VeganMofo Day 31: FInal Iron Chef wrap-up! Carrots + Pumpkin

Here we are with the final Iron Chef challenge of VeganMoFo. Such great, great entries this whole month! Thanks to everyone who participated!

Laura, from Peace by Pastries, went the classic hippy vegan route with her fantastic Carrot-Lentil Loaf with Pumpkin-Tomato Sauce. Hello autumn!


Veg-in-Training made a crazy Pumpkin Pie Infused Vodka for her entry that will be finished around Thanksgiving. Such dedication! Can't wait to hear how it turns out!


Megan, from Down Home Vegan, is a girl after my own heart and made a Thanksgiving Calzone with some pumpkin gravy for dipping goodness. Heck yeah!


I made Pumpkin-Carrot Tortellini with a Sage-butter sauce. So good! It took awhile to make, because I got all ambitious and decided I wanted to use whole pumpkins and not the canned stuff. I was pretty scared I was going to chop a finger off cutting up and gutting the pumpkins, but I managed to come out with all appendages intact and some yummy roasted pumpkins and carrots. I made waaaaaaay more filling than wonton wrappers, so the filling is going to be either used in calzones (thanks Megan!) or in stuffed shells sometime this week.

Filling included roasted pumpkin, roasted carrots, roasted head of garlic, a walnut cream (just blended walnuts + tofu + nooch + a little olive oil to blend it better). All of this was mixed together and stuffed into wonton wrappers. I wanted to make my own pasta, but I had these in the freezer anyways, and I was taking too long cutting up the pumpkins anyways. Also, I'm really bad at making the tortellini shape. Maybe it's easier with a square.

Sage-butter sauce is exactly what it sounds like; fresh sage sauteed in some earth balance, salt/pepper/garlic.

VeganMoFo Day 25-Iron Chef Challenge #3 Results: Apples + PB!

This week's challenge was apples with peanut butter. Hello childhood snackage and delicious fall combo. I don't know about you guys, but I'm up to my ears in apples, so I'll prolly be making a few of these this week. Let the challenge begin!

The Republic of Bunny whipped up an Apple Peanut Butter Dessert Chimichanga for this week's challenge. Holy smokes! Chimichangas always make me say that. Giant wrap of deliciousness!


Tami, from Vegan Appetite, made the most mouth-watering Apple Peanut Butter Fritters. Perfect fall festival food!



Veg-in-Training went for some breakfast decadence with her Apple Cinnamon Scones with a Peanut Butter Glaze. Just look at that glaze!


Megan, from Down Home Vegan, made the ultimate comfort pie with her Honeycrisp Apple Crisp. Apple crisps are the best, and I can only imagine PB as a bonus for the taste buds.



Laura, from Peace by Pastries, made a Local Apple Pie with a Peanut Butter Shortbread Crust and Peanut Streusel Topping. Look for it soon on her blog!

Geeky White Girl made some Apple Peanut Butter Brownies that will be posted on her blog tomorrow! Holy drool!


I wanted cookies in bar form, so that's the route I went. A little on the crumbly side, but Nik and I inhaled them in a day, so I must have done something right.

Peanut Butter Apple Cookie Bars:
Ingredients:
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar (brown sugar would be good here too, but I was out!)
1/2 cup Peanut Butter ( I used natural creamy PB)
1 tsp. Vanilla

1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp corn starch

2 cups diced apples

1. Preheat oven to 350F and lightly grease a baking dish (I used an 8"x11.5" one)
2. Cream oil, sugar, PB, and vanilla together until smooth and creamy.
3. Add in Baking powder, salt, flour, and corn starch and stir until well-combined. It will be crumbly.
4. fold in apples
5. spread dough into baking pan and smooth down
6. Bake for 35 minutes (dough was still soft coming out, but crisps up a bit after cooling. )

They're crumbly, but highly addictive!

Hmmm...stay tuned for the last challenge of VeganMoFo!

VeganMoFo: Iron Chef Challenge #3: Apples and Peanut Butter

This week's challenge is Apples and Peanut Butter! Brings you back to grade school lunches or after-school snacks, yeah? Go bigger than that!

Same as last week: Basic rules are just to make sure and use both ingredients, but anything goes after that! Sweet, savory, whatever floats your boat. This is just for fun, so no winners or anything, just a friendly challenge. Post your results here by 7pm (eastern time) next sunday, and I'll highlight some on my blog, along with the next challenge info.

VeganMoFo Day 18-Iron Chef Challenge #2: Lemon and Ginger

This weeks Iron Chef challenge was hard and easy all at the same time, with lemon and ginger as the key ingredients. Easy, because it's lemon + ginger, which already is a total flavor marriage, but hard because it was really hard to narrow it down what to make. Let the wild rumpus start! (sorry, I've been all about Where the Wild Things Are this weekend.)


C, from Cardamom and Cast Iron, was super-ambitious and made TWO entries for this week, Lemon-ginger Muffins and Pomegranate-Lemon-Ginger Syrup. I'm a firm believer in adding fruit to sweets or alcoholic drinks and calling it a healthy, merry day.



Veg-in-Training made a spicy sour soup, that I am coveting big time on this gloomy, feeling-a-cold-coming-on sunday evening. Yum!


Laura, from Peace by Pastries, made the most perfect looking Lemon-ginger scones I've ever seen. Mine are usually blobs (of yum), and not the perfectly sliced triangle beauties here. I saw these earlier this week and it inspired me this morning to make scones and tea. Best breakfast!


