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With a can of pumpkin in my hand, I was on a mission to make something tasty. I didn’t feel like cookies or cake or pie or fudge (WHAT?!), so I hopped on Pinterest and scoured the site for pumpkin treats I could make right here, right now.
Then I got distracted by quotes. And cute kitten pictures. And the next thing I knew, an hour had gone by and I hadn’t looked at a single pumpkin recipe. Focus, Cassie! Focus.
Okay. I will focus. Search “vegan pumpkin dessert”. Find lots of cookies, cakes, pies and fudge. NONONONOTHANKYOU. After searching for almost another hour (OMG WHAT IS HAPPENING, PINTEREST?!), I finally stumbled upon a recipe that looked yumz!
These no bake chocolate coco pumpkin bars. Okay FINE, these will do. As if I was settling or something. Man, I am grouchy when I’m on Pinterest too long.
Whipped up a batch, ate them all in 2 days. Didn’t share with my fam. They went bonkers. Made more, with slight changes to the recipe. They ate them, and I was the best mom/wife ever again. Awesome. I always knew I was the best. Score!
These guilt-free treats are so good. And they’re pretty! And you all know how much I loves me some pretty food. It makes my soul happy.
So today I encourage you to make some pretty food. It’s the weekend! Celebrate with some chocolate & coconut pumpkin bars. Preferably in front of the TV with a super scary movie playing. Halloween is coming and it’s time to scare yourself. And eat tasty fall treats. YES PLEASE.
Chocolate & Coconut Pumpkin Bars (Raw, No Bake)
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 8
Ingredients
- 10 dates, pitted
- 1 cup almonds
- 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- ¼ cup shredded coconut
- ¼ cup coconut oil
- 1 small banana
- ¼ cup pumpkin puree
- 2 tbsp agave
- ½ tsp vanilla
- ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
Instructions
- Add dates, almonds cocoa powder and 1 tsp of cinnamon to your food processor. Process until it all comes together into a ball.
- Transfer the mixture to a 9x5 baking dish and flatten it out in the pan. Set aside.
- In small bowl, combine the shredded coconut and coconut oil. Mix well until thick (you may need to add more coconut oil or shredded coconut to get it to a spreadable consistency). Spread this mixture on the chocolate almond mixture in the pan.
- Add the banana, pumpkin puree, agave and 1 tsp cinnamon into your food processor and process until smooth. Pour over top of the coconut mixture and smooth it out so that it covers the entire dish.
- If desired, sprinkle some coconut on top.
- Freeze for 60 minutes or until set. Cut into squares and serve. Store in the freezer. Remove for a few minutes to thaw before eating.
Notes
Adapted from Running to the Kitchen.
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Chocolate Beetroot Dougnuts
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Extra, extra! Read all about it!
I put beets in my doughnuts and I’m loving every last bite of these chocolate morsels!
I used to be one of those people who hated beets. In fact, just the sight of them alone would give me the heebie jeebies. My mom used to always buy the pickled beets in a jar, and those, I would eat, but fresh beets? No way! Those things are weird!
Well, flash forward to 2014 and fresh beets have now become a staple in my diet. They’re great for more than just eating, though! I also love (read: am obsessed with) them in my smoothies and juices. And they’re good for you!
Beets:
Lower your blood pressure
Boost your stamina
Fight inflamation
Are an aphrodisiac (no really!)
Are high in many vitamins and minerals
Help your mental health
Oh, beets. You are magic and I love you long time. Let’s be friends forever.
So! These doughnuts!
They’re pretty, right? That’s just another thing beets can do – make pretty food and drinks.
These doughnuts have a chocolate frosting on top (cause’ duh – chocolate), and I also added some beet juice & icing sugar on top to finish them off. And then I proceeded to eat 3 doughnuts before I could even snap a picture. Oops.
I bet you can’t eat just 1 either! Go ahead, try it. I dare you.
Chocolate Beetroot Dougnuts
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 6
Ingredients
Doughnuts
- ¾ cups + 1 tbsp kamut or all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 tbsp ground flaxseed
- ½ cup almond milk
- ⅓ cup coconut sugar
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- ½ tsp vanilla
- ½ cup grated beet
Doughnut Topping
- Chocolate: ½ cup dairy-free chocolate chips, melted
- Beet Glaze: 3 tbsp beet juice + ⅓ cup icing sugar, whisked together
Instructions
Doughnuts
- Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a doughnut pan with no-stick spray and set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a small bowl, mix together the flaxseed, almond milk, coconut sugar, vinegar, olive oil and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated. Fold in the grated beets.
