Pasta Salad With a Kick, Another Eggless Cookie, and Night Feast

A few weeks ago my daughter came up to me and asked if we could have a "night feast". Of course my first question was "What is night feast?" She explained that it was a picnic held by the light of the tree. I thought that sounded like a fabulous idea. She then informed me that hot cocoa and cookies were essential to night feast......she always comes up with the best ideas.

I made these egg free candy cane cookies and they were fabulous! I skipped on the white chocolate as I couldn't find any allergen free, and we frosted them with home made mint frosting. The cookies themselves were very tasty, which I find is not always the case in novelty cookies. I've made these twice now and enjoyed them both each time. The first time I shaped them into the letter C as I am working on the alphabet with my youngest.....learning with food is always fun.

Back to night feast, we held our first annual night feast on the first day of Advent. We ate peanut free Chex Mix, cookies, hot cocoa, and pasta salad. I really liked the dressing on this pasta salad, I don't think the noodles were really necessary. Next time I will turn it into a chickpea salad.

Honey Mustard Wasabi Pasta Salad

1 cup honey mustard dressing (look for one without high fructose corn syrup, and obviously an egg free one)

1 clove crushed garlic

1-2 tsp prepared wasabi

1 tsp minced ginger

2 cups cooked chickpeas

2 cups cooked noodles

Whisk together the first four ingredients and add extra wasabi to taste. Stir in the chickpeas and noodles. Cover and refrigerate until ready to eat. Enjoy. I can't wait to try this recipe out again during the summer.

Fall Treats and Tricks

I can't believe I haven't posted these yet! We went to a fall festival a couple weekends ago, and when we got home we had a family fun night. I made these French bread pizzas. Simply pesto, roma tomatoes and cheese. Great because you can make extras and freeze them for later. Great for lunch the next day too.
Pesto free version for my little man. Butter and garlic replace the pesto, and I chopped up the tomatoes for easier chomping.

These are cheesy pumpkin rice pumpkins. Bell peppers for the stems. I
believe I got the idea for these from Family Fun magazine.

These are (less convincing) pumpkin wraps. Wraps made with sun dried tomato wraps and garnished with parsley. Also an idea from Family Fun.

What is any party without pie? Egg free key lime pie. This was very tasty, I can't even believe I'm typing a blog right now and not in the kitchen making more.

Now for the trick portion.........

This..........

is the candy my kids brought home. Yikes!! I get kind of jittery just looking at it. I helped the kids pick out a couple pieces of candy to keep and they left the rest out overnight. It was replaced in the morning with a new microscope for my little girl and a new game for my little boy.....a game that had a piece missing....and has been discontinued so they can't send me a new one....sigh. Luckily the other pieces were exciting enough that they are now being used as action figures.

Well there you have it. We had a lot of fun eating and crafting. I am going to try to get my Thanksgiving pictures and recipes up before Christmas, but at this rate who knows! Hope you all are enjoying the holidays!

More Egg Free Holiday Baking: Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are good, these are really, really good. I am eating one right now as I type. I've called upon all of the one handed typing skills I perfected while nursing and blogging, and now I am utilizing them for another very important purpose........cookie eating and blogging.

I used this recipe for mint chocolate chip cookies and only played with it a little. Instead of chocolate mint chips (which are divine by the way) I used a chopped up mint Theo bar. The Theo bar was a little less minty than mint U.F.O.s (which is of course the name of the mint chocolate chips that you can buy at Trader Joe's) would have been, but still fantastic. The only other addition I made was about a tbs of applesauce for a moister dough.

My daughter and I made these together and we had so much fun. As you can see from the picture, I barely had time to get my camera out before the cookies started disappearing right off the pan. They are very chocolaty, and very tasty, I doubt anyone would guess they were vegan. More importantly though, I think they would be enjoyed by anyone who tried them...........except for chocolate haters........but, you know, there's something wrong with those people anyway. ;)

Egg Free Soy Free Sourdough English Muffins

Why haven't I ever made English muffins before?? And also important, why aren't you making them right now? Sometimes bad things in life (my son's egg and soy allergy) bring about fantastic things, like these muffins. I don't know that it will make up for a lifetime without Chinese food.....but it's a start. Not only do they avoid all of our collective allergens, but they are wicked tasty, and cook on a griddle. So unlike biscuits, there is no need to heat the whole house.

I modified the recipe from the "Sourdough English Muffin" recipe in this book.....I love this book. Not only are there tons of recipes for bread machines, there are tips on what to do with stale, leftover bread.

Unfortunately, since I got the recipe from a book....and....you know.... copyright laws and stuff, I didn't feel like it would be a good idea to post it on the interwebs. However, I will tell you the modifications I made, and you can either buy the book.....or modify another recipe that you already have.

All I did was use 1/4 cup canned pumpkin and 1tbs oil to replace the egg. Also I replaced half of the flour with whole wheat flour. These smelled great, tasted great, and went fast! They will be on our breakfast table this holiday season.

Egg Free Pumpkin Pie Bars

I love autumn with the same passion and intensity that I hate the summer. The weather cools, the humidity dies down, and I can finally venture outside and breath simultaneously. One of the things I love most about fall is pumpkin! I am a pumpkin fanatic, I love EVERYTHING pumpkin. Sweet dishes, savory dishes, candles, soap, serving platters, pumpkin patches...if it has to do with pumpkin I am all over it. So you will be seeing a number of pumpkin dishes in the near future.

The challenge this year being that little man has an egg allergy. I figured if I wanted time to perfect an egg free, soy free pumpkin pie filling I better start now. I didn't go to the trouble of making a pie crust because I wasn't sure it was going to work. I just crushed up some organic graham crackers and made a graham cracker crust in the bottom of my 8x8 baking dish. This worked fabulously. It is more creamy and less spicy than your average pumpkin pie (probably also higher on calories...shhh), but it held it's shape and we all enjoyed it. So it was a success in my book.

I can't wait to try this filling in a pie crust now that I know it works. Baking times are for the 8x8 dish. Use any sort of crust you like. I didn't really measure....or pay attention to how I made the crust. I'm great at this whole food blogging thing, aren't I?

2 packages of cream cheese
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup pumpkin
2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground cardamom

Soften the cream cheese in the microwave. Slowly stir in sugar.

Stir in pumpkin and spices. Adjust spices to taste preference.

Pour into crust. I baked mine for 50 minutes at 350. Let cool.

I'm so excited that our little man will be able to enjoy egg free, soy free pumpkin pie this year. If your intent is to make this dish egg free, soy free, be sure to check all the ingredients you use carefully!

UPDATE: I've made this quite a few times now, and this should definitely be made ahead of time to ensure time to set in the fridge. Also, while not absolutely necessary, using an electric mixer will produce the best results.

Recipe Remix and Giveaway WINNER!!!

Using a random number generator Krissie was picked as winner for my CSN giveaway! Congrats Krissie! I know you are going to have fun spending your gift card! A big thank you to everyone who entered, and thank you to CSN Stores!

I thought I might share this recipe for vegetable pancakes again as I've modified it to be egg free. I used 1/2 cup pumpkin puree to replace the eggs. It adds a bonus veggie, and still holds it's shape beautifully. With Fall nearing I thought it might be important to post as replacing egg with pumpkin would work for any latke recipes as well. Also worthy of note, you can use any sort of veggies you have lying around. For this batch I used a sweet potato, and also some spinach (love my leafy greens). Another modification that I made was to use Greek yogurt for the dipping sauce, as it it is much thicker. Hope you enjoy revisiting this recipe, we sure did!