Baked Tofu Sticks with Three Dipping Sauces

These tofu sticks are wonderfully simple--just throw them in the oven and forget about them.  There's no need to marinate or press: the sauces give you all the other flavor you need, and the dry heat of the oven ensures a great firm and crispy texture.  Don't skip the onion salt; it makes a difference.

Tofu Sticks, warm and crispy

Baked Tofu Sticks:

Ingredients:
1 lb firm or extra-firm tofu
cooking spray or oil
about 1/8 to 1/4 tsp onion salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray or oil. Slice tofu into roughly finger-size sticks. Arrange them on the cookie sheet. Feel free to pack them close together; just try not to have them actually touching each other. Spray or brush tops lightly with more oil.

Bake for 25 minutes, flip them, and then bake 15-20 minutes more, until they are golden brown and crispy on both sides. While they are still hot, sprinkle them evenly with onion salt, tossing them around to make sure they are evenly coated.

Serve warm with one or more of the following sauces:

Peanut Sauce

Peanut Sauce:

Ingredients:
3 tbsp peanut butter
1tbsp lime or lemon juice
1/4 cup soymilk or coconut milk
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp curry powder
4 tsp sugar or sweetener
1 tsp agave nectar (optional)
1 tsp soy sauce
dash of cinnamon
Water to thin sauce

Directions:
Mix ingredients together; heat sauce until warm. Add water if necessary (it probably will be) to thin it to a dip-able consistency.
This sauce is also good in Asian style pasta dishes.

Lemon Sauce

Lemon Sauce:

Ingredients:
3-4 Tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar or sweetener
1/4 cup water
2-3 tsp cornstarch
1/8 tsp turmeric
Dash of cinnamon
up to 1/2 tsp of lemon or orange zest (optional-use half if dried)




Directions:
Mix together all ingredients. Cook for 1-3 minutes on stove top or in microwave until thickened.

This sauce is also very good in stir fries--just double the recipe and add it right to your frying pan/wok when the veggies are almost done.


 
"Ranch" Sauce:

Ranch style dipping sauce

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp vegan sour cream or plain vegan yogurt
1/8 tsp onion powder
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp dill weed
a dash of lemon pepper
a dash of beau monde seasoning
a dash of dried parsley or chives (optional)
soymilk, water or lemon juice for thinning (optional)

Directions:
Whisk ingredients together. Thin it to a more dip-able consistency, if you like, with one of the listed options. You can add any other herbs or spices that sound good to you, such as tarragon or perhaps nutmeg, and leave out any that don't. It's pretty flexible.




This turned out pretty nice. The little assortment of sauces made a quick and easy meal more fun and interesting.

Vegan Sweet and Sour Cabbage Rolls

 This was fun. I thought it was quite flavorful, and a good use of frugal, healthy ingredients.

Vegan Cabbage Rolls with Sauce

Vegan Sweet and Sour Cabbage Rolls

Ingredients:

1 head of cabbage

Filling:

1 cup dry lentils

1 cup dry brown rice

½ large onion

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 tsp curry powder

¼ tsp cinnamon

2 tsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp lemon juice

salt, pepper, and lemon pepper to taste

¼-1/2 cup small dried fruit such as currants, raisin or dried cranberries

Sauce:

¾ of a 14 oz can cranberry sauce

1 6 oz can tomato sauce

½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp soy sauce

Directions:

Core the head of cabbage, and boil for approximately 6 minutes. Remove cabbage from water and let cool.

Cook lentils and brown rice according to your preferred method (I usually go with 20 minutes of simmering for the lentils and 30-35 minutes for the brown rice), using the cabbage water if you like (it has flavor and nutrients). Meanwhile, sauté the onion and garlic with the curry powder and cinnamon.

Sauteing the vegetables

 Peal off leaves of cabbage and set aside for stuffing.  Chop up the inner leaves that are too small for rolls as well as any that are hopelessly broken, and add them to the frying pan with the onions and garlic. Cook for a few minutes.

Mash about ¼ of the lentils (this will act as a binder). Mix in the rest of the lentils, the brown rice, the onion mixture, and the rest of the filling ingredients.  Adjust the flavoring, particularly salt, to taste.

Stuffing the cabbage

Stuff the leaves. Lay a cabbage leaf out flat, and place 1-3 tablespoons of filling, depending on leaf size, near the stem end. Fold in sides and roll up, starting with stem. Place finished rolls seam-side down in slow cooker, piling up in multiple layers. Sprinkle any remaining chunks of cabbage over the top.

