Cannoli

I went on this date in college. It was with someone several years older, which was really what I was looking for at the time. He was an NPR reporter and seemed to have his life together in a totally attractive way. Somehow on the night that we met I mentioned that since becoming vegan I had really missed eating cannoli, and he suggested that we figure out how to make them. Next thing I knew he bought this set of cannoli forms online. When they showed up I went over to his house for the evening to make cannoli. If you've never made cannoli before, this is a really long process, which was probably (definitely) a terrible idea for a first date. If you have only spoken to someone in a crowd for fifteen minutes, you might not want the next step to be being alone in a tiny apartment kitchen for 6-7 hours. It was all just a little awkward. I remember there were dinosaurs all over his room and then top top it off, he showed me his chainmail collection. He was really sweet and I was really nice the whole time, but I just knew about ten minutes into this several hour process that we were only going to be friends. We made the cannoli from this bizarre recipe I found online using silken tofu to fill them, and they were downright awful. But I pretended it was great and avoided a goodbye kiss, and I ended up walking away with a set of cannoli forms he didn't want to keep.
Flash forward a few years, and I have made vegan cannoli two more times. The first time I got the shell right. But the filling still wasn't quite what I wanted. I knew that I didn't want it to be too sweet or frosting-like, which is how I feel about Vegan Treats cannoli filling. So I decided to try and get as close to possible as a ricotta by making one from almonds. It worked out quite well. I think it would work with cashews too, but I think the almond flavor is a little more subtle.


Almond Ricotta

1 1/2 cup almonds
3/4 cup canned coconut milk
1/4-3/4 cup water

Pour almonds in a bowl and completely cover with several inches of water. Soak overnight. The next day drain the almonds while boiling a few cups of water. Pour boiling water over almonds and allow to sit for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. This is called blanching. Now peel all the almonds, by squeezing them between your thumb and forefinger. This is a tedious task, but a great time for self reflection. Plop all your peeled almonds in your best blender/food processor with the coconut milk. Start trying to process it. Stopping to add more water as need to keep the blades moving and making sure to scrape down the sides frequently. It took me about fifteen minutes to get the ricotta as smooth as I wanted it. The ricotta can be made in advance and chilled for about 4 days before it will start to sour. If you have additional ricotta left over, you can add savory seasonings and use it in pasta dishes!

Cannoli Filling

12 oz almond ricotta, recipe above
12 oz vegan cream cheese
2 tbl shortening
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Combine ricotta, vegan cream cheese, & shortening and beat for several minutes until combined. Add powdered sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon and beat for several minutes until fluffy. This should have a very thick, frosting like consistency with a hint of cinnamon and a very subtle sweetness. If you're filling isn't think, it is probably because you needed to add additional liquid when making your ricotta, you can add a little more shortening to thicken it up. Fold in chocolate chips and allow to chill until ready to use. The filling can be made up to 4 days in advance, too much longer and it will start to sour.

Cannoli Shells
makes 15-20 cannoli shells depending on thickness rolled out too

2 3/4 cup flour
2 tbl sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup shortening
2/3 cup marsala wine
2 Ener-G eggs, prepared separately
enough oil for frying, I used around 4 cups.
3 oz of chocolate, optional
powdered sugar for dusting

Prepare one Ener-G egg and let sit to thicken. Combine flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Mix until evenly distributed. Add shortening in small chunks, and begin to mix on a low speed. Add Ener-G egg and slowly drizzle in wine until a thick dough forms. Wrap in parchment and allow to chill for one hour.
Prepare second Ener-G egg and allow to sit. Add oil to a pan that is at least two inches deep. Turn to a medium-high temperature and allow to heat up while you start rolling out the dough. I broke the dough into 6 small portions to make it more manageable. I rolled each portion out between sheets of parchment paper and didn't need to use any flour to keep the dough from sticking. I cut sections of the dough with a 3.5" cookie cutter & then rolled those out in one direction to make very thin,wide ovals. Place your cannoli form at one end and roll it towards the other side. Brush the inside edge with a little Ener-G before placing it on top of the other side of the dough. Fry one at a time until totally golden. Allow to cool for several minutes before trying to pull out the cannoli mold or you will burn your fingertips! I had 4 forms, so normally by the time I got to the last one, I could pull the first mold out of the shell. Repeat until all dough is used. Once cooled dip ends in melted chocolate if desired.
Place the filling in either a piping bag with a large tip or use a ziplock bag or a spoon if that's all you have. Fill it until it can't hold any more filling. You can dip the edges of the filling in chopped pistachios & a cherry if you want to get super Italian. You could dip them in more chocolate chips. I left them the way they were so I could see the beautiful filling I was so proud of. They are fine for 2 days, but are really best eaten immediately.


