Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is my (and a lot of people's, I'm sure) favourite type of pie, and the type I have the least self-control around because it's so easy to just take a little slice from the fridge, and then one more little slice, and suddenly you've eaten a whole pie just like that.  Ryan has been wanting to buy a pumpkin pie for weeks now but I told him that since it would just be the two of us eating it (and I intend on eating much more pumpkin pie in the coming months!) I wanted to try making a healthy pie that we wouldn't feel guilty about eating!

This pumpkin pie is pretty healthy and also happens to be vegan.  The crust is made from low-fat graham crackers mixed with a bit of coconut oil, so the crust alone has a lot less "bad" fats than a typical butter or shortening-packed pie crust.  (Not that I have anything wrong with eating the occasional piece of traditional pie, but like I said, I wanted to make a healthier version!)  I could have made a healthier crust with nuts and dates but I wanted to keep this as easy and inexpensive as possible since we wanted it to be more of an every day dessert pie.

The filling is made up of pumpkin puree, unsweetened almond milk, no eggs, a reduced amount of brown sugar and some pure maple syrup for sweetening, cornstarch to help everything set, and of course the usual pumpkin spices.

For a topping, I made a batch of coconut whipped cream, which is a great vegan alternative to traditional whipped cream!  To make it, you basically put a can of coconut milk in the fridge for a while so that the cream separates from the liquid, then you scoop out the coconut cream and whip it in a chilled bowl until it's fluffy.  It doesn't need much sweetener but I added a tiny bit of powdered sugar and vanilla extract to mine.  It tastes amazing and the slight coconut flavour really complements pumpkin pie!  Oh She Glows has a great tutorial for making whipped cream if you've never tried it before!

I was worried that either the taste or texture of this pie wouldn't turn out right but it turned out so much better than I'd even hoped!  It had a really nice bold pumpkin flavour from all the spices and addition of molasses (you can cut back if you don't like a lot of spice though!), the filling set perfectly and was smooth and creamy, and the crust sort of softened but stayed firm.  I won't say that it tastes exactly the same as a traditional pumpkin pie, but we both loved this and will likely be making it again soon!

With (Canadian) Thanksgiving quickly approaching, this would be a great dessert if you'll have any vegans at the table, or just want a lighter option after a big meal!

Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Recipe inspired by and adapted from several sources, including Vegetarian Times, Minimalist Baker, and Oh She Glows

Makes one 9-inch pie

Ingredients:

For the Crust:

10 sheets of low-fat graham crackers (about 1.5 cups of crumbs)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 cup melted organic coconut oil

For the Filling:

2 cups canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)

1 cup unsweetened almond milk

3-1/2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

1 tablespoon molasses

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Lightly spray a 9” pie pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Pulse graham crackers in a food processor until they form fine crumbs. Transfer to a bowl and mix in the cinnamon with a whisk or a fork.  Add the melted coconut oil and mix together (I use a fork) until well combined.  Pour crumb mixture into the prepared pie pan and press evenly across the bottom and up the sides to form a pie crust.  Bake in preheated oven for about 7 minutes, then remove.  Leave oven on.

For the filling, mix all ingredients together in a large bowl, whisking together until just combined.  You could do the wet and dry ingredients separately if you like but I saved bowls and just mixed everything together in one.  Pour filling over the baked pie crust, return to oven, and bake for 55-60 minutes, until set. 

Remove from oven and let cool at room temperature for at least an hour, then transfer to refrigerator and let cool for 3-4 hours or overnight before slicing and serving.

Serve with coconut whipped cream, if desired.  Follow the link for instructions on making coconut whipped cream; note that your coconut milk will need to be in the fridge the day before so plan ahead!

Toblerone Cheesecake Bars

The last two Christmases, my friend has given me one of those giant Toblerone bars that I could never eat all by myself. Last year I had to get a lot of help from my family to finish it, but this year I realized that a huge amount of quality chocolate like that was just begging to be baked into something delicious! So I used part of the bar in these Toblerone shortbread cookies, which had a really nice flavour but turned out to be a little on the hard side. That could very well have been my own fault and not the recipe, so I’ll definitely be giving them another try one day. With the rest of the bar, I decided to use them in a dessert I’ve never once not liked: cheesecake!

