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Snickerdoodle Blizzard (no bananas!)

July 23, 2015 · Natalie 34 Comments

Why does the name ‘blizzard’ sound so much better than ‘soft serve’? Frightening frigid storm = delicious?? It’s weird…but true. If you think about it, many ice cream treats have meteorological themed names: flurry, frosty, snow cone. And then you have the odd ones out that are named after days of the week (sundae) and the thing that rubber ducks do (float). And then you have soft serve…which is just kinda boring. So that’s why this is a Snickerdoodle Blizzard.

I promised you a chilly Snickerdoodle-inspired treat and here it is! But I need to tell you a surprising secret: there is no banana in this recipe!

I love banana ice cream, but it’s kinda old news, so I had a crazy idea to make soft serve out of sweet potato. It all started when I saw this sweet potato chocolate pudding recipe. And then after I saw this chocolate ice cream tower of tastiness from Brandi over at The Vegan 8 I had to try it myself!

But it’s not orange?! That’s because I used a Japanese sweet potato (red skin with white flesh), my current top sweet potato pick. They are so sweet. Almost creamy. I would go so far as to call them (vegan) buttery. A regular sweet potato will do, but obviously it will be more orange.

This ice cream is not instantaneous, but it’s still easy. You need to bake, blend, freeze overnight, blend some more, cookie-ify, then eat! I used Silk Unsweetened Cashew Milk in this recipe because it is the creamiest of the non-coconut non-dairy milks. Terrible for cereal (in my opinion), but great for ice cream! You can use any kind you like, but it might not be as super creamy.

Snickerdoodle Blizzard

★★★★★ 5 from 3 reviews

Yield: 1 -2 1x

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Ingredients

Scale

1 medium Japanese sweet potato (or regular sweet potato)
3/4 cup Silk Unsweetened Cashew Milk
5 pitted medjool dates
1/4 cup Silk Unsweetened Cashew Milk for blending
2–3 Snickerdoodle Cookies

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Instructions

Bake the sweet potato in the oven or microwave. Scoop out the flesh and freeze overnight.
Blend the 3/4 cup cashew milk with the 5 dates. Pour into an ice cube tray and freeze overnight.
The following day, remove the sweet potato from the freezer and let it thaw for about 10 minutes.
Blend the sweet potato, date/milk ice cubes, and the additional 1/4 cup milk on a high in a high speed blender until very smooth and creamy. You don’t want any lumps of sweet potato, so blend thoroughly and add 1 tablespoon additional almond milk if necessary.
Crumble in 1-2 snickerdoodle cookies. Blend briefly to mix them in.
Serve in a tall glass with a long spoon, and indulge!

Chewy Vegan Snickerdoodles

July 20, 2015 · Natalie 64 Comments

Get ready for the soft, sweet, cinnamon-coated bite of your cookie dreams with this easy chewy snickerdoodle recipe!

Cinnamon sugar is basically cookie fairy dust. It makes everything more magical and delicious, especially if you’re a cinnamon addict like me and my friend Rebecca. When I’m not developing a blog recipe but just baking for myself to eat, I usually just hold the cinnamon shaker upside down over the bowl and shake it for a solid 7 seconds at least!

Why is it cookie fairy dust? I think it has something to do with the spice-sweet balance, not to mention it gets all over your fingers and licking them is practically mandatory. And if you make it with coconut sugar like I did, then the cookie-nibbling and finger-licking will feel a little more healthful and wholesome.

I almost said “These little cookies are entirely fruit-sweetened!” but then I remembered that the cinnamon sugar coating has sugar in it, duh! But everything underneath the cinnamon sugar coating is fruit-sweetened. Not to mention moist and chewy and perfect. I know oil-free cookies can sometimes be really, really dry, but I guarantee that this chewy snickerdoodle recipe does not suffer from that healthy cookie curse.

I had a video. A video that perfectly captured the dough mixing, the cookie rolling, the sugar coating of this chewy snickerdoodle recipe. But I lost it. Somewhere between lugging all my photo equipment home to my parents house, backing up and erasing my entire hard drive because I kept running out of storage space on my laptop, and accidentally hitting the format card button on my camera thinking the clips were on my computer, it disappeared into the black hole that is that little trashcan icon. I was sad, but fortunately the cookies themselves survived the trip, as did these photos!

To make up for the videoless-ness, I do have a super special chilly treat coming up later this week featuring these cinna-sweet cookies. So bake a batch now and be ice-cream-recipe ready!

