Raw Strawberry Cheesecake

Good news.

Instead of more iPhone photos, I finally have a real recipe with real photos! It’s been far too long since I’ve made anything exciting in the kitchen, and I was really craving some dessert yesterday so I knew it was about time. What came to mind? Raw cheesecake. With strawberries. Oh, yes.

One of my already favorite desserts is this raw raspberry cheesecake so I leaned heavily off of this recipe and was also inspired by The Rawtarian’s Raw Cheesecake Recipe as well.

Without further ado …

Raw Strawberry Cheesecake

Ingredients
Crust:

• 1 cup raw almonds (I only had roasted when I made this, and they were delicious too)
• 1 cup pitted dates
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Filling:

• 3 cups cashews (it may help to soak these for about 5 hours, especially if your blender isn’t very powerful)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• Juice of 3 lemons (about 3/4 cup)
• 3/4 cup coconut oil
• 3/4 cup honey, agave or coconut nectar

Topping:

• 2 cups strawberries (fresh or frozen)
• 1/2 cup dates

Instructions:

• Using a food processor or powerful blender, blend crust ingredients together until fine and will stick together. Place crust mixture into a 9-inch spring form pan and press down until an even crust is formed
• Place all filling ingredients into food processor or blender and pulse until completely smooth (you may have to add a tiny bit of water if it’s not wanting to blend, but add as little as possible so the mixture stays thick)
• Pour mixture on top of pie crust and smooth out.
• Next, blend together the topping of strawberries and dates (keep it slightly chunk if you’d prefer, or pulse until smooth) and pour on top of filling.
• Place in freezer for about an hour, or until hardened and enjoy.

February 14th is coming up rather soon … this would be a delicious Valentine’s Day treat!

A definite winner!

What have you been cooking up, baking, or blending lately??

On the road again

Hello, Kansas City.

We are back.

This past weekend, we went to Nebraska to visit my family. Here’s a mini iPhone photography recap to get us all settled into the beginning of this week!

On the Road Again

Favorite part of the drive? The huge windmill farm in Kansas, especially at sunset!

We tried on some hats. I got mine.

It can probably go left unsaid, but Erik did not purchase his, ha!

I helped my mom set up her very own blog this weekend! She is an avid quilter (and is very good at what she does). Her blog is called Quilting with Kris. She’s already having a lot of fun with it. Way to go, Mom!

She’s in the process of making me this Retro Flower Quilt that I saw on Pinterest. I’m really liking it so far!

A definite highlight of the trip? Hanging out with my just over 1 year old nephew, Walker. He’s getting so big! I wish we didn’t live so far apart.

Last but not least, I ran across this comic on Facebook, and I just love it! You may have already seen it on Facebook or Instagram but I just had to share it here too!

What are you up to this week??

What we've been eating

Hey everyone!

Hope your week has been great. Mine has bit a bit busy, hence the lack of blogging. And we’re actually going to Nebraska this weekend to see my family so I thought I’d stop in before we leave to share a little bit of what we’ve been eating during my absence, via iPhone photography.

• Soup! The weather has still been pretty nice but we’ve had a few days of really bitter wind. This delicious, comforting veggie soup came in handy. Word on the street on my Facebook page is yesterday was even national soup day.

• Kale chips! If you’ve never had kale chips, yes, they sound a bit unappealing and tend to look like leaves. But they are oh-so-delicious!!

• Other recent meals of deliciousness
  • Quinoa & walnut tacos (these are going to be made again soon, and I’ll share more!)
  • Veggie and cashew cheese stuffed sweet potatoes
  • Our own version of potato skins stuffed with veggies, served with peas and a cauliflower/carrot puree

• Fresh juice, pre stir & a random self portrait

• Last but not least, carrot cake smoothie!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! I’ll probably be back with a similar update of our weekend. I’m excited to visit my little nephew who is just over 1 years old now.
Find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for updates

Spicy sweet potato & black bean enchiladas (w/ cashew sour cream)

We had these delicious enchiladas sometime in December and I’m just now getting to blog about them.  They are definitely one of our favorite dinners, I could probably eat them every. single. day.

No joke.

And they’re really simple and customizable, to boot!