- Spoon the mixture into your doughnut pan and bake for about 8 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely.
Doughnut Topping
- Spread the melted chocolate on the cooled doughnuts, then drizzle with the beet juice + icing sugar mixture.
- Enjoy!
Coconut Hemp Granola
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Big clusters of oats, seeds and nuts? Check. Shredded coconut for extra yumminess? Check. Ability to suffocate my yogurt? Check, check, check.
Apparently, this granola is a big ol’ winner ’round these parts.
It’s not just good on yogurt, either. It’s also yummy as a cereal replacement with a bit of almond milk. Yum. Or you can just shovel it into your mouth with your hands. No bowl required. I don’t judge.
Feel free to add dried fruit in there, too. I just didn’t feel like any this day. So I left ‘er naked. Yep. I went there. Talking about nudity on the blog. This granola makes me do naughty things.
I limited the amount of sweetener in this granola, since most store-bought varieties make me want to gag with how sweet they are. If you add dried fruit, you may even be able to cut down the sweetener a bit more. Hooray for less sugar!
I also added coconut because I opened my pantry and it was staring at me. No really. That’s the only reason. Luckily, it worked out well for me and actually tastes amazing with the walnut, oat and hemp seeds. It’s a good thing I didn’t ruin a whole batch of granola just because I saw some coconut sitting on a shelf and though “why not?”. That would be embarrassing.
In our house, a bath of granola lasts about 2 weeks. With this one, it was gone in less than 1. Okay, so most of that was me just eating it directly from the pan, warm from the oven. But still. That’s improvement!
Coconut Hemp Granola
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Snack
Serves: 5 cups
Ingredients
- ¼ cup coconut oil
- ¼ cup agave or maple syrup (I used agave)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- 3 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
- 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- ¾ cup hemp seed
- ½ cup pumpkin seeds
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350F and spray a large baking sheet with non-stick spray or line with parchment paper or a non-stick mat. Set aside.
- Combine coconut oil, agave, vanilla, cinnamon and salt in a small pot over medium heat, until everything is warmed through and the coconut oil has melted.
- In a large bowl, combine oats and nuts. Add the coconut oil mixture and mix everything well.
- Spread the mixture on prepared baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, stir in the hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds, then bake for another 12-15 minutes, or until the granola is golden brown.
- Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before using or storing. You can store this granola at room temperature, in an airtight container, for up to 2 weeks.
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When I was a kid, my favourite soup was chicken noodle. Preferably from a can. And preferably without any chicken and mostly noodles.
I would often eat canned soup for lunch on the weekends. It was easy enough for me to make myself once I knew how to use a can opener and the microwave (that’s right, I didn’t even cook it in a pot on the stove).
Chicken noodle soup was my thang. For years. Even as an adult, it was one of my favourite things to eat when I was too lazy to come up with something a bit more creative.
Now, though, I’m obviously done with chicken noodle, but I still love the comfort of soup. My current favourite is vegetable, but this lentil soup is a close second.
It’s easy to throw together, it’s crazy good for you, and it tastes amazing. Way better than chicken noodle soup ever did.
Side note: Photographing soup is HARD. Photographing brown soup is even harder. Perhaps the green parsley on top will help? What if I stick some green in the background?
Be jealous of my food photography skillzzzz. Or not.
When it’s cold and gray outside (like today at my house!), soup is the perfect remedy. Try this lentil soup and let me know if you enjoyed it as much as I did!
Lentil Soup with Cumin & Coriander
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Entree, Lunch
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 4 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 small yellow onion, minced
- 4 medium carrots, chopped
- 4 celery stalks, chopped
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 cups green or brown lentils, uncooked (I used brown)
- 1 tsp cumin
- ½ tsp coriander
- 8 cups vegetable broth
- 1 large bay leaf
- 2 whole sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 cup chopped spinach
- ½ cup chopped tomatoes
- Salt & pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.
- Add in the onion, carrots, celery and garlic, and cook until tender and browned.
