Raw ‘Un’ Baking

2 weeks ago, I headed up to the Back to Eden kitchen to do a little un-baking for the storefront.

 

This is what I made:

(I’m going to start with the worst picture, so your enjoyment can go up as you read down:)

Cranberry-Pistachio Nessie Bars

   (uncut)

I fell in love with Lara Bars a while back, and was amazing at their simple ingredients. Then I was amazing at how much I was spending on them.

Solution: Make my own version! Introducing: Nessie Bars. This kind was in honor of Christmas—the bright red and juicy cranberries mixed with the salty and crunchy green pistachios made these bars gorgeous. Garrett sold them as squares down at the storefront, and I wish I would have taken a picture—they were so festive!

These bars are vegan (duh), raw, soy-free, gluten-free, and would have been sugar-free if the cranberries weren’t sugar-sweetened.

Next up:

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

These kind of look like rice cakes or something, but don’t judge based on the pictures! They’re so good!

The text I got from Garrett the day they hit the storefront for the first time:

A woman came in today and bought one of your raw cookies. She ate it in the store. She then bought the rest of them! No, really. She said, ‘I’ll take them all.’

Um, can I get a holla?

These cookies are vegan (duh), raw, sugar-free, soy-free, and would be gluten-free if oats aren’t rolled in wheat (Why on earth would people do that? I just found that out).

And finally…. Brownie Bites!

These babies are chocolate-y walnut-y little morsels all rolled up in coconut. I love em! I added some chocolate extract to them, but I don’t think I would again because they tasted kind of alcohol-y. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess.

My brownie bites are vegan (duh), raw, sugar-free, soy-free, and gluten-free.

I love baking in Back to Eden’s kitchen—it’s so shiny and clean and has all the ingredients I could ever want to play with. :)

 

Bread and Cookies and Nessybars, oh my!

Snacky treats:

While the landlord was here the other day, again, I took the opportunity to do some baking. Lunch with my friend Nell on Sunday inspired me to bake some bread. For the first time ever.

She served me fresh and warm rustic bread. With a little earth balance and some nutritional yeast, it was a cozy treat.
Rustic bread is actually very simple. I have no idea why it doesn't need sugar for the yeast to feed on, but it just doesn't*.
Just four ingredients--water, salt, yeast, and warm water. It takes about 2 hours to rise, 30 minutes to bake. I'm going to try again, maybe with a little variation (herbs, spices, fruit, etc) and then I'll post the recipe.

* I actually called my mom in a panic, because it wasn't rising as fast as I'd like. No need to panic though. It turned out great. A little plain, to be honest, but super edible.



I also have been fetishing for coconut recently. I cannot get enough of the texture and the flavor. I found a recipe on the PPK (the same evil geniuses who wrote my Veganomicon cookbook are behind this website) for chocolate oatmeal macaroons.


Ohmygoodness. Holy Yum.

So easy, so quick. They take 10-15 minutes to whip up, and about an hour to refridgerate. Talk about vegan deliciousness. I gave these out left and right because I knew I'd want to eat them all if they stayed around. I'm definitely making these more often.


I also made my own version of larabars, those magic whole food, vegan, raw, delicious snack bars. They all have just a few ingredients in them, so I tried my favorite at home. Coconut Cream Pie.


This actually tastes like pie, it's so good, and it doesn't even have any sugar. I didn't take pictures because the whole process was literally 5 minutes and I had cleaned up by the time I remembered my camera. But I will be making them again, quite often. Just 5 ingredients--dates, cashews, almonds, coconut, and coconut oil.
I want to try other flavors, like apple, banana, maybe peanut butter chocolate, maybe use some spices and herbs.... who knows. The point is they were so freakin easy and so freakin delicious and I am so freakin happy with how all of these projects turned out today! (Maybe if I added coconut to the bread I would have liked it better.)