Chocolate Pudding Parfaits

I am really loving holidays (ok, so I didn't work too much last year, but technically it is holidays for me. I'll be working my butt off this year hopefully). So much time free allows me to make and bake and I am spending a heap of time in the kitchen.

For my first recipe out of my new book, Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson, I made Chocolate Pudding Parfaits. So rich and so good. A decadent dessert!

Tahn

I'm in love!

I am soo in love with my new cookbook 1000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson.

Here's what I have made while I have been ignoring you:

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread (soo damn good!)

Moroccan-Spiced Chickpea and Sweet Potato Stew

Sunset Fruit Pudding (oh, so good! Can you tell I have a sweet tooth!!) It's raw, too - just fruit.

The salad is Roasted Cauliflower and Rice Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette. And thanks to Brisvegan's quiche post I was inspired to try Isa's Broccoli Quiche. I actually found the recipe on the PPK website. I used a basic pie crust recipe from 1000 Vegan Recipes. And DAMN it was good! Will definitely make this for the vegan xmas potluck I'm going to next Saturday (although I will splash out and purchase a pie tin - all I had was a square one). I wanted to have a test run on it first. Amazing! I also thought I would take some sushi as a starter and some sort of dessert to the pot luck. I'd better do some test runs on some desserts! Just in case....

Friday night Tweenie asked if we could watch the sunrise on Saturday morning. So we got up bright and early the next morning and walked up the road to the park. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy out on the east side of the world(and wouldn't ya know it - clear everywhere else!!). The kids still enjoyed it and it fostered some great discussions about the earth's rotation and the role of the sun. We hope to do it again on a day not so cloudy, although it did make for cool pictures.

Tahn

Silverbeet Pizza and Chocolate Banana Mousse

WTF?? Is it midnight? Am I sick? How come I'm posting so early??

Actually, I'm not really sure why I am able to post so early today, as opposed to other days when it is almost midnight before I get a chance to write.
I'm just extremely happy that I can!

So earlier in the day I made some basic pizza dough and left it to rise. I found a recipe for swiss chard, onion and tofu pizza to use up the silverbeet I had. The recipe combination sounded weird, but I thought I would give it a go anyway.

The recipe requires the pizza bases to be pre-cooked for 15 minutes but I don't recommend this. Have a look why:

Mine blew up like a balloon and here in this photo I have removed the top and now it looks like a pizza bowl! Luckily I had two lots and I pre-cooked the other one for only 5 minutes.
The rest of the recipe was really easy. I like how it turned out. The kids enjoyed it also. It's a very interesting way to use up silverbeet!

Before I made the pizzas I made this Chocolate Banana Pudding. It needs about an hour in the fridge. It requires 2C of silken tofu. So after I picked up the kids from school we walked to Woolies (well, Safeway, but I'm from W.A and some things you just hold on to!) to pick up 2 pkts.
So I stick one packet into the blender, all fine and dandy. Then I go to put the other one in and it looked like this:

It didn't smell too good either! And it was FULL of water! Its expiry date wasn't until the 25th of November! This is definitely not right, is it?
Anyway, I chose not to add it to the blender, so our dessert only had about 1C of silken tofu. And lazy me didn't scrape down the sides of the blender and a lot of the cocoa was still dry on the sides. I didn't mind, though. I thought it probably balanced out the lack of tofu.

Tweenie and Baby had a couple of tinned mangoes on top. It was delicious and I would definitely make this dessert again. It was so quick. About 3 minutes!

I'm feeling a little better today. I did manage to get up and at 'em, although it was a bit later in the day. I organised for a real estate agent to come around and appraise my house for renting and I have another coming tomorrow morning. It's an exciting, yet nerve-wracking time for me. I know I have made the right decision but...

Tahn