Croissants, Agave Chocolate Cake, and Chili Cheese Fries

After completely over estimating the amount of chili ingredients I had been throwing in the pot, I distinctly made way too much, as usual, and was left with a bunch of meaty TVP-seitan-kidney bean chili to use at my leisure for probably months to come. One such mouthwatering way to use this chili was on top a golden brown and delicious heap of oven baked french fries. I used a Tofutti cream cheese based cheese sauce to make the whole mess come together. This was basically 2 parts cream cheese, 1 part soymilk, 1 part nutritional yeast, then some paprika, salt and pepper. So good and easy.


Here are the fries on their own as a side to an avocado baked tofu toast with a radish salad.

And now for the ever so daunting croissants.

The prep surface.
Skip a few steps and a whole day's time....

After a 20 min ride at 400F.

A croissant Ménage à trois.The recipe was based on the vegan croissant recipe at Zeke's Ve-gastronomy. I subbed whole wheat flour and probably didnt use enough Earth Balance, but they still turned out pretty great. This was just a trial run at these for me, they will be perfect soon.

Now this is a a triumphant baking success. A no-refined sugar chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and it tastes amazing. The textures are spot on and it is really quite easy to make.


Cake Recipe
Look here for facts about agave and this recipe.
Now for the ever so difficult no powdered sugar icing. Well it is not so difficult if you have access to xanthum gum. The xanthum gum is a stabilizer that provides the stabillity for a fluffy vegan buttercream without using any powdered sugar. This is huge when using non-refined agave nectar syrup that is liquid so it makes the frosting quite loose. I just mixed 6 Tbsp agave and 6 Tbsp cocoa powder, 1 tsp xanthum gum and 2 tbsps Earth balance vegan butter together until light and fluffy. This turns out more like an icing than a fluffly buttercream, but thats what I wanted for this recipe.