I received so many delicious dishes and recipes for this contest! It was very difficult to choose. This wasn't a dessert contest but two food chosen were sweet. The first prize, which posted directly below, goes to the Vegan Avocado Mousse. I wanted to take a spoon and dig right into the photo! And the mousse fulfilled so many eating concerns since it is free of all top 8 allergens, vegan and healthy (no processed sugar.) The second prize, which is posted below the mousse, goes to the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Pie - also free of the top 8 allergens and it fulfills the fantasy of so many children who can't eat many commercially sold treats due. Both recipes are original.
But please scroll down and check out the "best of" posts because there is definitely something to eat for everyone! And many of these recipes can be found on my Fantasy Foods Facebook Page.
Raw Vegan Chocolate Mousse
4 Avocados
2/3 c cocoa powder
1 and 1/3 cups Agave
1.5 Tsp Vanilla Extract
Picture and this particular recipe from http://vegtastic.net/2011/07/raw-avocado-chocolate-mousse/
Many variations have been done on this, including adding berries and making a chocolate pie with a crust made of dates, nuts and desiccated coconut (ground together in a food processor).
This is my gluten-free bread - the recipe is available here:http://saltyfemme.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/bread-and-baking-part-4-on-the-road-to-gluten-free/. This also includes a short essay about transforming my love of bread baking when I started eating gluten-free. I always loved to bake bread, and this is the standby recipe/formula that I now use. It tastes a little different every week because I always change up the flours - the trick is keeping the flour weights the same (it's always 5 ounces tapioca starch and 8.5 ounces of other GF flours).
These are stuffed bell peppers made without dairy, eggs, or nuts. You can even make them vegan. We love these in our family because you can add a variety of veggies, beans, rice, and/or meats, and they taste great baked inside a giant bellpepper. These are easy to accomodate any allergy since you can put whatever you want in them.
This is the Chocolate So Delicious icecream, topped with Divvies chocolate chips, strawberries, crushed frozen Divvies brownies, home made vegan chocolate sauce and vegan "whipped cream" made of coconut milk.
My fantasy food is my delicious chocolate wedding cake. I am anaphylactic to milk/dairy, so this cake was made special for me and was also vegan. The caketasted great even one year later-when we pulled the cake from the freezer to celebrate our anniversary. Allergy-free cakes are delicious, and none of the guests knew it was made without dairy, nuts, or eggs!
This is my fantasy food....wish I could eat these crepes every morning for breakfast. We adjusted the recipe to meet our allergen needs.
From what I can tell first time authors learn this term "Pub Day" way before they need to. If you've never published a book and had not aspired to, than Pub Day is a rather abstract concept. Your agent tells you a date that barely registers because you are so worked up about all that will happen between Now and Then (edits, final edits, design, promotions etc. ) and time becomes elasticized -- stretching endlessly as friends and family inquire "What's happening with your book? Isn't it done yet?" and snapping back just when you'd like more time to review your endnotes or revise that article you just wrote.
My Pub Day has arrived. And I've heard many predictions as to how I will feel today. From the sage warning: "Nothing will happen except you are going to keep selling your book." To the effusive: "It's like giving birth isn't it? So exciting!"
Well I've given birth twice now and I'm sure that publishing a book is not an apt simile. For one, birth is a surprise and I'd be a pretty shoddy writer if I was for some reason "surprised" by something in my book. Also, I didn't much care what anyone else thought of my newborns and nobody (including myself) wrote blog posts, essays and reviews about them. (Thank g-d)
So for me, Pub Day is the day I direct readers to the wonderful piece titled The Network by my husband about our experience. And it is the day I suggest my readers check out my interview on Skirt! and my piece titled Feed My Child at Your Own Risk on Psych Today and my BOOK TRAILER. Oh. And Pub Day is also the day I kept my son home because he was sick with the flu, my daughter returned home from school with a fever, I ran two loads of laundry before noon, we ran out of jelly for toast and I was reminded (as if I needed to be) that no matter what day it is -- I'm a mother who writes, in that order, everyday.
What I Do Now:
