Double Chocolate Almond Truffles [vegan]

   I tend to cover things I love in chocolate, whether accidentally or on purpose.

  

 These truffles are no exception. If anything, it’s rather surprising that it took me this long to do so. For lack of a better term, we’re going to call them truffles, even though they clearly are not truffles at all, because, you know, vegan. I think they’re better, but more than one person has described my eating habits as “weird”, so that’s probably just one of my many eccentricities talking. 

     They were originally inspired by my love of Larabars, which was constantly at war with my desire not to literally eat myself out of house and home. (Almost two dollars for a bar? Please. I’m not made of money). So, I started making my own. Granted, my flavor repertoire is limited, mostly because I’m kind of lazy, but it holds me over in between legitimate Larabar splurges.

Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes {vegan}

Oh sweet, sweet, Saturday mornings.

As hard as I try not to, I can’t help beginning the countdown to Saturday sometime around Tuesday afternoon. Saturday is like the more regularly occurring, adult version of Christmas. It isn't literally related to  morning time; Saturday morning is whenever you physically awake, which, depending on what activities occurred Friday night, might not be in the morning at all. Saturday morning can be 1 p.m. or six at night. It really doesn’t matter, it’s the weekend. This is why I only work Monday to Friday: the whole world is lazier on a Saturday, and there is no judgment for sloth and general indolence. Everyone is doing it.

Mocha Frappe

   It’s a cold, rainy Easter Sunday in our little Southern city here on the East Coast. Last year, we were spending Easter in Minnesota, and it was ever colder and more miserable. I think I thought then that moving closer to the ocean would solve all my problems, including weather-related ones. Well, it hasn't, though it has made most of them milder. 

    So what is one to do when you’re trapped indoors (and have been all weekend), and the afternoon needs a little sprucing up? My answer is usually the same: coffee.

Vegan Peanut Butter Cups

So. Easter is upon us once again.

To some, Easter is about time with family, religion, or vacation. To me, it is about candy. I've tried to really think about the origins of Easter as a holiday and get into the spirit of the thing, but let's face it: the American mode of celebrating Easter is one big Pavlovian debauch. Though there has been no candy-laden basket waiting me on Easter morning since I have began that adventure that we call "adulthood", I still wake up salivating. 

   For things like this. I was never a jelly bean girl. Chocolate was where it was at. As a child I used jelly beans, and candies of their ilk, to trade for everyone else's chocolates—or I just stole them. (Mine was a glorious childhood). A favored guest in my Easter basket, a classic that my mother and I would do battle for, was Reese’s peanut butter eggs.

Chocolate Coconut Leche Cake

   Do you know what’s delicious? Chocolate. Do you know what else is delicious? Cake. Also good: coconut. Know what isn't delicious? Diabetes. 

    With that in mind, I recently set out to create a cake that united these lovely flavors and was both decadent enough to make me stop eating it after slice one and healthy enough to....be healthy. So the Chocolate Coconut Leche Cake was born.