In the slow cooker

Mix together sauce ingredients. Pour over rolls in slow cooker.  Add 1-3 cups of water (the cabbage water works fine) until the liquid covers rolls.

Set slow cooker on high and cook for 2-3 hours.

Makes 12-18 rolls (depending on size). Serve with a steak knife, the cabbage remains a little toothsome.

Variation:  For a richer, sweeter sauce, add an extra can of cranberry sauce and omit water.

First Layer of Cabbage Rolls

My Favorite Vegan Tofu Omelet

This recipe is a combination of three different vegan omelet recipes I’ve tried, each one contributing one key ingredient: silken tofu, cornmeal, and garbanzo flour. Silken tofu is much easier to blend totally smooth than regular tofu, the cornmeal provides essential flavor and texture, and the garbanzo flour helps with browning.

Vegan omelette filled with caramelized onions, potatoes and mushrooms

 

Favorite Vegan Tofu Omelet

Ingredients:

2  12 oz boxes of silken tofu

¼ cup cornmeal

¼ cup nutritional yeast

¼ cup water or soymilk

1 heaping Tbsp garbanzo flour (optional)

½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp turmeric

1/8 tsp cumin

½ tsp salt (or less)

½ tsp lemon pepper

oil or cooking spray for pan

Fillings (arguably the most important part!):  I used a combination of mushrooms sautéed with garlic and parsley, potatoes, and caramelized red onions. Other options include salsa, cooked greens, beans, faux meats or cheeses, or various sautéed, roasted or grilled vegetables.

Fillings, warm and waiting

Directions:

Puree all ingredients (except oil and fillings) in a blender until completely smooth. It may be helpful to pre-mash the tofu a little before blending.

Put oil in a (preferably nonstick) frying pan and heat to medium heat. (make sure the pan is one with a lid). Pour ¼ of your blender batter into the hot pan and spread it out into a circle with a spatula. Cover the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Have your fillings warm.

Not quite ready

 

When the five minutes are up, lift the lid.  The top of the omelet should look mostly dry; if it’s very wet give it another minute of cooking. Place the filling of your choice in a strip across the middle third of the omelet. Using a spatula, carefully loosen and fold each side across the middle, burrito- style. Cover the pan again and cook for 1 more minute.

Remove to a plate and cook the other three omelets using the remaining batter, re-oiling the pan as necessary. If you’re a skilled multi-tasker, you could use two or more pans and have multiple omelets going at the same time.

Can be topped with ketchup, salsa, or guacamole.

Serves 4

Variations: There are various ways to fold an omelet.  In addition to the burrito style above, there is the classic half-moon shape in which the omelet is simply folded in half over the filling. The omelet can also be rolled around the filling like a cigar. I think the burrito style is the easiest to do successfully with the tofu batter, which has somewhat less natural structural integrity than a traditional egg batter.

The batter can be also be cooked without any filling, and then be chopped up and added to fried rice or Pad Thai.

Half-moon style

Unbelievably Easy Vegan Peanut Butter Pie

I’ve made quite a few tofu cream pies in my day. There’s a fairly wide variety of recipes, with various degrees of difficulty and quality. I’ve made very impressive ones that took hours of layering and had long lists of ingredients, and I’ve tried really quick ones that sometimes skimped too much. This one has the best labor-to-reward ratio: the least amount of work producing the best result for your time. I make this pie whenever I need a recipe that only takes five or ten minutes to assemble and can be made hours ahead of time.  It always gets raves for its rich flavor and light, creamy texture. The carob version is particularly nice; peanut butter always makes the best of carob.

Peanut Butter Pie (Carob version)

 

Quick Vegan Peanut Butter Pie

Ingredients:

2  12 oz packages firm silken tofu

¾ cup peanut butter

¾ cup sugar or sugar-free sweetener

1/3 cup cocoa or carob powder

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp instant coffee or caffeine-free coffee substitute (optional)

a handful of chocolate or carob chips for garnish (or other garnish such as toasted nuts or coconut))

9 inch pie crust (crumb preferred)

Directions:

Prepare your pie crust, pre-baking if necessary (the filling is no-bake).

In the food processor

Place tofu, peanut butter, sweetener, cocoa or carob, vanilla, and coffee into a food processor or strong blender. Puree until absolutely smooth with no lumps whatsoever, scraping down the sides once or twice if necessary.