> Click Below To Pin <<<

Vegan Snickerdoodles (oil-free + gluten-free)

★★★★★ 4.9 from 8 reviews

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 10 1x

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Ingredients

Scale

8 pitted Medjool dates
1 1/4 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon (or less if you don’t like super cinnamon-y things)
1 tsp vanilla extract
SUGAR COATING
2 tbsps coconut sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

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Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F.
Blend all the cookie ingredients together in a food processor until it starts to clump together. Don’t over process.
Roll into 10 balls.
Mix together the coconut sugar and cinnamon.
Roll each ball in the sugar to coat all sides
Arrange the balls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Press the balls into cookie shapes (they will not spread much on their own).
Bake for 10-11 minutes at 350 F.
They are delicious warm, but keep any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge.

Silly fact: When I was little, I confused the words Shrinky Dink (those weird 90s craft things) and Snickerdoodles, so for a while I thought Snickerdoodles were an art project not a cookie.

Snack Swap with Curls’n’Chard

July 17, 2015 · Natalie 24 Comments

A crimson-colored quinoa crunch veiled in the thinnest blanket of chocolate. Fruity bars made from bizarre berries with Kangaroo peepers staring at me on the wrapper. Chewy squares that look like caramel but taste like lemonade. Chocolate with a crunch, a tang, and a catchy name. Fruit-shaped sticky bites that think they are exotic. And many more munchables that have traveled miles and miles to my snack-loving mouth!

Every continent, every country, every vegan loves snacks. I’m constantly talking to other vegans online from many miles and oceans away, and there seems to be quite a bit of variation in the vegan snackosphere! So out of curiosity and snack-love, my friend Kat, from the fantastic blog CurlsnChard.com, and I got together to send each other an assortment of edibles that the other has never tried. So I got a taste of Austria, and Kat got a taste of the U.S. vegan snack style.

Check out my taste testing video + and mini reviews below. I can’t pronounce any of it, but I sure can eat it!

Foodloose Bars • I got to try 3 flavors of these kinda like KIND bars. The first (in video) one was called Garden Gusto and it was super peanut-packed with big chunks of cherry. Super tasty and almost PB&J-esque. Next was the Delhi Delight, which was very tropical tasting from the mango, pineapple, and coconut with a little kick of curry. I’ve never had curry in a snack bar, so this was a new experience for me. And just when I thought I could pronounce the names of these bars, the last one messed with me. It was called Poesie Amelie and it was my favorite! With apples, figs, and cinnamon, I loved this one.

Aduna Moringa Bar • I really wanted to like this bar. Between the words “with mango” on the front and “supercharge your day” on the back it sounded like a winner…but no. Like so many other green superfood powders, I don’t think I like moringa sadly.

Roo’Bar • I’ll get to the taste in a minute, but can we just admire the adorable packaging for a minute please….okay glad we did that. It makes me think of both kangaroos and Winnie the Pooh, but I’m probably the only one who’s mind wanders there. Anyways, I tried the Inca Berry flavor, another berry I’ve never tasted, and it was very good. Mostly sweet, a little tart, a teensy taste of orange, altogether delicious!

Chufa Konfekt • I didn’t even attempt to pronounce this one, I’ll just call them Chewy Little Squares That Look Like Caramels But Taste Like Lemon. And I love lemon. And chewiness. So yeah these were awesome.

Raw Bite Bar • Now we’re getting to the chocolate! This bar is a lot like the Larabars we have here in the U.S., although this was quite a bit chunkier, which means more bites of chewy chocolate. I don’t think I have to tell you that this was yummy. But what I will tell you is that the flavor is distinguishably raw cacao, not just plain chocolate, which is neat.

Wow!Bab Bar • Wow!Bab you wowed me. I loved this bar. I want 12 more of this bar. The center is crunchy, slightly tangy, and a beautiful shade of pink. The crunch is from quinoa and amaranth. The color is from currants. And my love for this bar is from the thin coating of dark chocolate surrounding it all. Like a chocolate covered fruity rice crispy treat. I think this bar was made for me.

Pulsin Maca Bliss Bar • This little brownie-meets-bar hybrid was so rich and decadent. It looks a lot like any date and nut bar, but it really does taste more like a brownie. Let’s just say this one was gone pretty quick!

LoveChok Raw Chocolate • This bar had quite the journey from solid to melted to solid to my belly. And I’m so glad it survived that trip because it was divine! Kat sent me the ideal flavor for my tastebuds: blueberry vanilla. It was perfect. There was something crunchy in it I think. Don’t know, and don’t care what that was, I loved it!

Fruit Apps Gummies • I was ~~thrilled~~ glad when Kat asked if I wanted any gummy things in my box. I tried to contain my excitement…act like an adult, but I love gummy things about as much as your average 5 year old. These mini fruit-mimics came in 3 flavors: mango, orange, and pineapple. They were sweet squishy little bite-sized delights. I loved them and savored them piece by chewy piece.

Bonus! Baobab Powder • Kat was kind enough to send me a little sample of baobab powder to try too, and I really liked it. Tangy and very much like citrus. Can’t wait to work this into a recipe!