Spicy sweet potato & black bean enchiladas (w/ vegan cashew sour cream)

Ingredients:

• 3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 can black beans, drained
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 jalapenos, chopped (add more if you like it really hot!)
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 jar salsa of choice
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• Pepper, to taste
• Olive oil
• Cheese of choice (I kept it vegan and used cheddar Daiya cheese)
• Warm tortillas + any other desired toppings

Directions:

• Preheat oven at about 375F.
• Peel and chop sweet potatoes, tossing them in a little olive oil. Place them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and place them in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until tender.
• In the meantime, chop your onion and jalapenos.
• In a heated sauté pan, add about a tablespoon olive oil and once warn, add onions and jalapenos. When they become tender, add drained can of black beans, chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper and stir together.
• Place into a bowl and set aside. Once the sweet potatoes are tender, place then in the bowl with the black bean mixture. Stir them together until combined.
• Place about a 1/3 of the salsa in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish, or until it’s covered with a small layer of liquid. (In this instance, I used two pie dishes, but 9x13 is ideal)
• Spoon mixture evenly into about 6 tortillas, wrapping them up and placing them into your dish, tightly next to one another. Spread out remaining salsa (or however much you’d like) onto the top of the rolled tortillas. Next, layer cheese on top of the salsa.
• Bake for about 40 minutes.

Note: We love to top our enchiladas with vegan sour cream using this easy and quick recipe!

Vegan cashew sour cream

Ingredients:

• 1 cup plain cashews
• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• Water, as needed

Instructions:

• Place all ingredients into power blender or food processor and blend until completely smooth (it may help to soak the cashews for a few hours, depending on how powerful your blender is)

While it doesn’t taste exactly like regular sour cream, we love it and use this “sour cream” a lot!

Have a great weekend!!

Best Thing I Ever Ate in KC

I posted this a couple weeks ago on Facebook but in case you didn’t see it, and for those that don’t live in KC, I wanted to share it via blog post!

Guess who was in the January issue of KC Magazine?? This month was their annual food issue and I was very excited to get to be apart of it! It will definitely go down as the first 2012 yearly highlight.

One of the features was a “Best Thing I Ever Ate” in KC that I was asked to participate it. It was certainly hard to pick just one dish in KC that I love but I had to go with the dish I’ve probably went back to the most, and not surprisingly, that’s the rainbow taco at FUD.

The issue is great all around, perfect for anyone who loves food (so, basically, everyone!), and I’m very thankful to be part of it!!

Raw cheezecake bites

Finally, the last of our chocolate vegan fondue dipping treats!

These were probably my favorite. They’re really simple to throw together, and you don’t even need to bake them, because they’re raw!

Raw cheezecake bites

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup cashews
• 3/4 cup oats
• 1/4 cup agave
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• Juice of half a lemon
• Mix-ins of your choice! Some suggestions: raisins, cacao nibs, hemp seeds, chia seeds, goji berries, chopped nuts, etc. Get creative, you really can’t mess these up!

Instructions:

• Using a blender or food processor, blend together the cashews and oats until they form a powdery consistency.
• Add the wet ingredients together with the blended mixture, and mix together until combined.
• Stir in your mix-ins of choice.
• Roll into tablespoon sized balls, place on a parchment lined cookie sheet and place in the freezer for about 15 minutes until hardened.

That’s it! These are surprisingly delicious, I promise they won’t disappoint.

Have a great weekend, everyone!!!

Simple peanut butter balls

Now for the chocolate fondue dipping treats I promised the recipes to.

First up ... these peanut butter balls are very basic and simple. If you’re not using them to dip in chocolate like we did, I suggest adding chocolate chips to the recipe to give it that peanut buttery chocolate mixture. Yum!

Simple peanut butter balls

Ingredients:

• 1 cup white whole wheat flour
• 1 cup oats
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup organic cane sugar
• 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 3 tablespoons almond milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

• Preheat oven at 375.
• Combine dry ingredients: flour, oats, baking soda, sugar
• In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients: peanut butter, oil, milk and vanilla
• Stir together until completely combined (optional: feel free to add nuts or chocolate or raisins or any other element at this point to make these even more delicious!)
• Roll into tablespoon sized balls and bake for about 13 minutes, or until golden brown.

