Triple-Chocolate-Cheesecake

Triple-Chocolate-Cheesecake (or as my grandma calls them, “Chocolate Adventures”)

Guess what time it is!!!!!!

Chocolate time!

There is never not a good time for some chocolate,

So thus, it is always chocolate time…

That is my daily dose of wisdom,

Bask in it

Let it sink in your soul…

Feel enlightened?

Now you are ready to make some vegan-chocolate-cheesecake

Let’s begin

First things first, strain your tofu, because it is one slimy sucker and if you fail to get it anything less than mostly dry, it will turn your whole creation into a big pile of yuck!

Now, if you are cool and hip enough to have a tofu strainer, by all means, use it!

I, however, am not cool enough to have something so awesome (though I am very seriously contemplating asking my boyfriend to get me one for Christmas) so instead, I used a homemade press/strainer/contraption thing, and it worked fairly well.

I used a plate, with the tofu on top, a bight thick pad of paper towels covering that, a small cookie sheet with 2-3 really heavy books

 You may want to change out the paper towels from time to time, and also switch which side of the tofu is up/down

Squish!

But you definitely want to do this first, because the longer you can dry up your tofu, the better.

Ugh, it looks so gross!

Moving on…

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

And then you're going to take these beauties

Put 3 cups of granola in a food processor (I had to grind up one cup at a time, because we have a tiny processor)

Melt ½ cup of Earth Balance and then add it, along with 2 tsp of sugar and 1 tbs of cacao powder to the granola and mix

And if its really really crumbly, add a teensy-weensy-insy-bintsy-of water so that its more crust like. Keep adding water until you think it’s right… but don’t add too much

Then, grease whatever pan(s) you are using (you can use a regular 8” spring form pan, or you can be like me and use 6 mini tart pans with cool removable bottoms) and press the crust into the pans. I used a handful and a half (haha, I’m so professional and accurate in the kitchen) and make sure the curst is even on the bottom and pressed up against the side a bit.

Then, pop em in the oven for about 6-10 minutes, until you can start smelling the yummy-granola goodness

Then, melt some chocolate (I used about a cup of Ghirardelli semi-sweet… but you could definitely use more) and spread it across the bottom of the crust.

I sprinkled some crushed almonds on top of the chocolate, but you don’t have too… I’m just kind of crazy and impulsive

They look good enough to eat already!

And I think you could stop now and eat them like that… like a cookie!

But that wouldn’t be very much fun, so let’s press on!

Now that your tofu is all drained,

Crumble it a bit and stick it in a blender and whiz it as much as you can. It will be difficult to get it very smooth since that’s the only thing in the blender, but don’t despair! It will be alright in just a moment more

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew

Now, one by one add these to the tofu, blending after each addition

You want to blend it each time to make sure you whiz it as much as possible so that there are no nasty chunks of nastyness

1 c. chocolate milk (almond, soy, rice, etc)

-whiz-

½ c. unsweetened cocoa powder

-whiz-

½ c. sugar

-whiz-

Splash of vanilla

-whiz-

Whole package of Toffuti Better Than Cream Cheese

-whiz-

1 carton of vanilla yogurt (soy, coconut, etc)

-whiz-

-whiz-

-whiz whiz-

Make sure it all looks good and mixed in,

Then pour it into your pans so that it’s all nice and evenly distributed

And then, if you want, you can decorate them now, before you even bake them, by drawing designs with chocolate syrup

Put them in the oven, and bake for about 20 minutes (mini-pans) and about 30-60 minutes for a regular pan.

They are done when the top seems solid, the sides being more solid then the middle

Take out and leave it on the counter/stove and let them cool for about and hour,

Then wrap them up and put in the fridge to chill for at least 6 hours (but I like to give mine at least 12-24 hours… the longer they chill, they better they will be)

Pick Your Poison 

COOKIES!

Choco-Choco-Choco-Chip Cooooookies!

Can you tell that I’m excited about chocolate chip cookies?