Kip, from Messy Vegetarian Cook, shared a cough-curing tea that is totally delicious (I used up the rest of my lemon and ginger and had four cups of it this morning!)


Ohhh, and Joan, from The Geeky White Girl, made Glazed Lemon Drop Cookies with Crystallized Ginger. Um, YUM! Lemon cookies are the best and totally underrated.



I couldn't decide what to make all week, until saturday came and I had a sweet-tooth craving (this always happens right when I should be doing some work or something and I drop it all to make something sweet. Don't mess with my sweet-tooth). I have an underused bundt pan (and bundt pans should never be underused!!), so lemon-ginger bundt cake it was. I doubled the golden vanilla cupcake recipe, from VCTOTW, and added in lemon zest from two lemons and grated ginger from a 2" piece. I put the ginger through my garlic press and just got the yummy juicy bits and not the hairy fiber parts. I winged the icing, using just lemon juice, ginger, and confectioners sugar until it reached a goopy consistancy. Nik inhaled half of this cake after it had been out of the oven for only an hour!




Stay tuned for next week's challenge!
xo

VeganMoFo Day 11, Part 2: Iron Chef Challenge #2: Lemon and Ginger!

This week's challenge is Lemon and Ginger! Random number generator was giving me some not-so-good combos from this list, so I just picked two ingredients that sounded interesting for this week's challenge. If you have a combo that you would make a good challenge for next week, drop me a line!

Same as last week: Basic rules are just to make sure and use both ingredients, but anything goes after that! Sweet, savory, whatever floats your boat. This is just for fun, so no winners or anything, just a friendly challenge. Post your results here by 7pm (eastern time) next sunday, and I'll highlight some on my blog, along with the next challenge info.

VeganMoFo Day 11: Iron Chef Challenge #1 Results!

This week's Iron Chef Challenge featured the lovely Okra and horseradish combination, and there were some beauties submitted. Everyone seemed to have the similar idea of stuffing/breading the Okra and making some sort of horseradish creme to go with, but there were still different ways to go about this idea.

Geeky White Girl kinda took my breath away with her Beer Batter Fried Stuffed Okra with Blue Cheeze Horseradish Dipping Sauce. Hello okra wing night!


Veg-in-Training doesn't even like okra, but rose to the challenge to make something that even okra-haters will go gaga over with this super-meal. I'm super-envious of her amazing cornmeal crust. I can never get mine to look like that! Cornmeal Crusted Stuffed Okra served with Durty Rice Cake and Creole Sauce:



Cardamom and Cast Iron shared my same concerns about the slime factor with okra, but she knocked it out of the park with her amazing Spicy Cornmeal-Crusted Okra with Dipping Sauce. That crust! Yum!


Peace By Pastries gets super-points for being the only one to deviate from the stuffed/breaded route for this challenge, with her Crispy Okra Fritters with Horseradish Creme. Fritters are like, the best thing ever. Holy salivating!


I stuffed mine with a horseradish-cashew creme (I actually ruined my appetite because I noshed on this too much while prepping, d'oh!). Sooo addictive; I just took the Cashew Ricotta recipe from VCON and added about 6 TBS of horseradish. I breaded the okra with a panko herb crust, and baked it up all crispy like. Delicious! I was a little frightened by this challenge, as my only experience with okra has been of the slimy frozen variety, but fresh okra is a whole 'nother ballgame and worth messing around with. And ohhh, horseradish is a PERFECT pair for this lovely vegetable.


If I missed anyone, apologies all around, and feel free to post them in the comments! Stay tuned for next week's challenge shortly!

VeganMoFo: Iron Chef Challenge #1-Okra and Horseradish

It's Iron Chef time! Like last year, we're going to make this a two-ingredient challenge, with a week to make it. Basic rules are just to make sure and use both ingredients, but anything goes after that! Sweet, savory, whatever floats your boat. This is just for fun, so no winners or anything, just a friendly challenge. Post your results here by 7pm (eastern time) next sunday, and I'll highlight some on my blog, along with the next challenge info.

Good ol' random # generator picked the ingredients this week, from this lovely list, and the results are Okra and Horseradish!

Good luck!

VeganMoFo Day 12: Iron Chef Challenge 2-Pear-Pecan Sandies

For the second Iron Chef Challenge, with Pear and Nuts as the secret ingredients, I decided to make some Pear-Pecan Sandies. Although they are super-yummy, they aren't as "sandy" as I'd like, so I'm going to hold off on giving out the recipe until I can get it more how'd I like it. Soon enough!

Also, I finally got my oven to stop smoking when I turn it on! I think some Earth Balance spilled over from the muffins I made last week, or maybe some of the veg. oil from the doughnuts, but SOMETHING was in my oven that caused it to smoke up all scary like. I cleaned it super-thoroughly last night and it seems to have done the trick. I hate it when that happens!!

VeganMoFo Day 4-Iron Chef Challenge!

Katie came up with the idea of an Iron Chef Challenge, using two ingredients that are announced a day ahead of time. So fun! The first challenge was to make something with Apples and Ginger, and I immediately thought DOUGHNUTS. I bought doughnut cutters awhile ago and have been itching to attempt to make some. Perfect opportunity! I decided to make apple-ginger doughnuts with a powdered sugar/cinnamon/ginger coating. They worked out better than I imagined and I totally ruined my dinner tonight by eating too many while making them (gotta "test" them.)

First I made some homemade applesauce, using two apples, a few splashes of apple cider, and some fresh minced ginger. I let that cool and used 3/4 cup in place of the egg replacer in this recipe.