Hope everyone’s had a great week, and enjoy!!

Vegan Chocolate Fondue

Thus continues our New Year’s Eve fondue dinner!

In case you missed the first portion, it covered our cheezy vegan fondue dip that we ate with roasted vegetables and toasted bread chunks. Next up we’ve got some chocolate goodness for dessert.

First up, what we used for dessert dipping:

One obviously delicious option is fruit! I went with bananas and apples but the possibilities are really endless. Fruit + chocolate = always a safe bet. Always.

Next up, I made a few bite sized vegan goodies to go with it. Basic peanut butter balls and raw cheezecake balls. (Recipes coming soon).

I melted the chocolate mixture in a small sauce pan and kept it on a very low burner temp while we ate part one of our vegan dinner. (It case you missed it, I explained how fancy I was with my makeshift fondue set of saucepans and kabob sticks). It was a simple switch to bring the warm chocolate right over to the table when we were ready for dessert.

Vegan Chocolate Fondue

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 8 ounce vegan chocolate
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/2 cup agave nectar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tablespoons almond milk

Instructions:

• Place all ingredients into a small saucepan and place on medium heat, stirring until combined.
• Bring heat down to low, and serve when ready!

Notes: Be sure to keep this at a very low temperature once it’s combined as to not burn the chocolate.

And there you have it!

I’ll be posting the peanut butter ball and cheezecake bite recipes soon but feel free to get creative with the chocolate! There just isn’t a whole lot of things in life that doesn’t taste amazing with chocolate. Truth.

What’s your favorite food to pair with chocolate??

Cheezy vegan fondue dip

Happy New Year!!

It’s now officially 2012!

We kept it pretty low key on New Year’s Eve by watching some movies and the official ball drop, which was immediately followed by going to bed, ha. I know, we. are. party. animals. We did eat good, though. I wanted to make something fun, so we had fondue for dinner!

When deciding what to make, I looked around my kitchen to see what we had to work with and the fondue idea was partially inspired by a few ingredients we got on Friday at BADSEED farmers market. Enter:

Oyster mushrooms from Wakarusa Valley Farm in Lawrence, Kansas and whole wheat New Traditionalist Bread, made right here in Kansas City.

I made a cheezy fondue dip for our main course, and a chocolate one for dessert. The chocolate recipe will appear in my next post.

For our main fondue course, we used roasted vegetables and toasted bread for dipping. The veggies I included were carrots, broccoli, onions and celery. Very simply, I chopped them into large pieces, tossed them in a little olive oil, sea salt, and pepper and placed them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, roasting them at around 400 degrees for 45ish minutes. (I suggest chopping them into pieces that almost seem too big, as they shrink a lot during roasting!)

I cubed the bread into bite sized pieces and placed them in the oven for about 10 minutes after the veggies were done so that they could toast a little bit.

Being how I don’t have a fondue set, I went all fancy (ha!) and simply put my saucepan right on the dinner table with a potholder, and we used kabob sticks for dipping. Not quite as cool as the real deal, but it worked well for us and it would be very easy to heat up the dip by simply putting it on the stove for a few minutes. Now for the cheeze recipe!

I made a “classic” fondue dip, vegan style. We thought it was pretty delicious and went really well with the roasted veggies and toasted bread.

Cheezy vegan fondue dip
-inspired by Spark Recipes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup low sodium vegetable broth
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup cashews
• 1/3 cup oats
• 1/4 cup tahini
• 3/4 cup mushrooms
• 4 tablespoons arrowroot (or cornstarch)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons onion powder
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Instructions:

• Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until completely smooth.
• Place mixture into a medium sized saucepan, bring to a boil, stirring continuously. Cook on low until thick (about 15 minutes). Be sure to stir often, so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of your pan.

And that’s it!

For optimal taste, I recommend taking a bite that includes every item -- if you can fit it in your mouth, that is, ha.

Yum! It was a fun and different way to eat dinner, and the possibilities are endless. It would be a fun idea for a dinner party or a date night at home!

Part II of our fondue dinner, which includes dessert will be coming next!

What’s your favorite fondue?