- Add the lentils, cumin, coriander, broth, bay leaf and fresh thyme. Give it all a good mix, then add lid and simmer over low heat until the lentils are tender, 30-40 minutes.
- Remove the bay leaf and thyme, and add in the chopped spinach and tomatoes. Cook for 3-4 minutes, or until spinach has wilted.
- season with salt and pepper, and serve, with some fresh parsley on top for colour (if desired).
Homemade Peanut Butter Cups
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Halloween is just around the corner and the kid in me is more excited than I should probably admit. I get a little decoration-happy over here!
It’s a shame I can’t partake in trick or treating anymore. Not just because I’m a MOM and I’m pretty sure it’s a no-no to beg for candy door-to-door when you’re almost thirty, but also because – have you SEEN the crap people hand out on Halloween? It’s like they’re trying to kill those precious little children.
Everything is loaded with sugar, loaded with salt, and loaded with a bunch of ingredients that should never go into your body ever, ever, ever (I’m lookin’ at you, corn syrup!).
I let my kids go trick or treating, but only because I don’t want them to feel left out. I dump a good 75% of their candy into the trash when they go to bed, and honestly, they don’t miss it.
But I miss it! Before I switched to a vegan diet, I would rummage through my kids’ Halloween bags and eat their Coffee Crisp, Kit Kat, Doritos and Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Now, I have to look at those treats lovingly and then just toss them away. Which is probably a good thing, but I digress…
This year, I decided that if I was going to survive another year of watching my kids eat my favourite non-vegan treats from afar, I was going to need some treats of my own – like these peanut butter cups.
With only 3 ingredients and less than 15 minutes of time, this is probably one of the easiest recipes ever. If you can even call it a recipe.
Hello chocolate, meet peanut butter.
Homemade Peanut Butter Cups
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Snacks
Serves: 12
Ingredients
- 1 cup dairy-free chocolate chips (I used Enjoy Life brand)
- ½ cup peanut butter (store-bought or homemade)
- Kosher salt (optional)
Instructions
- Add chocolate chips to a microwave-safe bowl and heat for about 2 minutes, stirring every 45-60 seconds, until melted. Stir until smooth.
- Add paper or silicone liners to a large muffin pan. Add about 1 tbsp melted chocolate to the bottom of each liner. Freeze for about 10 minutes, or until the chocolate has hardened.
- Add about 1 tbsp peanut butter on top of the hardened chocolate (you may need to spread it out a bit), then add another 1-2 tbsp melted chocolate on top, making sure to cover the peanut butter.
- Sprinkle each peanut butter cup with a bit of kosher salt, then put the pan back in the freezer for another 10 minutes or so, until hardened.
- Store in the refrigerator (when you want to eat one, remove it from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature).
Apple Pie Smoothie
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So I woke up the other morning with the desire to eat pie. Apple pie.
I must have been dreaming about pie or something, because I woke up, with droll all over my face, ready to bake me a pie for breakfast.
But then I came to my senses. “Pie isn’t for breakfast, silly!”, I said to myself.
But I still craved apple pie. So what did I do? I made a smoothie of course! I normally have a green smoothie in the morning, but since my apple pie craving was SO SO STRONG, as in, MUST HAVE IT NOW, I went with a smoothie that tasted like apple pie.
I just threw a bunch of pie ingredients into a blender, added more liquid (duh), and let the blender whirl. And wouldn’t you know it? This smoothie tasted just like apple pie! Without the delicious flaky crust, of course.
But still – YUM.
I was drinking apple pie! From a glass! In the morning!
I’m such a rebel.
Now you can be a rebel, too. Go ahead, drink some pie.
Apple Pie Smoothie
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Smoothie
Serves: 2
Ingredients
- 1 large apple, sliced (I used a honeycrisp apple)
- 1 large banana
- 1½ cups non-dairy milk (I used almond milk)
- 1 large date, pitted
- ½ tbsp chia seeds
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp nutmeg
- 3 or 4 ice cubes
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to a high speed blender and blend until smooth!
Notes
Use a nut-free non-dairy milk to make this recipe nut-free.
Use a non-dairy milk other than soy milk to make this recipe soy-free.
