Fabulous Vegan Recipes

I saw a chocolate cheesecake recipe on IG and had to make my own, mostly because I want to get a new recipe up here but also because I was inspired to make another raw dessert. It's been a while since I've made a yummy dessert. I just returned home from Sicily-I was on a yoga retreat-and it was so magical. The food was fresh and organic and wonderful, the people were sweet and amazing and the country was just so simple and beautiful. I enjoyed the hot sun, swam in the pool and the ocean and just relaxed. Now that I spent a week eating local, fresh and organic, I want to keep doing this at home. I'm going to keep reaching for nuts, fruit and fresh veggies as much as I can and phasing out some of these mock meats I've been eating and...the salt, I'm not adding anymore.

My peanut butter craze reached an all new high the other day and it got so bad I swore off of it for 3 whole days. I can eat peanut butter several times a day everyday, if I let myself, which I did this past week. It's so damn good; I mostly prefer the Whole Foods 365 brand, there is just nothing quite like it. Maybe I should stop buying that brand and go with one I don't prefer so I won't go reaching for peanut butter every chance I get. Why it is so addicting?!

Oh my oh my, I must say I've been killin it with the recipes this week! I absolutely love this recipe, it's easy and sweet and healthy and I LOVE the lemon flavor...absolutely love it. Usually I make cheesecake with a crust but I just eliminated it, mainly because I didn't have dates so these will end up being less calories than my usual raw desserts. I used a cupcake pan for these so grab yours and get going!

When I do compilation posts, it's always a wonderful trip down memory lane. I love to see how my photography improved or how different I lay out my posts. I also love to see how my cooking has changed and what foods I was obsessed with two years ago. I love to see how I've grown and I start planning ways to improve my blog even more.

I never do mashups, which I want to do more of, because I have so many recipes that I feel I need to organize them better. What better way to do that than combining a few recipes into one blog post so you can see them more easily?! I picked 10 chocolate recipes because 1. chocolate is the bomb and 2. the holidays are here and everyone loves a chocolate dessert. These recipes are mostly clean, way healthier than processed, store-bought recipes and easy to make.

For my next apple dessert, I was further into my comfort zone since raw desserts are my jam. I made these out of the ingredients from my last post, the baked apple cheesecakes . This is an awesome dessert to whip up when you need something sweet or want to impress your friends. Made with nuts, fruits and oats, this dessert is whole food based and full of nutrients and goodness.

Everytime I go to a vegan restaurant and they have a raw cake, I gotta order it. It ends up being thick, creamy with just the right amount of sweetness and absolutely delish. I made this recipe yesterday but it didn't turn out well at all. Today I repeated it and I'm ready to give it to anyone to taste test-it's perfect! Cashews make the difference when making raw cheesecakes as does coconut oil and lemon juice. I'm so psyched for pumpkin season!

All day I was in the kitchen making food for my marathon fundraiser; a meditation and restorative yoga class followed by a vegan dinner. I didn't even know what the temperature outside was until 5pm when I left to head to my yoga studio for the class. I dropped stuff, made a few messes, but ultimately, it was a meditative experience in itself cooking these dishes. All I could think of was the beautiful people who were going to eat the food and meet each other and bliss out during my class. It was such a great class and I raised a good amount of money for my fundraiser .

Everytime I get a sweet tooth, I have to whip something up with any of the ingredients I have on hand. Usually I end up making a raw or no bake dessert, only requiring my food processor and some mixing by hand. If I have rolled oats and medjool dates in the house, I'm usually set. These cookies were the results of my sweet tooth while I was visiting my family in the burbs.

How do you tell someone you love them....them promptly forget about them? You make a heart-shaped tart, freeze it and forget you have it in the freezer. I bought a heart shaped rubber mold because I want to start making different shaped desserts and this mold makes it so easy to freeze something and get it out of the mold later. I bought this when I was home visiting my family and now my goal is to find little molds to make chocolates in and some Christmas molds. I'm headed home for the 4th of July and I plan on going on a shopping spree.

