Vegan Mousse with Rasberry Sauce! No way! Way.

So we were sitting around in this miserable heat hungry for something. What could I bake that required no baking? I flipped through the trusty Joy of Vegan Baking and found a recipe for chocolate mousse. No baking, just some fridge time. Also, this is like, the easiest thing ever in the history of history.

Traditionally, mousse is made with really disgusting items such as milk, butter, eggs, and heavy cream (dear lord no!). Here is what this recipe will require of you:

1 cup non dairy chocolate chips
12 ounces silken tofu
1/2 soy milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Whaaaaat? lol no way! WAY! Easy as pie! (okay not really but you know..) Zap the chips in the micro for 2 minutes, stirring along the way. Process the tofu, milk, vanilla and chocolate. Um, okay, you're done. Muhahaha! This tastes AWESOME, very chocolaty and fluffy.

I decided to make a pie out of this, because I have no individual serving dishes, and I can't buy any more dishes because apparently an elf made my kitchen. I used a pre-made graham cracker crust, but I think next time I will go for the gold and get a chocolate cookie crust. It's probably not vegan, but as you know, I'm not 100% vegan anyway. So there.

For the topping, I did a raspberry sauce- also, ridiculously easy. Take 2 cups of fresh raspberries (about two packs) and process with 1/4 cup of sugar or sucanat. Chill in an air tight container.

Oh, what the heck is SUCANAT?? Don't worry, I looked it up. It's actually an acronym for sugar cane natural. Thank you wikipedia. Here's the article if you are so inclined to read about it.

Funky Summer Lasagna-Tasting-Like Asparagus Pizza

The 5-Ingredient Gourmet has a recipe for asparagus and red pepper pizza which I used as a base recipe for this one, it was mighty tasty, and filling!

The layers were in this order:

Pre-made crust
Red sauce ( I used a mushroom marinara)
Ricotta cheese
Blanched Asparagus and Red Peppers sliced up in bite size chunks
Mushrooms
Mozzarella cheese

Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

Cherry Pie

I made a pie! This was very exciting, being that it was my first pie, with non-store-bought crust. I have never been a fan of anything pie except for apple pie, but I let my husband pick a recipe and he picked cherry pie. I'm glad he did, because otherwise I probably never would have made this groovy pie.

The recipe calls for cherries either canned, fresh, or frozen. I went for frozen black cherries since those were the only cherries left in Trader Joe's the day I went. The filling was crazy easy. Just get a big bowl, and mix 5 cups of cherries (that's almost 2 frozen bags) with sugar (3/4 cup) and cornstarch (4 tbsp) and then let it sit for 10-15 min. This is when you can bake your crust, which conveniently takes 15 minutes as well. After 15 min, add 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1/4 tsp vanilla extract. Done with filling!

Okay, so crust is really hard to make. I did everything the recipe calls for, but when I got to the rolling out part, the dough was like a red-headed stepchild. It rolled out nicely when I started, but when I started to roll it a bit more, it started breaking. I added sprinkles of flour to get it to get the frack off my rolling pin, and water to mend the breaks, but it just kept breaking again. Two things I will do differently next time: 1) Chill it for longer. The recipe says to chill it for a minimum of 30 minutes, but I think I am going to do it overnight or something next time. 2) More water. The recipe calls for water when you are mixing the dough, but the author also says to chill all the ingredients, including the rolling pin, prior to mixing it together. Well, I did that, and my water froze. But I didn't notice that about a 1/3 cup of my water was frozen on the bottom of the cup until after I mixed it all together. Anyway, I wrestled to get the dough in the pan, and for the top, you can see all the patches I had to make to get it to cover the top. Regardless, it was a really yummy pie, and I would definitely make it again.

Here's the crust recipe:

2 1/2 unbleached all purpose flour
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup veg. shortening
1/3 cup + 1 tbsp ice water

Blend on low in food processor. Divide evenly and chill in plastic wrap for a long time. haha.