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My absolute favourite squash of all time is the gorgeous delicata squash. Not only is it beautiful, but it’s SO tasty! My favourite way to cook it is by roasting it in the oven with a bit of oil, salt & pepper.I can eat it as a snack on it’s own, that’s how good it is. Usually, though, it’s a side dish.
This recipe is hardly a recipe at all, considering there are only 4 ingredients (and one of them is the squash!). But it’s so delicious, I just had to share.
Slice your squash in half, and remove the seeds. This is the fun part. No really!
Normally I just throw out the seeds, but this time, I kept them, and roasted them, too, after the squash was done. They were so good!
Add to your baking sheet, toss with a bit of oil, salt & pepper. Then bake!
Come oooooon. Look at those little cuties? Don’t you just want to snatch them up and eat the whole entire bowl-full yourself?
No? Just me?
I added the squash to a rice bowl this time, with some sauteed greens and lentils. My belly was happy. Your belly would be happy too, if you made this squash! Do it!
Roasted Salt & Pepper Delicata Squash
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Sides
Serves: 3-4 sides
Ingredients
- 1 medium delicata squash
- ½ tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- ½ tsp salt (add more or less, to taste)
- ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper (add more or less, to taste)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Wash the squash, then slice off the stem, and cut the squash in half, length-wise. Do not remove the skin. Remove and discard the seeds (or you can save them and roast them for a snack!). Slice squash into half-moon shapes, about ½ inch thick.
- Spread your squash out on a large baking sheet. Add the oil, salt & pepper, and mix well, with your hands, until every half-moon is covered.
- Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes, flipping halfway through the cooking time, or until the squash has browned and you can easily pierce it with a fork or knife.
- Serve hot!
Pumpkin Donuts with Powdered Sugar Glaze
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Pumpkin EVERYTHING is in full effect over at my house. What about yours? I’m eating this stuff like it’s candy, and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon!
Not that I’m complaining or anything…
The other day I opened up a can of pumpkin puree, just so I could smell it. SERIOUSLY. I had no intentions of making anything with it. I just wanted to smell that pumpkin smell and then melt into a puddle of OMG IT SMELLS SO GOOD.
Ican’t make this stuff up. I’ve done some weird stuff before, but this just moved up to the top of my “crazy things I’ve done” list.
Anywho, that pumpkin went in the fridge, and then the next morning I had the urge to bake with it. After giving it another good, long sniff, of course.
But what to make? There’s cookies and muffins and cupcakes, oh my! But no. None of those were right. Pumpkin bread? Donuts? Yes. Yes, that’s what I’ll make. DONUTS.
And so that’s what I made. Delicious, moist, pumpkin-y orange donuts with extra cinnamon and drizzled with a bit of icing (who cares if they’re for breakfast? A little icing never hurt anyone.)!
Pumpkin Spelt Doughnuts with Powdered Sugar Glaze
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Author: Vegan Insanity
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 12
Ingredients
Pumpkin Spelt Doughnuts
- ½ cup + 2 tbsp pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
- ¼ cup coconut sugar
- ½ tsp apple cider vinegar
- ¼ cup + 2 tbsp non-dairy milk (I used almond milk)
- 2 tbsp vegan butter, melted (I used Earth Balance)
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1½ cup spelt flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 1½ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp nutmeg
- ½ tsp vanilla
Powdered Sugar Glaze
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 3 tbsp non-dairy milk
- ½ tsp vanilla
Instructions
Pumpkin Spelt Doughnuts
- Preheat oven to 350F. Spray doughnut pans with non-stick spray and set aside.
- In a large bowl, add pumpkin puree, coconut sugar, apple cider vinegar, non-dairy milk, melted vegan butter, baking soda, baking powder, flour, salt cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla. Yep, everything. Add it all to the bowl and mix until combined.
- Spoon into your prepared doughnut pans and flatten them with your fingers.
- Bake for 10 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Allow to cool for about 20 minutes. While the doughnuts are cooling, you can make the powdered sugar glaze.
Powdered Sugar Glaze
- Add all ingredients to a small bowl and whisk until you reach the desired consistency. If the glaze is too thin, add more powdered sugar. If it's too thick, add more non-dairy milk.
- Once doughnuts have cooled completely, drizzle the glaze over each doughnut. Sprinkle with more cinnamon and enjoy!
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