Vegan Chocolate Cream Eggs & Chocolate Mint Cups

VEGAN CHOCOLATE CREAM EGGS!

Need I say more? No. But I'm going to anyways. ;) Those [insert the brand, you know the name] chocolate cream eggs that only come out at Easter are so creamy, chocolatey, rich, tasty, fattening, horrible-for-you-but-oh-so-good... I was really sad when I came to the realisation that this would be my first Easter where I couldn't buy and devour one. [Okay, I'd probably end up buying WAY more than one... But for the sake of my image, let's just say "one"...]

I really feel like I should have posted this in my original Cookwithnikki blog, because there's nothing "fitness" about these little guys... But they are vegan, and one of the key things about keeping up with fitness is allowing yourself a treat every now and then... Right?

Maybe not, but I will say whatever I can to justify these things! They are amazing! 


Instead of posting the recipe in here, I urge you to check out the original post that holds the amazing recipe for these! Give the original poster some viewer-love! I need to stress this point: These taste almost exactly the same as the original!

My variations on the recipe are as follows: 

• I used coconut oil instead of the oil called for in the recipe. 
• I only made 2/3 of the recipe. 
• For 1/3, I kept the original flavour. 
• For the other 1/3, I added 2 tsp peppermint extract to make my "chocolate mint cups". Yummy!
• I used dark chocolate, 71% I believe... 
• I skipped on the food colouring, and just kept them white. 
• Making the mint cups, I used the same format that you would use to make peanut butter cups. (Take the mini-muffin cups, melt some chocolate, spread it along the bottom, freeze it, put the dough stuff inside, freeze again, pour more melted chocolate on top, freeze, eat, eat, and eat more...)

Now HERE is an image to urge you even further to run over to the original post, and give these a try! 

Oh yes, these are good... :)

Juice Your Veggies!

So tonight, I spent about an hour in my kitchen with the juicer and some veggies & fruit. All I can say is that it was awesome... Messy, a little tiring, but awesome. I pretty much put together everything for tomorrow, with the exception of a salad and a few other small things. I'm going to give myself a "raw day". Taking it a day at a time... So we'll see how I last! :)

Here's an awesome image that makes me really happy. It's a few mason jars of amazingness:

Doesn't that just look amazing?! So much awesome healthy, awesome flavour inside of these jars...
Since you can't taste anything off of a computer screen, I'll give you the recipe for each juice! They're super simple to make if you have a juicer! I'll start from the big ruby red one, and work my way back to the little guy in the corner... All of these are variations on juices from the awesome book Rawesomely Vegan. I've included the original recipes, and put my variations in brackets. I've made the recipes bigger, because I'm making these as meals. So if you just want a single drink to enjoy on the side of a meal, stick to the original recipes! :) Also, the best part about juicing is that you can pretty much toss in whatever you like, so these are just a few of the juices that I've made out of the book that I really enjoy. You don't need to follow them exactly, and I haven't either. :)

The method for all juices is to juice it in a juicer according to your juicer instructions. Typically, harder/tougher fruit and vegetables get juiced at a higher speed, while softer vegetables and fruit get juiced at a lower speed. I'm not a pro at this yet, by any means, so I use my better judgement if something isn't in the instruction booklet for the juicer... With citrus, some recipes call for just tossing the whole thing, skin and all, into the juicer. Meanwhile, other recipes call for juicing the citrus separately.

Juice 1: "Orange You Glad You Beet Those Toxins Out?"
Ingredients: 

• 1 beet, greens removed (I used 2 beets)
• 2 oranges (I used 3 oranges)

Juice 2: "Slim Down Solution"

Ingredients: 

• 1 red apple, cored (I used 2 green apples)
• 1 celery stalk (I used 6)
• 1/4 lemon, unpeeled (I used a whole lemon, yum!)
• 1 cup baby spinach (I used one of those small containers of spinach, probably about 2 cups...)
• (I also added about 1 cup of bean sprouts)

Juice 3: "Sweet 'n' Mellow"

Ingredients: 

• 1 medium green zucchini
• 3 medium carrots
• 2 red apples, cored (I used green and golden delicious)

Juice 4: "Spring in a Glass"

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup asparagus
• 3 medium carrots
• [post-posting thoughts on this one: I ended up adding 1 cup of freshly cut pineapple. This particular juice is a little bit much if you're not used to the bold flavour of juiced vegetables without fruit. You may like it, but if you try it and don't, just add an apple or pineapple!]

Well, that's all for tonight! I'm about to start day 1 of week 9 (P90X), so I've gotta get a move on! It's getting late at night... (I know, I shouldn't work out this late... But I don't get home from school on Mondays until really late in the evening.) Have a great morning/day/evening/night everyone! :)

Food Photography Obsession - 4 Years of Foodie Memories

This is a little random [and quite off-topic for this blog] but today as I was taking a [yet another] picture of one of the drinks I made in the juicer, I wondered when my obsession with taking pictures of food started. Also, I wondered about when my obsession with food in general started, but that's much harder to figure out...

So, I went onto my FaceBook page [yes, I have FaceBook...] and took a quick peek into my foodie album. To date, I have 179 pictures in that album, and my first one dates back to June 2008. WOWZERS! Some are silly pictures, but some are pretty good. Which really motivates me to go and get a better camera, and put a little more effort into staging the pictures. [90% of the pictures in that album are shot with either an iPhone 3G-S or an iPhone 4S] Once school's finished up and I actually have more time, I look forward to indulging in my artistic and foodie side a little more... I miss it!

Anyways, instead of me chatting about the pictures, how about you go take a look yourself?
Check out the pictures here! I have the gallery open to the public. 

Note to the vegans/vegetarians: There are dishes that contain meat in this gallery, as a lot of these were taken before I went vegan. One thing I'm excited to do is go back to a lot of my old recipes (many of the pictures have links to blog posts with recipes) and go "veganize" them! That should be fun! :)

Here's a few of the pictures that I like!