christmas food

we had a really nice christmas lunch at my sister in law's place in their newly finished outdoor entertainment area. there were more vegan options than non-vegan options i think (everything in the photo except the dish of chicken/turkey--not sure which it was--was vegan). we made some sushi and some chickpea salad (from la dolce vegan-- it's easy and really tasty) and zac's mum made her vegan nut loaf that she always does (soooooo good-- tastes like stuffing which was always the best part of the meal even when i ate meat) and some potato salad (potatoes coated in fresh herbs from her garden). the green salad was also vegan (we went to a chirstmas thing last week where the 2 or 3 green salads all had eggs or cheese in them) with homemade vegan dressing too.

for dessert i decided to attempt a chocolate almond cheezcake from the ultimate uncheese cookbook.

i was a little worried the middle was never going to harden (we had to cook it 80 minutes instead of 60 and it was still kind of jello like but i think that's just the way our oven works). once it cooled it was perfect (i think the outer edges were slightly overcooked but not bad). i thought about making a chocolate sauce to drizzle over it but never got around to it. it's pretty amazing tasting too. the only sweetener in the cake is maple syrup (a LOT of maple syrup). the crust i made also had maple syrup in it. i decided to use the fake maple flavoured stuff for the crust and for about 1/2 the amount in the cake (that used up one entire bottle of the stuff). then i used some of our good maple syrup from canada to complete the amount needed. it worked out well (you could probably substitute the whole amount with the fake stuff if you wanted to). the teasecake doesn't have that cream cheese aftertaste that real cheesecake does but it did have an amazing chocolate and almond flavour (i may cut down slightly on the almond essence if i make it again).

we're still happily eating away at the leftover nut loaf and cheezcake.