Giveaway Winner and Vegantine's Day Yummies!

We have a winner! Congratulations, Krys at Two Vegan Boys Weblog! Thank the gods for Random.org. It would have been impossible for me to choose only one winner from all the brilliant entries.

Krys' superpower was "the ability to feed the world so there were no more starving children." Nice! I hope you and your family enjoy your new juicer, Krys! Just send me an email with your address to wingitvegan (at) gmail (dot) com so I can forward it to the 877MyJuicer.com folks.

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway. It was lots of fun!

Let's talk Vegantine's Day! I wasn't very inspired this time, maybe because we've been so busy getting ready to hit the road. How on Earth did I manage to make so many Halloweegan treats during MoFo? Anyway, let's start with breakfast. These heart pancakes are made with two metal heart-shaped cookie cutters. A large one for the chocolate part and a smaller one for the strawberry centers.

Outer Chocolate Hearts 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour 3 tbsp cocoa powder 3 tbsp brown sugar 2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 2 tbsp oil 1 1/4 cup soy milk handful of chocolate chips* 1- Whisk together the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. 2- Whisk the liquids in a measuring jar or small bowl. 3- Stir the liquids into the dry ingredients adding more soy milk if necessary. Center Strawberry Hearts 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour 1 tsp baking powder 1/8 tsp salt 5-6 strawberries, stems cut off 1/3 cup soy milk 1 tbsp maple syrup 1 tbsp oil 1/4 tsp vanilla 1 tsp beet juice (not necessary but it makes them pinker!) a few sliced strawberries* 1- Whisk together the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. 2- Use a blender to make yourself a little smoothie with the strawberries, soy milk, maple syrup, vanilla, and beet juice. 3- Blend until smooth and whisk in the oil. 4- Stir the smoothie mix into the dry ingredients adding more soy milk if needed. Putting the hearts together 1- Preheat your skillet prepared with cooking spray. Also spray your metal cookie cutters all around inside and out. 2- Place the big heart on the skillet, place the small heart inside of the big one. Spoon some strawberry butter into the small heart and some chocolate batter into the big heart. 3- Let them cook on low for a minute and carefully remove the hearts (don't touch them - use tongs!) 4- Cook for a couple more minutes and carefully flip them over with a spatula and cook for a couple more minutes or until a toothpick inserted in both parts of the heart comes out clean. You don't want to brown them, so the heat should be low and you shouldn't overcook them. 5- Repeat for the rest of the batter. You should wipe clean the cookie cutters and re-spray them with cooking spray in between pancakes. Makes 8 pancakes. * These pancakes were OK. I made them without chocolate chips and sliced strawberries so they didn't live up to their full potential.

My favorite Vegantine's Day treat - Strawberry Love Bugs!

I dedicate these to Denny, my Strawberry-Twin!

There must always be a Mr. Cranky Pants for balance purposes.
He did not want to have his picture taken.

UPDATE: I blogged about these again in 2011. Check out the step by step instructions!

These are really easy to make, especially if you leave out the antennae. Just slice a few strawberries in half and dip only the tips of both halves into some melted chocolate chips to create the heads. Use a simple powdered sugar and water icing for the faces, and drop some melted chocolate chips on the little bug's bodies. I cut a tiny hole in the corner of a small ziploc bag to squeeze out the chocolate drops. The signs they are holding are little pieces of paper hot-glued to toothpick halves. That's it!

Now if you want to give them antennae you will need to use the melted chocolate in a ziploc trick to squeeze out swirly little antennae onto some wax paper. Refrigerate the antennae for about twenty minutes or until the chocolate has hardened, and attach them to the heads using more melted chocolate as glue. Work quickly because they melt in your fingers really fast. Here are my antennae:

What? Did you think they were really MY antennae? On my head? :)

More chocolate? Sure! These are the same chocolates I made for my previous post, though this time I invested $2 in a chocolate mold from Hobby Lobby. Money well spent!

Vegantine's Day Chocolate-Cashew-Coconut Yummies
1/2 cup chocolate chips
2 tbsp coconut milk
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/4 cup cashews

1- Melt the chocolate chips with the coconut milk. I did this in the microwave, at 50% power and a couple of 30 second intervals.
2- Stir in the shredded coconut.
3- Coarsely grind the cashews. I used our Magic Bullet, just a few pulses so they don't become cashew flour!
4- Stir the cashews into the chocolate mix.

That's your chocolate filling if you're using candy molds. If you're shaping these by hand move on to the next step.

5- Spread the chocolate on wax paper and refrigerate for an hour.
6- Cut into your favorite shapes with cookie cutters. Place chocolates on a plate and refrigerate for another hour.

At this point you're done. Unless you want to do some extra work and dip each chocolate into some melted chocolate chips like I did for my previous post. Way too much work for my taste though. Or you can just shape them into balls and make truffles which would be easier to dip in chocolate. Keep them refrigerated! Here they are non-dipped and shaped like hugs and kisses.

Vegantine's Day Strawberry Mini Pies

These were actually Mr. Wing-it's birthday pies. He's not a big cake man. He's a pie man.

Vegantine's Day Outtake! These were supposed to be Cupid's Cupcakes, but the chocolate arrows look more like chicken feet. They look like there's a chicken buried in a heart and one of its legs is sticking out. Ugh.

Well done.

When life gives you a Lemonade Award... Thank you so much Jumbleberry Jam for my sweet award! It's so nice to get an award from such a cool blogger like you! I have to pass it on to 10 people, but look at my blog roll and you all will see my predicament. So, I better get squeezin' lemons because I intend to pass this on to everyone on my blog roll!


Did you make it all the way to the end of this long post? Great! Then I can wish you a fabulous Valentine's Day, whether you're celebrating with a special someone or with friends... or alone with your little Strawberry Love Bugs! :)