I had seen a recipe for a baked cannoli bite on Cooking Classy that I knew I also had to try since I was already making cannoli. My shell recipe really didn't taste great baked. I found it to be a little too crunchy and I think the flavor of the oil is pretty essential in giving the dessert their signature taste. However the bites were still super cute. Since making these last week I have been thinking about it quite a bit, and came up with an alternate way to make mini cannoli cups. You could freeze the dough in the mini cupcake pans and then fry them individually! I am 99% sure this will work, and it is definitely on my to try list. That way you don't have to even worry about buying your own molds, unless you too have a date who might buy some for you?!
This wraps up my Vegan MoFo sweets! I wanted to save the best for last, and I really think I did. It's a close call with baklava cheesecake, but I think this is definitely the winner in my book. I hope everyone else had a great month. What was your favorite thing that you made? Did you meet lots of amazing new bloggers too? It's always refreshing to find new people with similar views.


Also if you don't already have a KitchenAid mixer and live in the US or Canada, you have 24 more hours to enter to win this mixer I am helping give away! It's my favorite piece of kitchen equipment, and I can't remember how I made do without it. So enter!

Pain au Chocolat

Let's make something totally clear. I am a huge fan of buying rolls of puff pastry. It's not that the stuff is hard to make. It's just that it's really labor intensive, and I generally can think of several other things that I would rather spend my time doing. However, if you have never tried to make puff pastry from scratch I think it's worth the attempt just to have an understanding of how great an invention frozen pastry is. Vegan Dad has a really great recipe and explains the process perfectly.
I wanted pain au chocolat. So I took my prepared puff pastry and rolled it out to a 9x13" rectangle. I pressed mini chocolate chips into around two inches of dough and then cut that into 6 pieces along the 13" side using a pizza cutter so that you have 6 strips, each 2x9" with two inches of that coated in chocolate. Now roll it up starting with the chocolate. Place it onto a parchment lined sheet tray with the seam down. Brush the tops with coconut milk and sprinkle lightly with sugar. I baked them at 400 for about 15 minutes, until they were totally golden and flaky. Let them cool a few minutes before you bite in, or you will burn your tongue on molten chocolate. The temperatures and times will vary on your pastry and oven, but start with whatever the recipe you are following says and then just check your oven frequently to make sure they are browning evenly.
Whatever you do, make sure that your pastries are on parchment paper and not wax paper. I feel like recently I have heard several stores of people spending their whole days making puff pastry from scratch and then putting their croissants into the oven only to have a smoky mess a few minutes later, because they accidentally used wax paper. Don't let this tragic tale become yours.


I was curious about gluten free pain au chocolat and found a recipe in BabyCakes Covers the Classics. Obviously it isn't a laminated dough so it couldn't be the same, but these were more like cookies to me. I will have to dig a little deeper and find a gluten free puff pastry recipe to give a whirl.


Also today is the most magical day of the year. It's DC VegFest! So I will be spending my whole day in this beautiful 70 degree weather, eating snacks and talking to all my favorite local businesses and non-profits. If you are in the area, I highly suggest coming out. It's from 11-6pm at Yards Park! I will be at the Conscious Corner table (booth 6) for most of the afternoon if you want to come say hello in person or buy a cupcake!

Cream Puffs

When I think of the dessert that I probably miss the most since going vegan, it is definitely cream puffs. I have never had an acceptable version without all the eggs & cream. I remember eating cream puffs larger than my oversized mug of coffee my freshman year of college. I have missed them since. But not any longer!
After the little bump that was my eclair failure, these cream puffs were smooth sailing. I found the recipe last month while reading Quick & Easy Vegan Bake Sale. The steps in the choux recipe are fairly similar to that in the eclairs, but using a chia egg instead of flax. They puffed up quite nicely and I filled them with the same cream from Miyoko's eclair recipe. I dipped them in a gianduia ganache that I thinned out a wee bit too much. I will definitely be making these cream puffs again!