Because I didn’t have any special occasions coming up that I could serve a big cheesecake at, and because it’s a little hard to send slices of cake to Ryan’s coworkers, I decided to make more portable cheesecake bars. I remembered a recipe from Cookin’ Canuck for Reese’s peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake bars, which I made a couple years ago and got rave reviews for. Because I already knew that recipe was a winner, I decided to use the same recipe for these bars by replacing the Reese’s with Toblerone.

As I expected, these turned out to be amazing! Ryan said this was his favourite cheesecake recipe I’ve ever made, which is saying a lot because I force that man to eat an awful lot of cheesecake (it’s my favourite dessert). I sent them to work with him so that we didn’t eat the entire tray ourselves, and he said his coworkers all absolutely loved them too, and one agreed that it was his favourite cheesecake I’ve made (again, that’s saying a lot, as I send a lot of cheesecake to those guys too!)

If you have some leftover Toblerone chocolate laying around that you don’t know what to do with, make these cheesecake bars! If you don’t have any Toblerone, you can probably find a good sale on some right now in the discounted Christmas treats sections of stores. And if you can’t find any or don’t like Toblerone, you at least have to try the original recipe using Reese’s peanut butter cups, it’s amazing too!

Also, don’t forget that the giveaway to win a great set of Italian food products from Aurora Importing is still on (until Thursday at midnight)! If you haven’t entered yet (and have a Canadian shipping address), head over to this post right now to enter! I’ll be back on Friday morning to announce the winner! [GIVEAWAY OVER]

Toblerone Cheesecake Bars

Adapted from Cookin’ Canuck, who adapted from America’s Test Kitchen

Makes about 16 bars (in an 8x8 pan)

*Note: I was working with a large 400g (14.1oz) Toblerone bar for this recipe, so the "pieces" I refer to are individual pieces from that size bar. You could still make this recipe with a smaller sized bar, but you'd have to adjust the amounts of "pieces" you use.

Ingredients:

For the Crust:

7 whole graham crackers, crushed into crumbs (about 1 cup crumbs)

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

3 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

For the Filling:

2 bricks of cream cheese (250g each), softened

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1/4 cup sour cream (I used full-fat)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped Toblerone chocolate (5 pieces from a large (400g) bar)

For the Topping:

2 pieces of Toblerone chocolate, chopped (from a large (400g) bar)

3 pieces of Toblerone chocolate, melted (from a large (400g) bar)

Directions:

For the Crust:

Preheat oven to 325°F.

Line an 8-inch square baking pan with aluminum foil, leaving a few inches of foil draping over the sides of the pan (which will help with removal later).

Crush the graham crackers in a food processor (or I used a magic bullet) until they form fine crumbs. Transfer the crumbs to a large bowl and add the brown sugar, flour, and salt. Whisk together until well combined. Add the melted butter and mix together with a fork or whisk until all the crumbs are moistened (alternately, if using a food processor you could just add all the ingredients to the food processor with the crumbs and pulse until combined). Transfer the mixture into the prepared pan and press evenly to form the crust.

Bake in the preheated oven until crust is beginning to brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for about 30 minutes.

For the Filling:

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth, about 3 minutes. Beat in the sugar until well combined, about 1 minute. Beat in eggs one at a time, fully incorporating each egg into the mixture. Beat in sour cream and vanilla until fully combined, about 30 seconds.

Chop 5 Toblerone pieces into small pieces and stir into the cream cheese mixture. Pour the mixture into the pan over the cooled crust and spread evenly. Bake 35-40 minutes, until the edges are set but the middle jiggles slightly when you shake the pan.

Place pan on a cooling rack and let cool to room temperature, about 2 hours. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours and up to 24 hours before serving.

For the Topping:

Melt 3 Toblerone pieces in the microwave (I did it in two 30 second intervals), and transfer melted chocolate to a ziplock bag. Cut a corner off the bag and use it to drizzle half the melted chocolate over the surface of the cheesecake. You may have to cut a larger hole than you're used to for drizzling chocolate, so the nougat pieces don't get stuck. Sprinkle 2 chopped Toblerone pieces evenly on the surface to stick to the chocolate, then drizzle the other half of the melted chocolate over top.

