It's not a diet, its a lifestyle
When throwing parties I’m trying to think of more time efficient recipes to share with my family and friends because someone doesn’t want to spend his entire party in the kitchen! So since I’ll be throwing a Halloween party this Saturday I had to come up with some fun and new recipes for me to serve, and trust me, there’s almost nothing easier than serving spreads. This is a time saver as you simple add everything to a food processor, pulse and dip!
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It’s almost halloween and I’ve got a party planned for me and my friends, were I will be serving them with vegan halloween food. I’m too ashamed to call this a recipe, so let’s just call it an inspiration post. Being totally honest, this day I don’t want to spend the majority of the time in the kitchen, I want to be spending it with my friends, so the menu will be filled with simple yet delicious dishes like these easy peasy mini pizza’s. No need to make dough or spend more time than necessary when you can simply buy pre made pizza crusts, I even saved time on cutting the pizza’s by getting the mini ones. If you’re in the Netherlands you can find these mini crusts at the freezer section of Albert Heijn (not sponsored).
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It’s Oktober which means another batch of halloween inspired dishes will be appearing throughout the month, and we’ll be kicking it off with this purple soup. Serve this to your guests during a halloween party, “uhm what is this?” they will probably ask, looking at you like your some kind of witch. The moment they’ll try the soup though, this is when they’ll get it, they’ll be left bewitched.
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Trying new vegan product is always something that excites me, especially as I’m literally seeing new vegan products hitting the shelves almost every month, it gives me hope for a more sustainable future. Most of these products…
A party just isn’t complete without a nice sweet snack/dessert, and since we’re still working towards a spooky Halloween menu why not make a spooky recipe for cupcakes!? These cupcakes are moist and rich with a decadent silver frosting that will ward off all the evil spirits, some might even say that this frosting will even protect you from werewolves. No I didn’t use any funky food colouring, just black tahini which you’ll find a recipe for over here. By now you might have figured out that black tahini will be making an appearance into almost every Halloween dish this year, so go to your nearest asian grocery store and get yourself a big bag of black sesame seeds, it’s worth it! You can also order the seeds or the tahini on-line if you don’t have any store selling these product near you.
Now to be honest even though the frosting adds a nice flare of magic it isn’t very necessary since the muffins are sweet by them selves, having said that, it does add to the presentation and might be just what you need! You can also skip the black tahini if you don’t have any on hands and still want moist and dense cupcakes, or use less like the picture below. One thing to keep in mind when using black tahini is that you’ll want to let the cupcakes cool before you eat them, cause otherwise the taste of the tahini will dominate the cacao and that’s, not, delicious! But once they’ve cooled down they’re the most delicious chocolate cupcakes ever!
These cupcakes were an instant fave for my family, they weren’t to sweet and perfectly moist, just the way they like them! I also sneaked a couple of pieces of chocolate in the batter so some cupcakes would have a chocolate core, because who doesn’t like a chocolate overdose!?
You can expect even more Halloween themed recipes during the next week so we’ll all be ready for our Halloween parties, or ready to simply indulge, parties are overrated anyway! I really hope you like these recipes and feel free to leave a comment below or to tag me in your spooky creations on Instagram and don’t forget to like my Facebook page.
One Love,
A.J.
Granola is one of my breakfast staples, especially when I’m craving something crisp and sweet. Now since we’re sticking with the Halloween theme we’ll be making black granola flavoured with cacao and vanilla. All we need to turn this from brown to black is…
Every once in a while I like to explore my honor my Chinese roots by exploring the Chinese cuisine and veganising my favorite dishes! Today we’ll be making steamed buns also called Baozi or Bao. Since the only thing not vegan about these steamed breads are often the filling it’s not that difficult to veganize, no today we’ll be spookifying (I know it’s not a word, bear with me) these buns.
It all starts by making the buns from scratch and adding in a bit of black tahini, yup you can expect a lot of dishes using black tahini this month. You could also use charcoal but I find black tahini to be more cost effective when it comes to natural food colouring (if you make it from scratch of course) find the recipe for the black tahini here. These buns are soft and light, like little clouds, but at the same time dark and spooky.
