Vegan “Cheese” Kale Chips

A couple of weeks ago, I tried raw kale chips coated with with a crunchy vegan “cheese” coating. I thought they were delicious (addictive, actually), so I tried to replicate them. The ingredients on the box said: kale, cashews, sunflower seeds, red bell pepper, lemon juice, Himalayan salt and chickpea miso. Some of the other varieties had nutritional yeast in the ingredient list.

I did a quick search and found that I wasn’t the only one looking to replicate the coated kale chips. Using the ingredient list and some online recipes as a springboard, I experimented and came up with something pretty close to the original.

Easy Blender Chocolate Mousse (Vegan)

I had made chocolate mousse with tofu before. And it was very nice But when I saw a tofu based mousse recipe from Francois Payard, I had the feeling it would be a bit better than what I had tried before. It was excellent: although denser than some mousses, it was surprisingly light given that there was no whipped cream or egg whites folded into it.

I changed the recipe out of sheer laziness. The original recipe calls for heating soy milk in a pot, pouring it over chopped chocolate in a bowl, whisking to make a ganache and then folding in silken tofu that was pureed in a food processor. I found a way to make this a one appliance, one step recipe. I dump freshly brewed coffee, chocolate chunks and silken tofu in the blender and whirl away. The resulting mousse looks hopelessly liquid, but it sets up in the fridge. Somehow or other, the blender whips some bubbles into the mixture, giving it that fluffiness characteristic of mousses.

The original recipe calls for a pound of 61% chocolate, a pint of vanilla soy milk, 12.3 ounces of silken tofu and a fresh vanilla bean. There was no indication of serving yield.

I tried two different formulas:

(1) 6 ounces hot coffee, 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, 2 ounces chocolate chips, 4 ounces silken tofu, 2 tsp. vanilla; and

(2) 5 ounces hot coffee, 1 ounces coconut oil, 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, 1 Tbl. cocoa powder, 4 ounces silken tofu, a pinch of salt, and 2 tsp. vanilla.

Each version was good and yielded 4 servings (or 5 smallish servings).

Tomato Broccoli Pesto Salad

Roasted broccoli and grape tomatoes, tossed with pesto and toasted almonds: easy, colorful and healthy.