healthy laps

I am not a vegan, nor am I a vegetarian…but, I do stay away from red meat (personal preference) and don’t eat too much other meat.  I love grains and beans and veggies and fruit!  I also love sweets, so when I found a few blogs with numerous recipes for vegan sweets, I decided to try some out!  It seemed like the perfect time, being the holiday season and all.

These are the types of recipes that I love because they are made with minimal, healthier ingredients.  I am not saying that all of the ingredients in these recipes are healthy, but they are healthier than normal sweets can be (so you don’t have to feel as guilty when you induldge)!

(recipes borrowed from LoveVeggiesandYoga.com)

Vegan Peanut Butter Cups

makes 2 huge PB Cups (next time I will make mini’s)

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces dark chocolate (they recommended baking chocolate, but I have lots of dark chocolate bars on hand that I used).
• 2 tablespoons natural peanut butter
• small handful chopped unsalted peanuts
• optional: dash of vanilla (or agave)

Chocolate & PB

Directions:

• Melt 3 ounces of chocolate (in microwave or stovetop).

ready to melt...

• Pour chocolate evenly into 2 muffin liners and place in fridge or freezer to harden a little.

melted chocolate in muffin liners

• In the meantime, mix 2 tablespoons of PB, peanuts (or just use crunchy PB – we were out!) and vanilla in a small bowl.  I popped it in the micro for 15 seconds to make it more easily blendable.

PB, peanuts and vanilla after 15 seconds in micro

• Take muffin liners with chocolate out of the fridge and place a scoop of PB mixture into each.

scoop PB mixture onto hardened chocolate

• Melt remaining chocolate and pour over the PB.

making a mess with melted chocolate!

smooth out a little after pouring over PB

• Refrigerate until hardened (I put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes).

waiting to be eaten in the freezer!

ready to eat!

with muffin liner off - check out those ridges!

• YUM!  So rich and chocolatey – delicious!

showing off the PB filling!

These were delicious!  Next time I would make the PB cups in the mini muffin liners, because these were too big and rich for me to eat in one sitting.  After licking all that chocolate off of my fingers while making these babies, I could only get myself to eat a few bites of this.  Mini PB cups would be awesome!

Next up:

Vegan Chocolate Coconut Snowballs

makes 12-15 snowballs

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups shredded coconut
• 3/4 c maple syrup or agave
• 3/4 c cocoa powder
• Dash Vanilla Extract
• Optional: 1/4 c coconut oil

Ingredients for Snowballs

unsweetened coconut

Directions:

• Put all ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix by hand.

before mixing

after mixing

• Roll into tablespoon sized balls and place on cookie sheet.

ready for freezing

snowballs!

• Place in freezer until hard, about 1 hour.

hardened and ready for eating!

• Eat and enjoy!

YUM YUM YUM!  These snowballs were to die for…I will seriously have these on hand in my freezer all the time!  And, they were so simple to make!

Filed under: Eating Laps, Recipes, Uncategorized | Tagged: baking, chocolate, coconut, cookies, Eating Laps, peanut butter, Recipes, snowballs, treats |