Vegan Yack Attack's Protein-Packed Dessert for Breakfast Smoothie!

Thank you Vegan Yack Attack for putting together several of my favorite things! Smoothies, chia seeds, chocolate, and frozen bananas. This was the perfect quick snack while I was busy crafting all afternoon! It reminds me of a shake my parents used to make with bananas, icecream, and slim fast powder: but WAY healthier!

For the recipe I used almond butter instead of peanut butter and about 3/4 cup of almond milk. YUMMY

Here's the recipe

Sweet Potato and Banana Pizza

 Okay- so you’re probably thinking: “Sweet potato on a pizza????” OR “Banana on a pizza????” OR “Sweet potatoes and bananas?” Or you might be thinking all three things. Trust me this is delicious.

Remember that show Doug? I remember an episode where there was a cooking contest, someone made pizza, someone made banana pudding, and somehow the pudding ended up on the pizza but it was great. The next time my sister and I ate a pizza we sliced up banana. I remember I LOVED it. But I stopped- I must have rediscovered pineapple and jalapenos. 

Anyway, the night I came up with this recipe- Brian and I were trying to decide what to do for dinner. We had kale, sweet potatoes, and bananas. (We also made this pizza with the kale) Brian casually mentioned he had had banana pizza in Sweden and something triggered. Suddenly the idea of sweet potatoes and bananas sounded so good- on pizza. I was hesitant putting the sauce and cheese on, but I figured why not.

The result was in my opinion successful. Hope you enjoy too!

Sweet Potato and Banana Pizza

1 8” pizza crust

1 banana (thinly sliced)

1 sweet potato (shredded)

¾ cup tomato sauce (more or less to your liking)

¼ cup of shredded vegan pepper jack (or more)

Coconut oil

Cinnamon

1.              Preheat oven to 425 or whatever your crust suggests.

2.              Put a little oil in a skillet on medium heat.

3.              Add the shredded sweet potato and a few shakes of cinnamon. Sauté for a few minutes until it is soft.

4.              Spread the sauce over the pizza crust.

5.              Transfer the sweet potatoes on top of the sauce.

6.              Sprinkle the cheese over the sweet potatoes.

7.              Arrange the bananas over everything and sprinkle a little more cinnamon on top.

8.              Bake for about 12 minutes, until cheese has melted.

9.              Let cool for a few minutes, slice up and enjoy! 

Kale Chip Recipe

Tortilla chips are my weakness. Hah, who am I kidding? One of my many weaknesses. But I love the crunchiness and yum. This kale chip recipe is not a replacement for my beloved chips, but it will sometimes make that craving go away. It’s nice to know there are vegetables that can taste enough like junk food to get that craving to go away without leaving you that horrible stomachache later.

My aunt explained this recipe to me a couple months ago, and I always forgot about it. I happened to drop by one day while she was making them and I tried a couple. It was as if a light bulb went off in my head. I understood what she was talking about. These were fabulous!

Kale Chips

A few leafs of green kale

Melted coconut oil

Salt

Pepper

1.              Preheat oven to 400

2.              Tear up the kale into small bite size pieces. Pour a small amount of coconut oil over the kale. Mush up everything in your hands to coat the kale in the oil.

3.              Sprinkle with salt and pepper

4.              Bake for 8-10 minutes for a single layer, or 10-12 for a few layers. Make sure to toss them halfway through cooking if there is a lot of overlapping.

5.              Keep an eye on them for when the edges go brown, but not the whole leaf. ENJOY!

These are very delicate, and very delicious warm. Hope you like them!

I have tried this recipe with black kale- it works but the green kale works much better for this recipe. Anyone else have any simple chip recipes?
 

Adventures of the Corn Dog into My Belly

I started eating a vegetarian diet very young. I never liked meat, but looking back on what I did enjoy is pretty scary. I would eat cheeseburgers from McDonalds (not even real burgers at a BBQ, I thought those were gross!), tuna salad, and corndogs. Not hotdogs, I never liked hotdogs, but yummm corndogs and the rest of the icky processed food I enjoyed.

I never even considered vegetarian corndogs until I was at my friend Lauren’s house and she offered me Morning Star’s mini corndogs. Oh my gosh, so delicious. But as I am foraging into this vegan adventure- I read the ingredients: milk, eggs, corn syrup, sugar, hydrogenated oils, and enriched bleached flour. A bunch of stuff I’m trying to cut out!

So while I was searching for a name for a blog, I was getting discouraged, because a ton of my ideas were taken by dead urls, twitters, or advertising sites. I finally thought “Happy Herbivore” would be great! I plugged it in, and the first thing I see? “Popular Recipes: Vegan Baked Corndogs.” Okay so the name I was stoked on was taken- but I had inadvertently come across what I didn’t even realize I was longing for.

Here is Happy Herbivore’s recipe for VEGAN baked corndogs.

I tried it with Smart Dogs (Not gluten free, but still pretty healthy), almond milk, corn flour instead of the whole wheat pastry flour, and agave instead of raw sugar. Pretty good- but because I had changed the flour around I added more almond milk and the texture of the batter was a bit off. They tasted pretty good... but my corndogs were hideous.

Not to be discouraged, I noted that the Happy Herbivore suggested that a Twinkie pan makes cuter corn dogs. While searching Amazon, I noticed that not only did they have a pan, but they also had a pigs-in-blanket cooker "Appetizer Maker" that had great reviews. About $25 later I had one on it’s way to me.

