It's Vegan. It was a rainy afternoon and I figured I would experiment a bit with my own concoction, particularly as I wanted to send some treats out to my family. Well...the second I took a bite of one of the warm cookies, I knew there was no way that batch was leaving my kitchen. The next morning I bundled myself up, trekked out for another jar of tahini, and made another couple dozen cookies, some of which did actually make it to California.

The tahini flavor is super intense in the raw dough (which I personally really loved), but it really mellows out when you bake the cookies. The end result is a nutty and rich but not overly sweet, especially if you use dark chocolate. And just think how damn classy you're gonna feel when you bring fancy tahini cookies to your next office party! No one needs to know how simple they really are - it'll be our little secret.

Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies

Makes 2 dozen cookies

½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
⅔ cup tahini
¼ cup Earth Balance
¼ cup soy milk (or any other non-dairy milk)
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate, but you do you!)

Preheat your oven to 375 F and lined a couple baking sheets with aluminum foil. In a large bowl, mix together the sugars, tahini, and Earth Balance until you have a really smooth, thick batter. Add the soy milk and vanilla and mix again for another minute or so.

Super smooth.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt, then dump that into the batter and mix until everything is nicely blended together. Add your chocolate chips and stir one last time. You could also shredded coconut or chopped walnuts here if you'd like - just stir them in along with the chocolate!

Chocolate chips are mandatory, though.

Grab an ice cream scoop or a big spoons or your two hands and make little dough balls - mine were about the size of a golf ball, but you could make giant cookies if you prefer. Just be sure to flatten them out a bit once you put them on the baking sheet, because they're not going to spread too much by themselves.

Seriously just pop one of these in your mouth. You won't regret it. 

Pop those suckers in the oven and bake for 12 minutes, until they start to turn golden brown. Once you take your cookies out of the oven, let them sit for a couple of minutes before taste testing, because they're going to be a little gooey while they're still hot. Warning: the smell of these baking is going to brings all the bois to the yard, so brace yourself!

The Other Kind of "Magic" Brownie

Sometimes I feel like being vegan is an exercise in seeing what kind of weird shit you can sneak into seemingly normal dishes without anyone calling you out on it. This week the answer is beans! Beans are almost always the answer, actually, but today we're specifically talking about black beans in the form of rich, chocolatey brownies that will knock your socks off.

I've been hearing mythical stories about black bean brownies for ages, but I had never actually tried one, much less made a batch myself. When a couple of neighborhood friends invited me to potluck brunch this weekend, I spent an unreasonably long time trying to figure out what to bring. Kiran and Hannah routinely churn out beautiful and delicious dishes for various get-togethers, so I was inspired to step up my game and try something new. And holy crap, I'm so glad I did!

You wouldn't think black beans would do well in dessert form, but you would be so sadly mistaken. I'm not going to pretend to understand the food magic that allows this to happen, but somehow the end result of this recipe is an incredibly thick, chocolatey batch of brownies that A) do not actually taste like beans, and B) will disappear in seconds once you serve them. Plus, the recipe has a grand total of 5 steps and you probably have all the ingredients in your pantry already! So go ahead, gather your beans and make yourself some brownies.

Black Bean Brownies
(slightly adapted from Lauren Goslin's Oatmeal With a Fork)

Makes 20 two-bite brownies.

1 can of black beans, rinsed thoroughly and drained
½ cup cocoa powder
½ cup oats
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ cup sugar
½ cup maple syrup
¼ cup coconut oil (you can also use vegetable or canola oil - whatever you have on hand is fine!)
2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and grease an 8 x 8 inch baking dish with a bit of vegetable oil. Throw all your ingredients into a blender or food processor and liquefy that shit. Your batter should be just a little bit runnier than frosting; you can add more oats if it's too thin, or a tablespoon of water if it's too thick.

Blender full of beans. 

Pour the batter into your pan and bake for 20 minutes. To see if the brownies are done, stab them with a toothpick or knife - it should come out clean.

Raw...

The one and only downside of this brownies is that you can't just inhale them when they're still hot - since they're super fudgy, they need to cool before you cut them or you'll end up with a chocolatey mess. Once the pan is cool enough to handle, stick it in the fridge for about an hour.

...baked! You can tell I got a little overenthusiastic with the stabbing. 

Now, you can totally call it quits at this point and you'll be the happy owner of a big batch of incredible brownies. I was feeling fancy, though, so I decided to add some flair! I combined powdered sugar (2 cups), coconut milk (¼ cup), vanilla (1 teaspoon), and flaked coconut (1 cup) in a small bowl and mixed everything until I had a smooth, thick frosting. Then I spread that coconutty goodness evenly over my brownies, cut them into little rectangles, and decorated each one with an almond. Voila! Almond Joy black bean brownies.