 

 

Pour filling into your pie shell. Sprinkle chocolate or carob chips artfully over the top.

Chill for several hours before slicing if you want it to look pretty. It’ll still taste good if you can’t wait though. : )

A slice of pie

This recipe works very well sugar-free.  I believe it would also work fine using alternative nut butters, although it would be a little expensive in this amount.

Vegan Gravy Supper

There’s something very soothing about gravy.  It’s warm and thick and familiar, and it’s compatible with almost anything savory. A good gravy can not only jazz up the classic potatoes and biscuits and make the most of various mock meats, but it well known for its ability to rescue recipes gone slightly awry. A dish that turns out a bit bland or homely can be well disguised with a puddle of gravy.

This particular gravy recipe was inspired by a gravy recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. I liked the idea of using mashed beans to thicken and add texture as well as protein.  However, I wanted to use a different mix of herbs and incorporate some mushrooms that were in my fridge. Also, the recipe in the book seemed to my eye to be slightly off in its dry-to-wet ingredient ratio, as well as a little overly generous with the soy sauce and nutritional yeast, so I decided to take the gravy filling from my Seitan Pot Pie and combine the two recipes. The result was very nice (and southerner-approved!).

Gravy simmering away

 

Golden Mushroom Gravy

8 oz sliced mushrooms

½ of a large onion, diced

2-3 tsp garlic, minced

2-3 Tbsp oil

1 tsp dried parsley

1/8 tsp dried marjoram

1/8 tsp dried rosemary (crunched in hand)

1/8 tsp dried savory

1/8 tsp dried thyme

¼ tsp ground cumin (optional)

3 Tbsp flour

3 cups veggie broth or water (I used water + 3 tsp broth powder)

1 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 2 tsp water

1 15 oz can garbanzo beans, rinsed, drained, and mashed

1 tsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp nutritional yeast. (optional)

Salt, pepper or lemon pepper to taste

Sauté the mushrooms, onion and garlic using a little bit of the oil (save the rest for the roux). Add the herbs and spices. When the veggies look done (cooked through and lightly browned), push them over to one side of your pan. Make a roux in the space you’ve cleared by mixing the remaining oil with the flour in your pan and browning very lightly.

Add water or broth to your pan and stir everything together.  Simmer the mixture for three minutes.

Add mashed beans, cornstarch slurry, and remaining ingredients. Cook for 1-2 more minutes, or until thickened, then taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Gravy will continue to thicken as it cools.

Mashed potatoes, a split biscuit, and vegan meatballs all drenched in gravy.

I served this warm over biscuits, store-bought vegan meatballs, and mashed potatoes with some white beans mixed in. It would also be good over vegan meatloaf, hash browns or fries, toast, rice, cooked vegetables, grits/polenta, or a tofurkey-style roast.

Variations:

 Creamy: Replace some or all of the water or broth with non-dairy milk for a creamy southern-style gravy—particularly traditional with biscuits.

Smooth:  Puree the mixture using a standard or immersion blender before serving.

Using different beans could change the color and flavor in interesting ways.  Black beans would make it darker, navy lighter.

Black Forest Chocolate-Cherry Cobbler with Quick Vegan Chocolate Sauce

This is bit of a departure from all the candy recipes I've been posting. After wearing ourselves out making fancy treats all week, here's a nice easy dessert to serve on Valentine's Day itself.  It seems very rich and decadent, but it's actually very fast and easy, and not too bad for you either. It's a good dessert to make the day after making vegan chocolate covered cherries because you can use up the rest of your can of pie filling.
Both the cobbler and the sauce work very well sugar-free, by the way.

Black Forest Cobbler

Black Forest Chocolate-Cherry Cobbler

3/4 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar (or sweetener)
1/2 cup cocoa or carob powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup soymilk
3 tbsp oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp instant coffee or coffee substitute (optional)

1 can cherry pie filling (I used low sugar)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine flour, sugar, cocoa or carob powder, instant coffee, baking powder and salt. Mix together soy milk, oil and vanilla and add to dry ingredients. Try not to over-mix.

Pour pie filling into 8 inch square baking pan. Dollop chocolate batter over pie filling, trying to distribute evenly.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, until topping looks firm and dry and filling is thick and bubbly. Serve warm with a spoonful of chocolate sauce.

Makes 9 servings (and the leftovers are even better!)