Using the overhanging foil, lift the bars from the pan. Remove the foil and cut bars into 16 pieces (or more for smaller pieces). Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Raspberry Cheesecake Crepes

As I've mentioned before, breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. Even though it’s usually eaten as quickly as possible while I check my email in the morning before heading off to school, and it usually consists of something simple like a bowl of cereal or toast with peanut butter, there’s something so comforting about starting your day with a familiar meal that will fuel you through the morning. While I usually try to keep it healthy at breakfast, I do like to splurge on weekends with Ryan, experimenting with different pancake or crepe recipes so that he can wake up to a delicious meal (he’s spoiled).

These raspberry cheesecake crepes were my latest creation, and also the most decadent breakfast I’ve made in a while – not to mention the most delicious! A thin vanilla crepe is wrapped around a filling of sweet cream cheese, raspberries, and crushed graham crackers, then topped with warm raspberry sauce and icing sugar – just writing that sentence already has my mouth watering again! Here’s a shot of the inside of the crepe:

Note that I didn’t put quite enough cream cheese or graham crackers in the crepe that’s pictured, and I also topped it with a little too much raspberry sauce, so it tasted more like a raspberry crepe and than a raspberry cheesecake crepe. That’s not a bad thing, but if you want the cheesecake flavour to come through more strongly, then add more filling than I did. The recipe makes enough filling – I just wasn’t sure how much to put on my first crepe, so if you make them all at once you’ll be able to divide it up a little better. You could also eliminate the fresh berries in the middle of the crepe, or add some crushed graham crackers on top if you want to play around with it a bit to your liking.

I’ve broken the recipe down into different parts to make it a little easier to read, but writing it that way probably makes it seem like more work that it actually was. While there are a few different components to make, overall this dish is quite easy - the crepe batter is all mixed in one bowl, and the other components only take a couple minutes to assemble. Don’t tell your guests that though – they’ll be so impressed with this dish that they might even offer to do the dishes for you – mine did! (but I helped him – did I mention he’s spoiled?)

While we ate this for breakfast (or brunch I guess, since we ate around 11am), they would also be a great dessert to serve to guests or a loved one for a special occasion. Whatever your reason for making them, just be sure you do, you won’t regret it!

Raspberry Cheesecake Crepes

Crepe recipe adapted from All Recipes, everything else is my own recipe

Makes 4-5 crepes (Serves 2 as a filling meal, or 4-5 as a lighter meal of one crepe each)

Ingredients:

For the filling:

3 oz reduced-fat cream cheese

1/2 cup icing sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

4-5 graham crackers

1/2 cup raspberries

For the raspberry sauce:

1/2 to 3/4 cup raspberries

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon water

For the crepes:

1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon milk

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons granulated sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon melted butter

Directions:

For the filling:

In a small bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the icing sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth (this can all be done by hand). Set aside.

In another small bowl, crush the graham crackers into small pieces –about half should be crushed into fine crumbs and half in small pieces. Set aside.

Set the raspberries aside also. Having all three components ready will make it easier to assemble the crepes when they’re done.

For the raspberry sauce:

Place the raspberries in a small saucepan over medium heat. Sprinkle the sugar and water over the berries and let simmer gently while you make the crepes. Mash the berries as they’re cooking. You can strain out the seeds afterwards if desired, but I don’t bother.

For the crepes:

In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, and vanilla. Stir in the flour, sugar, salt, and melted butter until well blended. The consistency should be thin and pourable, like a drinkable yogurt.

Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium heat until hot, and coat with cooking spray. Pour about ¼ cup of the batter into the pan and quickly tip the pan to swirl the batter around so that it coats the pan. When the edges are dry and pulling away from the sides of the pan, and bubbles are forming in the middle of the crepe, then it’s time to flip it over (this only takes about a minute). Gently flip the crepe using a spatula, and cook briefly on the other side until lightly browned. Repeat with the rest of the batter, using ¼ cup at a time.

To assemble crepes:

Lay a crepe flat on a plate. Spread cream cheese mixture down the centre of the crepe. Top with fresh raspberries and graham cracker crumbs. Roll each edge of the crepe over the filling. Top with raspberry sauce, and sprinkle icing sugar or extra graham cracker crumbs on top if desired. Serve warm.