So that was my little taste of Austria, unwrapped, up close, and with lots of sweet-sticky finger licking!

Curious to see what I sent to Kat? Check out her taste test ➙ HERE

Now you tell me, if you were going to send a box of snacks from your country to someone around the world, what would you pack inside?

Chocolate Waffle Fruit Pizza

July 15, 2015 · Natalie 14 Comments

There really isn’t much to say about the silliness on this plate. It’s a waffle covered in chocolate covered in fruit. It’s dessert pizza for breakfast. It’s delicious. It will make the day ahead more fun. Enough said.

My waffle maker and I are still getting to know each other. Like I’m learning that it likes to burn my hand with steam when I leave the waffle a little too long. And that ‘non-stick’ doesn’t really mean no sticking. And that it likes to be cleaned with much care, running a Q-tip in each crevasse because the plates are not removable.

It is a needy contraption, but the waffles are still worth it. Especially when smeared with chocolate!

I seriously hope that you have a more exciting fruit selection in your fridge than I did when you make this. I only had strawberries. I had just used up my last two bananas in the chocolate sauce, but I dug in my pantry and found freeze dried bananas…which were weird on a waffle. So please, please be a better fruit-topping planner than I was!

Chocolate Waffle Fruit Pizza

★★★★★ 5 from 1 review

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 3 waffles 1x

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Ingredients

Scale

WAFFLE
1 ripe banana
1 cup gluten-free flour (or oat flour)
1 cup non-dairy milk
2 tsps baking powder
CHOCOLATE SAUCE
2 ripe bananas
2 tbsps cacao powder (or cocoa powder)
TOPPINGS: strawberries (raspberries, blueberries, bananas, kiwi etc.)

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Instructions

FOR THE WAFFLE: Blend all the ingredients to make a thick batter.
Prepare them according to your waffle maker’s instructions. It makes about three 6 inch waffles in my waffle maker.
FOR THE CHOCOLATE SAUCE: Blend the bananas and cacao on high until creamy.
Spread the sauce on the waffles, top with fruit, enjoy!

Reality…

PB&J Popcorn

July 13, 2015 · Natalie 19 Comments

If you aren’t following me on Instagram you may have missed the fun popcorn talk we had a few weeks ago. Sprinkled-on seasonings, cacao-coated kernels, and decadent-sounding drizzles, you guys had some awesome flavoring ideas! All that topping talk somehow planted a PB&J idea in my head, so I created PB&J Popcorn!

PB&J Popcorn take 1. Popcorn is not waterproof. Putting water on popcorn kills all the crunch factor…it’s pretty much like snack murder. There’s a lot of water in strawberries. There’s even more water in strawberry sauce. So the first version with a strawberry drizzle was more like PB&J collapse-corn.

PB&J Popcorn take 2. Strawberry sauce might have been a fail, but strawberry powder was perfect! But there was another problem…do you know what else has water in it? Powdered peanut butter sauce. If you use regular peanut butter than no problemo, oil on popcorn is just fine. In fact, those overly-runny all natural peanut butters would work perfectly in this recipe. But I was determined to make the powdered stuff work…

PB&J Popcorn take 3. PB2 is not the only powdered peanut product out there. I recently discovered Crazy Richard’s Pure PB, which happens to be unsweetened. It’s 100% peanuts, simple! And it also happened to solve my hydrophilic popcorn problem. Because you know what liquid doesn’t ruin popcorn? Maple syrup! So instead of using water to rehydrate the PB powder, I used maple syrup. If you used maple syrup with PB2 it would be TOO sweet (something I rarely say). But with the Crazy Richard’s Pure PB the sauce is sweet, drizzlable, and keeps the popcorn poppy!

PB&J Popcorn

★★★★★ 5 from 3 reviews

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes

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Ingredients

Scale

3 cups popped popcorn
1–2 tbsps all natural peanut butter
1/2 cup freeze dried strawberries

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Instructions

In a VERY dry blender, blend the freeze dried strawberries to a fine strawberry dust.
If you peanut butter is not runny enough to drizzle on, then microwave it for 30 seconds to 1 minute to soften.
Fill your bowl with popcorn, sprinkle on the strawberry powder, and drizzle with the peanut butter.
Serve immediately.

Notes

You can use powdered peanut butter for the sauce, but you have to eat it very quickly or it will make the popcorn soggy.

What sort of wacky popcorn flavors would you like to see next?

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Chewy Vegan Snickerdoodles

Vegan Snickerdoodles (oil-free + gluten-free)

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Snack Swap with Curls’n’Chard

Chocolate Waffle Fruit Pizza

Chocolate Waffle Fruit Pizza

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PB&J Popcorn

PB&J Popcorn

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Instructions

Notes

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