I have made so many batches of these in my lifetime, it’s rather ridiculous. I make them for my grandma’s birthday every year, I make them probably about five times every year at random times… mhmm, I have made these so often, I pretty much have the recipe memorized. But of course, now the recipe is different, because I made them animal friendly :)

So let’s begin the love fest!

Preheat oven to 375

Stir together these

2  1/2  C. Whole wheat flower (if you can, use whole wheat pastry flour; I have yet to get my hands on any, unfortunately)

2 C. All purpose flour

1tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking soda

Set aside and cream these until well… creamy

2 C. softened Earth Balance

2  1/2 C. sugar

2  1/2 C. packed brown sugar

Then, mix together your eggsis

4 tbs. ground flaxseeds whisked with 6 tbs. of water until gelatiney (made that word up…)

Then add these slowly/one at a time/in increments to your creamed sugary-butter

2 capfuls of vanilla

Your eggs

(oh I how love my flaxseed eggs!)

Slowly add your flour mixture

Then add these beauties

2 whole bags of Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (these are the only vegan chips, so be careful!)

Roll into little balls and place on greased cookie sheet. You might want to press down on them slightly, since they won’t spread out much, if at all on their own.

They are cute in their little ball shapes though

Too cute to eat… almost

Then bake for about 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. But be careful not to over bake! They are rather inedible if baked too long, blech!

Pour yourself a tall glass of milk (almond, hemp, rice, soy, coconut, etc) and enjoy!

Muffin Mayhem! (Part 2)

Muffin Mayhem! (Chocolate Edition)

So, after I made my berry muffins, I made some chocolate muffins too…

Let me say this as a disclaimer, they were good, but not nearly chocolatey enough. You definitely need to add chocolate chips to the batter (I regrettably did not do this) and then they will be absolutely perfect!

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s begin!

Preheat oven to 345 (no berries to let sweat here)

And stir together the following

(yes, that is a very large bag of baking soda… we love both Costco and baking soda a whole heck of a lot)

3 Cups Flour

2 Tsp. Baking Soda

1/4 Tsp. Salt

1 Cup + 2 Tbsp. packed brown sugar

1/2 cup unsweet cocoa powder

Then, in a separate bowl, stir these together

1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil

1/2 Soy vanilla yogurt (I just used a whole carton)

2 Cup Almond Milk (or your other favorite milk alternative)

2 Tsp. Red Wine Vinegar

1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract

I’ve never used vinegar in baking before, and definitely not one that is red, so I was pretty skeptical. But I do think it made the muffin moister, and didn’t taste odd at all

After all that is combined, gently fold in the dry ingredients, and in this case, you do need to make sure not to over mix! You want to look slightly fluffy and airy… these are girly muffins :)

Grease your muffins pans and fill about 1/2 way full

Then, stir these together

Aprox. 3 Tbs vegan cream cheese (that’s all I had left over from the cinnamon rolls, but I will use more next time, since this was the best part of the muffin)

2 tsp unsweet cocoa

1 tsp powdered sugar

You want it to all be combined, like this

I also drizzled a little bit of vegan chocolate sauce on my half filled muffins, but if you cant find anything like that don’t worry (though you could just melt some chips)

Then scoop the cream cheese mixture into each pan, and cover with the remaining batter

Now you want to top with choco-choco-chips!

I have been conditioned all my life to think that these were the only chips worthy of consumption either by themselves, or through baking, and I am ever so happy to discover that they are animal friendly :)

Put as many or as few as you’d like

And press them lovingly into the batter slightly

(remember that when you do this, you will have added about a whole bag to the batter already…. Right?)

Then pop-em in the oven for about 20-25 minutes and viola! Chocolate muffins!

Like I said, they were good, the top part was the best best best, since the cream cheese stuff rose to the top and it was ever so delicious. The rest of the muffin was moist and nice, but bland and not chocolatey enough, it definitely needed some chips mixed in…

To eat mine, I drizzled some more of my chocolate sauce over it; a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to get her fix