Quick Chocolate Sauce:

Quick Vegan Chocolate Sauce

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar or sweetener
3 Tbsp cocoa or carob powder
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp oil (optional)
1 Tbsp chocolate or carob chips (optional)
a dash of cinnamon (optional)
1/4 tsp instant coffee or coffee substitute (optional)

Cook first four ingredients together in microwave or on the stovetop until thickened. This takes about a minute in the microwave.

Stir in vanilla, and rest of ingredients if using. The oil and chocolate chips add richness; leave them out for a fat free sauce.

Use immediately.  If you have to make it ahead of time, decrease the cornstarch to 1/2 Tbsp because the sauce will continue to thicken as it sits.

Cobbler with a dollop of chocolate sauce

Homemade Vegan Chocolates--Techniques and Ideas

Well, I've spent all week posting about homemade vegan chocolates, so I thought I'd do a summary post of how and why homemade chocolates can be a fun project, as well as list some general ideas of different directions you can go in.

Valentine's Day can can a tough day for singles, but it's even tougher when you can't even find comfort in the overflowing candy isles.  Being surrounded by a constant barrage of advertisements and enticements for treats you can't eat can be fairly torturous in a "water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink" kind of way.

So what's a hungry vegan to do when none of those huge cardboard hearts fit the bill? Make their own, of course.  Luckily you don't have to be a pastry chef or a master chocolatier to make something really good.

The best thing about making your own treats is you can customize them as much as you want. Need them to be low sugar? No problem, just substitute whatever sweetener you like. Got to have carob instead of chocolate? That's fine too. Gluten-free, nut free, and dairy-free (implied with the vegan of course) are all doable. And even better, you can customize them to your personal taste as well as your dietary needs. If you only make the kinds you like, there's no squinting into the box trying to figure out where the dreaded coconut is lurking. And you can make flavor combinations that aren't commercially available at all, such as raspberry hazelnut or perhaps mocha-cherry "cheesecake".

The sky's the limit, or rather, your patience is. You can make really simple or amazingly complex and impressive efforts, depending on how energetic you are. Or how deep in the doghouse you are. Homemade chocolates make a great gift/apology too. : )

Here are some options for homemade vegan valentine chocolates:

1.  Dipping various things in chocolate
The simplest form of homemade chocolate candy is probably just a basic chocolate covered fill-in-the-blank, made by melting chocolate, dipping whatever you want into it and letting it harden. There's really not much more to it. Some people like to add a little vegetable oil or shortening (or even wax!) to the chocolate to help make it shiny, or go to the trouble of tempering, but it's not totally necessary.

Chocolate Dipped Pretzels and Graham Crackers

Things that can be dipped in chocolate:

•      fresh fruit (has to be stored in the fridge and eaten promptly)
•     dried fruit or candied fruit (as well as candied citrus peel or ginger-yum!)
•     candy (toffee, marshmallows, fondant, marzipan, sponge candy, brittle)
•     cookies--ginger snaps, shortbread, basic tollhouse etc.
•    nuts (regular, toasted, candied or spiced can be a nice touch)
•    salty snacks (pretzels, crackers, potato chips)   

2. Clusters/Haystacks/Bark
This is even easier than dipping things, and works better for smaller items such as raisins. You just melt some chocolate and stir in some nuts, dried fruit, pretzels, cereal, coconut, or even some types of noodles. Then scoop up little clumps of the mixture and drop them on wax or parchment paper to dry.
If you just pour out your mixture onto a lined pan and cut it after it hardens, you can call it "bark" instead of haystacks.
White chocolate works just as well, and so does carob. I even have a peanut butter version with no chocolate at all.

3. Truffles--little vaguely round candies that are shaped like...well, fungus.  That probably isn't the best way to sell them. : )  There are a lot of different variations but one thing that is always true is that they are always very rich, with intense flavor and a soft, luscious texture. They veganize pretty well, too, as the chocolate is very much the dominant ingredient; if you've got a good vegan chocolate (or carob, even), you're pretty much set for truffles.

• The most common form of truffle is based on ganache, a thick frosting-like spread. Traditional non-vegan ganache is a mixture of melted chocolate and heavy cream that can be shaped into balls after it cools and firms up. The balls can then be dipped in melted chocolate for a hard shell or, more commonly, rolled in cocoa powder (powdered sugar, sprinkles, nuts or coconut are also covering options).The main question for vegan ganache is what to replace the cream with. Coconut milk would be a very close (and rich) approximation, but just plain soy milk works better than you'd think. Homemade cashew creams and similar concoctions work fine too, and can add their own flavor. Whatever cream analog you choose can be enhanced with spices or extracts or even infused with coffee or tea if you like before it is mixed with the chocolate.   
•  Sometimes instead of ganache, the center of a truffle may be filled with other things, such as cake or cookie crumbs mixed with frosting or vegan cream cheese. This type of truffle is usually dipped in chocolate rather than rolled in cocoa for reasons of structural integrity. Truffles may be filled with cookie dough as well.

