Seriously amazing vegan fondue recipes

The Hibbards love vegan fondue!

There is something magical about fondue. Don't you agree? My dreams usually involve cheese and chocolate...and Krispy Creme donuts (find and/or make me vegan ones and I will love you forever). Matt jokes that I try to eat my pillow at night. ha.
The Melting Pot was my only real experience with fondue, but we used to go at least a couple times a year, BV (before vegan). I am saving myself for a Cathrineholm fondue set, but until the day I find one in good condition, I'll just have to use big enamel pots and some old 70s fondue sticks that I found in our junk drawer (probably came from a fondue set my parents gave me).

Trying to find a vegan cheese fondue recipe online was pretty hard, so I took the basic idea from this recipe to create my own. My modified recipe is DIVINE!!! Like, so good that I had it as leftovers for 3 nights! Not the healthiest thing you can eat...but your mouth will love you.

VEGAN CHEESE FONDUE

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup mimiccreme
• 3 tbsp earth balance
• 1 bag vegan shredded Diaya cheese
• 1 tsp tahini
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• dash salt and pepper (to taste)

Preparation:

In a fondue pot (or enamel pot) over medium-low heat, melt the earth balance and diaya cheese. Add tahini and stir until combined. Add remaining ingredients. You may need to add a bit more cheese or mimiccreme to get the consistency that you want.

  You only need 1 bag of Diaya...not 2, as pictured

 Looks just like cheese

 Starts looking like cheese fondue!

Here's where it get's fun! We decided to dip gardein crispy 7 grain tenders, apple slices and 2 varieties of fresh vegan bread.

 Gardein and apple slices

Fresh bread cubes

 After sitting on low heat, the cheese fondue turns a nice shade of 'cheddar'.

 Yum!

 I yuppified Matt's Coleman camping grill, so we could keep the cheese hot! This is where a good fondue set would come in handy.

 Yep, camping in the kitchen.

 Dippin'

 It was sooooo tasty. I honestly think I could taste-test fool some non-vegans into thinking it is real cheese fondue.

The chocolate course. This is somewhat easier to find recipes for, and I used this recipe, but made some modifications. Super duper tasty. And, you can re-heat it, if you have leftovers.

Vegan Chocolate Fondue

Ingredients: 

• 1/4 cup earth balance
• 8 ounces vegan chocolate chips or dark chocolate
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 cup agave nectar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tbsp vanilla soy milk

Preparation:

Melt earth balance, vegan chocolate and soy milk together in saucepan over very low heat, or, use a double-boiler to ensure chocolate doesn't burn. Once melted, remove from heat, add the rest of the ingredients, combine well and transfer to fondue pot to keep warm.

Ingredients

 Everything goes into the pot

 Finished vegan chocolate fondue

 Fun! Let's dip bananas, massive strawberries, vegan bread, vegan chocolate chip cookies and vegan brownies.

 Going in!

 Strawberries and chocolate. Dreamy.

So, looking for something fun to try this weekend?! Try vegan fondue! 

Vegan glazed lemon hand pies

Every time I mention wanting to make hand pies, people ask, "What are hand pies?" To which I answer, "Have you ever had a Hostess fruit-filled pie?" Those are hand pies...aka handheld pies. I remember hostess lemon pies being absolutely divine and I was determined to find a recipe for vegan lemon hand pies.

I have my first meyer lemons this year and they are huge (tree was just planted in the spring)! I rounded up a bowl of lemons and got to work on this recipe from Vegan Crunk.

Vegan Lemon Curd (recipe by Melisser Elliot)
Ingredients
1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (from about 10 small lemons)
½ cup water
1 ½ cups sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
⅛ tsp.sea salt
Zest of 2 lemons, grated with a microplane grater
⅓ cup plain soy creamer
2 Tbsp. soy margarine (I used Earth Balance)

Instructions
Combine the lemon juice, water, sugar, cornstarch, and sea salt in a blender. Blend until smooth.
Pour the mixture into a medium saucepan and stir in the lemon zest. Heat on medium, whisking constantly until the mixture comes to a full boil (about 10 to 15 minutes). Allow to boil for one minute undisturbed. The mixture will be thick and start to turn a little clear. Remove from heat.
Stir in the soy creamer and soy margarine. Whisk until margarine is melted and everything is fully combined. Allow the lemon curd to cool to room temperature in the saucepan. Transfer to a jar and refrigerate.


Fried Pies
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp.sea salt
1 tsp.baking powder
⅓ cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. bourbon (I didn't have bourbon, so I used rum)
2 cups canola oil, for frying
2 Tbsp. sugar, for sprinkling over the cooked pies

Pie Glaze
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp powdered soy milk
Enough soy creamer to make a liquid consistency glaze

Combine ingredients in a bowl right before you start frying the pies.
Set aside.