I'm always in the mood to make raw desserts but I feel like I'm not very good at them. I don't buy alot of exotic ingredients like coconut butter or mesquite powder so I pretty much work with nuts, oats and a dried fruit. Of course, I always have peanut butter on hand and then usually run out of chocolate ingredients. These bars were easy and I had all the ingredients except oats so I used a mixture of buckwheat, chia seeds and other superfoods (it's Trader Joe's ancient grain and superfood mix).

These little bites are the bomb! They are chocolately and super fudgey (thanks to coconut oil) and chewy. Isn't coconut oil awesome? It's so versatile, I use it in my recipes and I use it to moisturize my skin and hair. To refresh my face, I spray a combination of peppermint, cucumber, lemongrass essential oil on my face and then follow up with some coconut oil. My face feels fresh and hydrated and it wakes me up, Coconut oil, at least for this recipe, makes the chocolate very decadent and rich so that you are biting into an almost ganache-like filling. These are my favorite bites thus far!

I woke up the other day wanting to eat raw; I think I do this when I overindulge or have too much sugar. This cheesecake is an ode to nice cream, the ice cream I make from frozen bananas. The crust is a mix of fruit and nuts and is sweet and filling. This is such an awesome, lower in fat cheesecake you can whip up in case you have a crazy insane sweet tooth like me and don't want to snack on crap or high calorie sweets like baked goods. The cheese in it is simply the nice cream, no nuts, so it's totally cool, refreshing and chocolatey delish.

Another truffle recipe, another sweet to enjoy! I just finished my first plant power workshop and I'm so proud of myself. This is the first workshop I did myself and I accomplished everything I set out to do. We ate, we drank, we made sushi, talked greens and grains and organic produce and we meditated. I can't wait to do another one after the new year.

Happy Holiday Season!! I originally posted this recipe last Christmas and now it's back! Because it's easy, awesome and so yummy and I will probably be making it again. This recipe is supersized so that you have a enough pie for your whole family. You can use any amount of the ingredients as you wish so feel free to change this recipe to fit your holiday table. I loooove this avocado pudding mix, I make it for everything, you can eat it by itself or top a pie or cupcake with it. It's so yummy and versatile and everyone will love it!

I made my raw chocolate cupcakes for my friend who just had a baby and I improved on the icing. It's so hard to believe that this is good for you and that by eating it right from the bowl is actually not bad. There is no risk of a sugar rush from this icing as it is made entirely of fruit and veggies.

It's supposed to be hot again in NYC starting today but that is not why I made this; I just wanted chocolate! And just because you have chocolate doesn't mean you can't have your greens. I love adding spinach to a creamy, chocolatey smoothie, it's never been easier to get in your greens. 

The best part about living in NYC is having access to juice and smoothie bars any time you want. I always find a smoothie that I want to make at home and it usually involves a nut butter and chocolate. I love going to Juice Generation and getting the Joyful Almond smoothie or Peanut Butter Blast smoothie. I decided to try to replicate the Joyful Almond smoothie...it didn't turn out exactly tasting the same as the one at JG but it was a delicious chocolaty filled mason jar and there is nothing wrong with that! This is another one of those smoothies that is a dessert and tastes like you will need to run 10 miles to burn it off but it is made of whole foods, perfectly portioned.

I make chia seed pudding alot but this time I made it without any added coconut sugar and some fruit and homemade cashew butter and it was awesome. I'm not usually good at layering everything to look pretty but I must say this is a good picture! Grab some fresh berries and some raw cashews for this recipe and you got yourself a yummy, filling breakfast. Kids will love this breakfast because it's in a cool mason jar and it's sweet and fun.

If you bake regular chocolate box cake and crumble up the cake and put it in a bowl, you will get my raw chocolate cake consistency. These cupcakes are so much like the "real" baked thing that it will be hard to resist them even if you're a non vegan who is opposed to any vegan baked goods. By the way, it drives me nuts when non vegans put their nose up to vegan food simply because they have't tried it, but that is a separate blog post!