Cashew Cream & Cherry Baby Strudel

I really intended to make a regular sized strudel. But then when I unrolled my thawed phyllo, I realized that most of it was broken in half. So I just decided to work with it and make little baby, single serving strudel. Keep your chin up, and MoFo on.
Cherries and cream are really the best combination I can think of. Tart cherries and cream is the only superior combination. I know that people have trouble finding them sometimes. Recently I have seen them in jars at Whole Foods and in cans at Giant. So you could check in those sorts of places. If you can't find tart cherries, than fresh cherries (quite the splurge this late in the season) or frozen cherries should work. If you don't use jarred/canned cherries that are already in some sort of sugary syrup you might want to toss your cherries in simple syrup so they ooze a little in baking. I'm just saying. We want the cherry juices flowing. If you happen to have cherry pie filling lying around (I am also this sort of person), than you could obviously use that here as well!
Cashew Cream
makes approximately 1 1/2 cup cream

1 cup cashews, soaked overnight
1/4 cup canned coconut milk
3 tbl agave
1 tsp vanilla extract
water as needed
Cashew cream is one of the those things that you don't need a recipe before. You really just blend and taste until it fits what you want. This is where I started. I added a bit more water to really get it moving easily in my blender, since I don't have a VitaMix and I am scared of killing my Ninja. Having it a little thinner helps to get the cream really smooth, plus since I am baking it that process thickens the cashew cream anyways.

Cashew Cream & Tart Cherry Baby Strudel
five tiny strudel

10 sheets phyllo dough
2-3 tablespoons Earth Balance, melted
1 1/2 cup tart cherries
one batch cashew cream above
Preheat oven to 375. Take your phyllo sheets and cut them in half, so you now have 20 pieces. Place two sheets on a clean work area and lightly brush with melted Earth Balance. Add another sheet and brush either Earth Balance. Top with a final 4th sheet. Add a few tablespoons of cashew cream and spread it over the lower fourth of your phyllo. Add a thick row of cherries, approximately a half cup. Starting from the end with the filling roll the phyllo up tightly. Set on a parchment lined baking sheet with seam on the bottom. Brush top with Earth Balance and sprinkle with a bit of sugar if you desire. Repeat 4 more times. Bake 20-25 minutes until the phyllo is golden and crisp. Serve with whipped cream.


This is probably one of the easiest things I have made this month, but also easily one of the most satisfying. It's got all the right flavors and textures. And it's a dessert that you can eat a large portion of without feeling sick, because there isn't too much sugar. Maybe it's just my love affair with cherries. I am considering also making this with an almond cream, because that sounds like it would be super dreamy as well!

Eclairs (or not)

Miyoko's eclair recipe from this month's VegNews!
I was waiting in a line at the grocery store that I work for when I first saw the cover of this month's VegNews. There's a beautiful crepe cake. I thought about how badly I wanted to be eating a slice of that instead of the salad I was buying. But then it caught my eye, "classic French food veganized" & "custard filled eclairs". I sat down with that magazine and don't have a faint idea of what the salad was like. I read all of the recipes multiple times daydreaming about those eclairs.
I put them on the schedule for the month with my heart full of hope. But it didn't quite work out as planned. While Miyoko's recipe sounds perfect, I think my trouble came with the flax egg whites. After boiling them for the minimum amount of time they were practically un-strainable and impossible to accurately measure since it was almost a solid instead of a gel. I proceeded ahead anyways hoping for the best, but knowing that it probably wouldn't work. My eclairs tasted great. But they never rose and stayed quite doughy and instead of staying the shape I piped them sort of spread out into fat ovals. I tried to bake them for longer just to see if I could save it, so they turned into cookies. Which I still sandwiched together with pastry cream & dipped in chocolate, because why not?! It was almost like I intentionally made milano cookies.
I will definitely be giving this recipe another chance. And I did enjoy her pastry cream recipe, so you should at the very least try making that. I haven't made the crepe cake that initially reeled me in to the cover, but I am sure it is only a matter of time!

Baklava Cheesecake

Heather at Sprinkles Bakes makes the most unbelievable desserts all the time. Some of my favorites have been her hibiscus poppyseed shortbread cookies, Edgar Allen Poe inspired red velvet cake, and all of the recipes she shares on the Etsy blog. Everything she makes is beautiful and flawless. Her cookbook SprinkleBakes: Dessert Recipes to Inspire Your Inner Artist is one of my favorites. Her perfect execution of recipes inspires me to keep practicing, and hoping that I develop an artistic eye half as decent as her's. She made a baklava cheesecake at the end of May, that I have been stuck on since. Once I successfully made vegan baklava, I knew the cheesecake was the next step. It also fell perfectly into position. It wraps up cakes & ties in with my last theme for the month, pastry! I am definitely someone saves the best for last.



Vegan Baklava Cheesecake
one 8" cheesecake, veganized from this recipe on Sprinkles Bakes

Cinnamon "Honey" Syrup
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup agave
1 1/3 cup water
1 tsp cinnamon

Bring sugar, syrups, & water to a boil. Simmer for 25 minutes. Stir in cinnamon & allow to cool.