Instructions for the fried pies
Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a large mixing bowl.
Cut in the shortening. Pour the water and bourbon into the dry mixture. Stir to combine. Lightly knead the dough to form a thick dough ball. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
Separate the dough into 12 equal-sized balls. Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out one dough ball into a 5-inch circle.
Place one rounded tablespoon of lemon curd in the center of the circle. Lightly spread it around, leaving plenty of room around the edges (I didn't spread the curd around...I wanted a lot of flavor in the middle).
Fold half of the circle over and press edges to seal. Crimp the edges with a fork and transfer the pie to a plate. Repeat with the other 11 dough balls.
Cover the plate with plastic wrap and place the uncooked pies in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to chill.

To cook, heat 2 cups of canola oil in a large sauté pan (I used a deeped pot because the bubbling oil scared me). Heat for about 10 minutes, or until the oil reaches 375 degrees—you can test the temperature with a metal candy thermometer.
When the oil is hot, place as many pies into the pan as will fit without touching each other. Fry for about 1-3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown (could happen in less than a minute, so watch them!).
Remove the pies from the hot oil using a metal slotted spoon. Allow to drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Sprinkle pies with sugar while they’re hot (or dip entire pie in the glaze) and set on parchment paper or plate to cool. Repeat with the rest of the pies.

My meyer lemons from the backyard

So pretty

Grated lemon peel

The ingredients for the lemon curd and pie crust

Mixing the curd

Lemon curd on the stove

The lemon curd starts to thicken

One of my cathrinholm pots...love it.

Pie crust dough

Dough ball

Rolling out the dough

Filling the pies

Pies ready to be chilled in the refrigerator

Frying up the pies

Pies are done when golden brown

Yummmmmmmm.

This is the reason to glaze them...so they look purdy.

Ready for the giving....I ate 2...now I must give the others away!

Vegan Crack Corn

Making crack corn for Christmas has been a family tradition for the last few years. This year, I veganized the family recipe and made crack corn even better.

Crack Corn
16 cups fresh popcorn (make sure you choose no butter, no salt popcorn if using microwave popcorn)
3 cups rice Chex
2 cups dry-roasted peanuts
3 tbsp peanut butter
1 batch homemade vegan white chocolate

1. Combine the popcorn, Chex and peanuts in an extra large bowl.
2. Melt white chocolate with the peanut butter in the microwave (or on stove) for 30 seconds to start. Check on the mixture regularly, by stirring the mixture. Continue in 15 second intervals if the white chocolate is not fully-melted.
3. Pour the white chocolate mixture over the popcorn, in the large bowl and mix to coat all pieces.
4. Spread out the mixture out to dry on large pieces of wax paper.
5. Popcorn white chocolate coating will remain 'wet' for about 20 minutes. Once the coating has dried, the popcorn is ready to eat and can be transferred to a bowl for serving. 

Ingredients

 Mixing the dry ingredients

 My pretty homemade white chocolate

 Combining the peanut butter and white chocolate

The white chocolate mixture after it has been melted

 White chocolate mixture

 Close-up of the coated popcorn

 Setting the popcorn out to dry

 Ready to eat!

 The finished product=crack corn (addictive like crack)!

Vegan buckeyes

These puppies are awesome. Super simple, quick to make and definite crowd-pleaser. I made 36 of these for a party last night and every single one of them disappeared. There are variations of this recipe that have rice crispies in them, but I opted for a smooth peanut butter center vs. crunchy.

I modified this well-reviewed recipe to make it vegan. The only non-vegan ingredient was butter, so I replaced butter with Earth Balance.

Vegan Buckeyes
Makes 36 small buckeyes or about 24 large buckeyes

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup Earth Balance, softened (about 15 seconds in the microwave with soften a stick perfectly)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups confectioner's sugar
8 oz of bakers semi-sweet chocolate squares

1. In a large bowl, mix together the peanut butter, Earth Balance, vanilla and confectioners' sugar. The dough will look dry. Roll into 1 inch balls and place on a waxed paper-lined cookie sheet or large plate.
2. Chill balls in the freezer until firm, about 30 minutes (or less, check on them). 
3. Melt baker's chocolate in the microwave in a microwave-safe bowl for about 1 min 30 sec (check on it every 10 secs)
4. Let the chocolate cool for about 1-2 minutes. Dip frozen peanut butter balls into the chocolate. I like to completely cover the buckeye, but you can make them look traditional by only dipping a portion of them in the chocolate. Put the chocolate-coated buckeyes back on a wax-paper lined cookie sheet or large plate and refrigerate until serving.

5 ingredients

 What the dough will look like before you form into 1 inch balls

  Buckeyes ready for the freezer

 Buckeyes ready for the freezer

 Chocolate-covered buckeyes

 Finished buckeyes