Vegan Ganache based truffles

   


4. Filled chocolates- Little shells of chocolate encasing various sweet and creamy things. These are the ones most associated with the big cardboard hearts. When it comes to the homemade version, you've got two basic options: making the filling a bit on the firm and dry side and simply dipping pieces of it in chocolate, or making the filling more soft and liquid and pouring it into shells of chocolate and sealing it off. Both methods have merit, with some ingredients working better with one or the other. If you don't have chocolate molds to use for the second method, you can get the came effect with paper mini muffin liners.

Types of fillings:   

•  Cream--Actually most "cream" fillings are made with fondant (see below). Some homemade chocolates however do involve things like cream cheese and other dairy or faux dairy products to make white fillings. These are usually pretty simple to substitute. Both these fillings and fondant ones can achieve a variety of flavors through extracts and add-ins, such as vanilla, mint, coconut, citrus or other fruit flavors.
•  Fondant (cooked or uncooked)--Fondant is form of white candy that is almost entirely sugar, and is actually the "cream" in most cream filled chocolates. Most of the time it is cooked with a candy thermometer and kneaded laboriously. There are a number of recipes that veganize very well. They don't modify at all well for low sugar cooking though. There are also a few uncooked fondant recipes that involve kneading small amounts of liquid into a large amount of powdered sugar.
• Jam or fruit filled--There's something terribly gourmet about a tiny cup made of dark chocolate, filled with raspberry jam. Other fruit-and chocolate combinations can be equally fancy. Sometimes the fruit works well straight, sometimes a cream-type filling is added as well, as in chocolate covered cherries.
  

  

  Vegan Chocolate Covered Cherries

•  Nut butter filled--Peanut butter is probably the most common. There are quite a few vegan Reese's peanut butter cup recipes on the net.
•  Caramel- The combination of caramel and chocolate if the basis for several of the most popular commercial candy bars. There's something about the flavors and textures that just work together.
  

  

  Various Caramels

• Ganache--This would a truffle-like effect in a different form

   
5. Fudge--Like any recipe that is 90% sugar, traditional fudge recipes veganize just fine.  Non-traditional recipes that get their texture from specific un-vegan ingredients such as sweetened condensed milk rather than old style sugar-cooking techniques may not. I've tried some that did work, however. You can make fudge look extra good for Valentine's Day by sprinkling red or pink sprinkles or crushed starlight mints over the top before it hardens. Pink tinted coconut would be pretty too.

Uncooked Carob Peanut Butter Fudge

6. Shaped chocolate--Plain chocolate can be formed into interesting and festive shapes in a variety of ways.

• Molded--Chocolate can be pour into special molds in all kinds of shapes: hearts, eggs butterflies, pi.
• Piped--It takes a certain amount of skill (more than I have!) but melted chocolate can actually be squeezed through a piping bag and used to draw simple or elaborate designs.
• Scraped--Various techniques can be used to scrape hardened chocolate into curls or shavings. There's a particular method that creates long tubes that used to be called "chocolate cigarettes." I think maybe chocolate telescopes or something would probably be a better name in this day and age if you're serving them to kids.

7. Candy bar imitations--If you're missing a particular commercial treat, there's no reason not to try to replicate it specifically. For example, if you poured a layer of caramel over a shortbread cookie and dipped it in chocolate, you'd get something very like a Twix bar. Caramel with nuts covered in chocolate would be like a Baby Ruth. Chocolate with crispy rice cereal mixed in would resemble a  Nestle Crunch.
You just have to try and deconstruct the particular elements and figure which ones you can replicate. It could be a fun challenge.



Well, that's about all I have to say on the subject of chocolate!


Here's the week's chocolate recipe roundup, if you missed any:

Vegan Rocky Road
Vegan chocolate Covered Cherries
Vegan Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles
Vegan Chocolate Covered Caramels, and Chocolate Covered Caramels with Peanut Butter Fudge
Chocolate Dipped Pretzels and other miscellaneous things