As for filling It’s all up to you, I used a marinaded tofu which I pan fried a bit with some fresh veggies; beets, cucumber, carrot, tomato, brocolli cress, bean sprouts, tomato and avocado, and as for sauce I used a home made kimchi hummus, which you’ll find a recipe for later this week.
You can honestly fill these buns with whatever you want, you can use a black hummus to make it even more creepy or fill it with a mini burger patty to make these the perfect party sliders, scratch that, no matter what you stuff them with these buns make a perfect addition to your (halloween) party menu!
Now lets start cooking! And as usual feel free to leave a comment below or to tag me into your recreations on Instagram, I’d love to see you’re spooky creations. Bon Appetite!
One Love,
A.J.
Noodle salads are one of my go to dishes when I want something fast, filling and delicious, all you need is a tasty sauce and some colourful veggies to turn it into a meal! This is definitely a quick and easy recipe. It took me about 3 minutes to whip up the sauce and not much more to chop the veggies, you could all of this while the noodles are soaking and by the time they are done you’ve got yourself a meal. You could possible make this colourful rainbow noodle salad in less than 15 minutes, lets make it a challenge!
Just like many people like to dress up during halloween, well be dressing this salad up with a dark satay sauce, made using black tahini, which you can make yourself and you’ll find a little how to by clicking the link. The sauce will turn this once beautiful salad into a messy dark bowl of deliciousness.
Of course feel free to play around with the ingredients by using different veggies or a different type of noodle, I used rice noodles which I coloured with purple cabbage to make it blue and being able to transformed to pink with a few drops of lime. You can find out how to make these noodles by clicking on this link. Unicorn noodles aren’t required but its a fun way to turn a regular salad into a Harley Quinn inspired salad, perfect for Halloween!
Now lets start cooking! And as usual feel free to leave a comment below or to tag me into your recreations on Instagram. Bon Appetite!
One Love,
A.J.
Since we have entered October it is time to share some Halloween themed recipes! For some reason Halloween has to be one of my favourite times of the year, probable because I am a huge fan of horror movies. So to celebrate this spooky holiday I’ve decided to…
This will be my third steamed bun recipe and I’m not even close to being finished. Now since where in the middle of the holiday season I’d like to give a twist to the regular bao buns with some sweet potato bun with a spicy bean filling, this one’s a winner! These buns are different from the other two recipes, which you can find here and here, instead of being open, these buns are closed and filled with a delicious spicy bean mixture.
One of the reason I love steamed buns is because of the texture of the bread, it’s so soft and fluffy and because of the steam gets a nice and smooth “skin”. Adding sweet potato to the dough makes the dough a little sweet and adds a nice colour to the buns, to enhance the colour I also added a bit of turmeric, not only does this give the buns a lovely golden colour, it also adds to the nutrition of these buns, they’re basically super foods now, just kidding, or am I? All jokes aside my family loved these buns, and anytime a non vegan can’t deny the deliciousness of a vegan meal you know you did something right!
With these buns I’m paying homage to my Creole and Chinese roots by fusing the idea of Chinese steamed buns with a filling inspired by Surinamese cooking. The filling has celery leaves and adjuma peppers which are two ingredients often used in Surinamese cuisine and two ingredients I love working with. One to thing keep in mind if you can get your hands on the peppers and decide to use them is that they are very spicy so you might want to use chilli pepper instead or skip it all together.
To simplify the recipe I just made simple round balls, but you can play around with the design while closing the bun to create a more authentic look. You can also play around with the filling and even the colour of the dough by adding different natural food colourings. But no matter what you’ll do these bao buns will definitely have you asking for more!
I’m currently storing a batch in the freezer and fridge to see how long they’ll stay good and if they’re freezer friendly, so once I’m done testing I’ll edit my findings in this post.
For now go ahead and make some yourself, let’s get to it!
I hope you enjoyed this post, and feel free to leave a comment below, or to tag me in your recreations on Instagram and don’t forget to like my Facebook page.
One Love,
A.J.