When the "Appetizer Maker" arrived I was so excited I pulled it out right away and needed corn dogs that second. I wanted to try a slightly different recipe so this time I tried a recipe from the mini book that came with the “Appetizer Maker.” It called for egg, milk, cornmeal, salt, flour, baking powder, and sugar. So I mixed egg replacer, vegetable broth, cornmeal, salt, gluten free flour, baking powder, agave, cinnamon. It was okay, Brian thought it tasted exactly the same as the previous one. But we both agree they were cuter!!

A little overflowed but who doesn't love the corn mixture!

So today, determined to end this war or corn dogs, I tried combining what I liked from the separate recipes, learn from my gluten free mistakes and finally make the ultimate gluten-free-sugar-free-vegan corn dog recipe.

On the dogs . . . I have been using Smart Dogs for a while since I originally just cut out white flour. However, now that I’m moving towards gluten free I haven’t found any vegan and gluten free dogs at my local grocery store. After some research I found that www.soyboy.com and Tofupups are vegan and gluten free but I haven’t tried either yet. Have any of you?

Vegodactyl Vegan Gluten Free Sugar Free Corn Dogs

1 ½ egg recipe

2/3-cup cornmeal

4 tbsp coconut flour

2-teaspoon baking powder

1/2-teaspoon baking soda

A dash of paprika

A dash of dry mustard

A dash of onion powder

A dash of black pepper

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 tablespoons agave

A sprinkle of cinnamon

1/3 cup vegetable broth

2 tablespoons melted coconut oil

1/3 cup water

4 veggie dogs cut into thirds (If you want gluten free, here is where you need to be careful!)

1.            Grease Appetizer Maker with a little coconut oil or prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper. To Preheat Appetizer Maker or oven to 450.

2.            Mix all dry ingredients together. Add vegetable broth, coconut oil and stir well. Slowly add water until batter is just combined and all lumps are removed.

3.            If cooking in an Appetizer Maker place a little batter in the cavities, place the dog on top and a little more batter on top. Cook according to the directions.

4.            If cooking on a cookie sheet, dip the dogs and place on parchment paper, if necessary add a little more batter to the top.

5.            Bake for about 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Salsa Fresca Recipes

You may wonder why I reviewed recipes from my dinner party instead of posting them and reviewing. Recipes are an interesting thing- as I said in my first blog post I rarely follow them exactly. However due to copyright, I choose not to post full recipes created by someone else. Note that anytime I try anyone else’s recipes I will link to the book or blog it came from. But if I’ve changed something enough I will post my recipe for it. If it’s still close I will post inspired by. This is just for my comfort, and I really felt that I needed to write briefly about.

That little disclaimer past me now, I want to post the salsas from the other night. Grab some corn chips and go to town on these. 

Also if you’re like me you probably HATE chopping cilantro. I was at Williams-Sonoma and came across an herb mill. It’s not the easiest thing to clean, but it works and is so very worth it to not to have to try and chop them.

Salsa Fresca Recipes

Pineapple Avocado Recipe

(Inspired by Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook)

2 cups chopped FRESH pineapple
2 avocados, peeled, pitted, and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
¼- ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
Juice of half a lemon

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for about a half hour before serving.

Mango Salsa

(Inspired by A Beautiful Bowl of Soup: The Best Vegetarian Recipes)

1 mango diced with the skin

1 small red onion diced

Juice of half a lemon

2 tsp of agave, maple syrup, or brown sugar

¼ - ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro

Dissolve the sweetner in the lemon juice. Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for about a half hour before serving.

Caramelized Onion and Kale Pizza

I think pizza is a very personal thing. Before I started my vegan adventure, I loved Papa John’s website where you could specify “light” or “heavy” cheese, sauce and toppings. So because of that giving a pizza recipe is very tough! I’ll post approximately what I use and please adjust to what you love.

I purchased a cornmeal crust for this recipe because I was feeling lazy and hungry and didn’t want to take the time to try a recipe that might be awful. Maybe next time I’ll try a recipe.

For the cheese I went to buy Daiya mozzarella because it is amazing and delicious, however Whole Foods was completely sold out, and none of the other mozzarellas they carried were vegan so Brian suggested we try the pepper jack because it “would probably be exactly the same thing.” It wasn’t but it was delicious.

Tonight was a silly night when we went to choose the tomato sauce. While Brian was loudly commenting on how we had to buy the canned sauce because it was cheaper, I noticed Shia Labouf was shopping right next to us. I giggled. I love tomato sauce, I think it is wonderful and I don’t mind buying the plain stuff because I always add a ton of garlic, onions and sometimes-chopped tomato and basil to it. But I thought it was funny that we were so loud about buying cheap sauce next to a movie star.

For the toppings on this one I used kale and caramelized onions, yum! Make sure you put the kale underneath the onions, or it’ll get very crispy. (I’ll do a recipe for kale chips soon. Super delicious.) Spinach can absolutely be substituted. Ugh- just do whatever makes you happy. This is what I did:

Caramelized Onion and Kale Pizza

1 8” pizza crust

¾ cup tomato sauce (more or less to your liking)

¼ cup of shredded vegan pepper jack (or more)

2 big leafs of black kale shredded into small pieces

1 medium red onion (Thinly sliced)

1 clove of crushed garlic

Coconut oil

1.              Preheat oven to 425 or whatever your crust suggests.

2.              Put a little oil in a skillet on low heat.

3.              Add the onions stir till they are covered in oil. Stir occasionally for the next 15 to 20 minutes.

4.              While the onions are going heat up the sauce, add the crushed garlic. Add a few onions too if you want.

5.              Spread the sauce over the pizza crust.

6.              Arrange the kale over the sauce.

7.              Sprinkle the cheese over the kale.

8.              Add the caramelized onions to the top.

9.              Bake for about 12 minutes, until cheese has melted.

10.           Let cool for a few minutes, slice up and enjoy!