Cheesecake
7 oz walnuts, chopped into tiny pieces
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch sea salt
1/3 cup warm water
3 tbl Ener-G
24 oz vegan cream cheese
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup Earth Balance, melted
15 sheets phyllo dough

In a small bowl, combine 5 oz of chopped walnuts, 1/2 cup of the "honey" syrup, the cinnamon, and salt & set aside. Whisk together water and Ener-G and let sit until it thickens. In a mixer, combine cream cheese with thickened egg replacer, sugar, & vanilla. Beat until smooth.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place a piece of parchment paper on the base of your springform and then reattach the top of the pan (as Heather shows in her more detailed directions). Take each sheet of phyllo and lightly brush with Earth Balance. Fold in half. Lay in pan so that it is in the middle, and then hanging over the edge. Repeat many times so that each piece of phyllo is overlapping the last. Pour in half of cream cheese filling. Add a few blobs of cinnamon walnut mix, then top with rest of cream cheese. Add remaining nuts, and swirl.
Fold the overhanging phyllo on top of the cheesecake. I added another sheet of phyllo to the top of the cheesecake to fully cover all the filling to keep any of the syrup from burning. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Once your cheesecake has finished baking, turn oven off, open a few inches and allow to cool for an hour. Place cheesecake in fridge and allow it chill for 4 hours or overnight.
Bake a few of the remaining phyllo sheets at 350 for 10-20 minutes until golden. Sprinkle on top of cheesecake. Add remaining chopped walnuts and drizzle with some of the "honey" syrup.


I am going to warn you. This cheesecake is messy. Next time I would consider putting a piece of parchment inside of the springform pan ring after I lock it as well. The syrup does ooze as the cheesecake is baking. While most of the syrup stayed on the bottom piece of parchment, I found that a bit did also spill onto the sheet tray I placed under the springform. Next time I might just line the oven rack with aluminum foil, because the sheet tray kept the bottom bits of phyllo from browning the way I wanted them too.
The mess is totally worth it though. This cheesecake is amazing. It's rich and just sweet enough to add a more syrup to the top without it being too much. It also looks beautiful with minimal effort. Really once you pile the extra phyllo & walnuts on top, it just looks amazing. The way the phyllo wraps around the edge of the cake and then has extra height in the middle reminds me of a wrapped package. One that I can't wait to open until it is totally cooled.

Hummingbird Cake & Pineapple Flowers

While my original intention was to only bake things I have never made before, I snuck in hummingbird cake (my personal favorite) by topping it with dried pineapple flowers. I have seen these beautiful little cupcake toppers floating all over the blogosphere, but never really thought I would actually do it. As I was wondering around the grocery store after work, I decided it was time to put it to the test. I found this quick set of guidelines on The Tasty Bite Blog when I got home & set to it.
I probably should have thought it through a little bit better and maybe read some directions before I bought the pineapple. Because I recently learned how to pick a ripe pineapple (you just grab one of the leaves on top in the middle and if it pulls out easily, then it's ripe!), I put my new knowledge to use & bought a ripe pineapple. Because it was so ripe, it was actually a terrible choice for making dried pineapple flowers! It was so juicy and that makes it even more difficult to cut. I also haven't sharpened my kitchen knife in far too long, which made it even trickier. I didn't get any paper thin slices because I was a bit too pre-occupied with not slicing my fingers open. These ended up baking for almost 2 hours, and many of them were still not actually very dry but I couldn't wait any longer. Now I know?! Enough of them were cute that it was still worth it, plus I ate all the pineapple that was too thick to attempt to bake for breakfast.


The hummingbird cake recipe is from Nikki at the Tolerant Vegan. It's terrific in every way. Don't even think twice about roasting the bananas. It's a total must to get the caramel-y flavor which adds another great note to the cake. Some people like to throw some shredded coconut in their hummingbird cake, but it's just not my thing. Don't get me wrong I love coconut, but the texture of shredded coconut isn't something I want in my cake. Not that you can see the frosting since the point of these cupcakes were to decorate them with flowers, but they are topped with cream cheese frosting.
Red velvet and coconut might be the most recognizable Southern cakes, but hummingbird was the most popular recipe request from Southern Living Magazine until the last few years. In 1978 by a lady from North Carolina submitted the first recipe to Southern Living, and it became infamous. She never shared the name's origin story, but I have heard several theories over the years. That the cake is sweet enough to attract hummingbirds, the people flock around the cake like hummingbirds around a flower, that the flavors originate from Jamaica where the national bird is hummingbird… I'm liking folks flocking around the cake like birds around a flower, because of the way I decorated these little babies, but who really knows?!