The Amazing Adventures of Bacon & Tofu

It appears that halloween treats are making their appearance across the web.  Last week I had a couple of treats appear on my reader (thanks to my buddy Alisa!) and there was one I just HAD to try: Vampire Cookies.  The recipe seemed simple enough and it even took into account the fact that I don’t always want to make the dough and cook the cookies on the same day.  So on Sunday I started my cookies and just finished them up last night.

It was easy to veganize the recipe just by using margarine for “butter” and Ener-G Egg Replacer for the egg.  The cookie dough was super easy to make but the assembly of the cookie was a little more trying.  If you are feeling froggy and want to try to make them I have a few suggestions.

1. Don’t forget to chill your dough!
2. Work in small batches or a really cold kitchen (walk-in freezer?)
3. If you have a marble counter or cutting board, use it!  If it is a board you might want to chill it with the dough – this will help keep the dough chilled longer and therefore easier to work with.
4. When it says “lightly floured surface” feel free to be liberal, and make sure to flour the rolling pin too!
5. If you are expecting the cookies to bleed on their own, don’t.  Mine didn’t bleed at all – could have been the high quality, chunky jam I used though.

You may want to wait to preheat your oven until you have them made just to help keep the temperature in your kitchen down, but I am not sure how much that will help.  Enjoy baking!  (I’ll post pictures when we get them uploaded!)

~C

Sat and I are in love.  I don’t know when it happened exactly, but it happened at first site.  Or rather taste.  I love fruit snacks – they are a super quick snack that hits the sweet and fruit spot.  After eating the Safeway brand of fruit snacks for a while we just got bored.  The kind that we liked were often out of stock on the shelves and if they weren’t on sale were super expensive.  So we decided to look around for another vegan fruit snack (they are kind of hard to find – many of them have gelatin in them).

Low and behold, or rather, high and behold, on the top shelf was a new brand of fruit snacks, Au’some Fruit Nuggets, made by Florida’s Natural and they are vegan!  They have a really visible list of “frees” – lactose free, gelatin free, gluten free, etc.  And they are also made from 66% real fruit juice.  I know, not 100%, but it is better than the Safeway ones.

When we first opened the box we were really surprised.  The packages were TINY!  We thought we got ripped off – but then you open them and  even more surprizes.  The snacks were tiny – and hard.  They were like the chiclets version of fruit snacks – little, hard, and chewy.  But they are AU’SOME!  It is like the fruit EXPLODES in your mouth – you have got to try them.  And if you don’t like them, send the rest of the box to me. 

We have had better luck finding them at Target than Von’s (Safeway).  The box in the picture above is not the kind that is marketed in the US – I couldn’t find a picture of one and am too lazy to take a picture of ours.