Welcome back, friends! Thanks for joining me for yet another installment of my Coconut Bowls Project. If you've been here before, feel free to skip ahead to my recipe reviews. If you aren't sure what's going on, the next paragraph will clue you in!
Within the Coconut Bowls Project, I am cooking every single recipe in the Coconut Bowls cookbook! All recipes in the book are vegan, and if I ever make any changes to a recipe I'm always sure to let you know. Due to copyright reasons I can't share the exact recipes with you, but I can share my thoughts and tell you what page they are on so that you can cook along with me if you choose! If you want to get your hands on your own copy of the book, be sure to use the coupon code joyfulbalance-10 to get 10% off! Also be sure to check out installments one, two, three, and four if you want more!
LET'S DO THIS.
Plant-Based Mac & Cheese
- Recipe # 25/100
- Recipe by @ehvegan
- Page 252
If you've been plant based at any point, you probably realized pretty quickly that there are lots of plant based "mac and cheese" recipes out there. This one is a pretty typical recipe, but it uses a lot of kitchen staples so it's good to have in your back pocket when you suddenly need a dinner plan!
The cheese sauce is basically made by blending up some cooked veggies and a bunch of spices. The original recipe also uses vegan butter and cashews, but I replaced these ingredients with a ½ cup of cashew cream since I don't have vegan butter in my kitchen! The replacement seemed to do the trick. I also think that this recipe could be easily altered with other spices if you wanted to experiment with other flavors. (Side note: I accidentally used extra turmeric, so my sauce came out EXTRA yellow for that reason!)
I halved the recipe and ended up with enough pasta for about 2 bowls, but enough sauce for 3-4. This will vary based on how much sauce you personally want to use on one serving of pasta! I used the leftover cheese sauce in a burrito bowl later in the week and it was delicious.
Citrus Soba Noodle Salad
- Recipe #26/100
- Recipe by @the_vibrantvegan
- Page 118
I'm always up for trying new salad recipes! Salads are great because they pretty much require you to make a dressing and chop some veggies, but that's about it! This one was a few simple veggies, a citrus dressing, and some soba noodles.
This was my first time trying soba noodles, and to be honest they were chewier than I expected! In the future I think I'd prefer just a regular whole wheat pasta, but that's just my personal preference. The dressing had a definite kick to it from the cayenne pepper, and it was a bit on the spicy side for me. But if you're into spicy, you'd probably love it! If that's your thing I think it would be a great dressing option for any salad.
I made a couple of simple replacements to the dressing recipe. I replaced soy sauce with tamari, sesame oil with tahini, and olive oil with water. Since I used tahini (which can be quite thick) I also used a blender to blend the ingredients together and make it all smooth!
For the salad itself I used the same ingredients as listed in the recipe. However, I did change up the ratios! I used 1 soba noodle packet and 1 cucumber for my salad, and kept all the other ingredients the same. This made enough for two large-ish bowls for me, with a bit of leftover dressing!
Oahu's North Shore Smoothie Bowl
- Recipe #27/100
- Recipe by @earthyandy
- Page 50
You guys know I love a good smoothie bowl. This one was pretty basic as far as ingredients go, but it was a big hit in my house!
I didn't change anything about this recipe, except that I used a lot more almond milk than the recipe implied! This could depend on your blender or how frozen your fruit is, but I used over a cup of almond milk for mine. I topped it with homemade cinnamon granola and coconut shreds! If I'd had more fresh fruit on hand I think that would have been a delicious option as well. Super yummy, easy to make, and goes with pretty much whatever toppings you desire.
This one made about 3 bowls worth for me!
Choc-Cherry Raspberry Bites
- Recipe #28/100
- Recipe by @one_full_belly
- Page 200
These ones are a fun concept. You basically blend up a cherry/coconut mixture, layer it with some raspberry chia jam, and then coat it in chocolate.
I enjoyed the end result of this one, but the process of coating the bites in chocolate was very messy! I did leave out the coconut oil, so it's possible that this change could have affected my coating process. In the future I might try just drizzling the chocolate over the top instead of dunking the entire bite in the chocolate! But if you wanted to include the coconut oil like the recipe calls for, I think that the dunking process might work out better for you.
Other than leaving out the coconut oil, the only other change I made was using coconut sugar for my sweetener instead of stevia.
Made about 20 bites for me!
Red Quinoa with Smoky Sweet Pepper Sauce
- Recipe #29/100
- Recipe by @tastyasheck
- Page 168
This one was basically a buddha bowl! (And you know I love buddha bowls). It consisted of cauliflower, green beans, quinoa (made red by beets), a "smoky sweet pepper sauce", and some toasted cashews as toppings.
The bowl was decent, but my favorite aspect of this one was definitely that pepper sauce! It came out SO creamy and it was absolutely delicious! It was honestly hard to believe that it didn't have dairy in it. I also really loved the crunch that the cashews provided. Plus, this recipe had you cook your quinoa with beetroot and that was a fun way to add in some extra color and nutrition!
I did a smaller amount of chipotle pepper than the recipe called for, and I left out olive oil. I also didn't top mine with spring onion simply because I didn't have one in my kitchen!
This made 2 pretty big bowls for me!
Mango Lime Nice-Cream
- Recipe #30/100
- Recipe by @shinewithplants
- Page 210
If you haven't hopped aboard the "nice cream" train yet, this is basically the idea that you can blend up frozen bananas to make a pretty decent ice cream consistency. The bananas are sweet and also creamy, making this a good alternative to traditional ice cream (if this sounds like your thing be sure to check out my Creamy Chocolate Vegan Milkshake based on the idea!). This particular nice cream was the basic nice cream concept, but with some frozen mango and lime for a refreshing flavor!
Because the flavor was more tropical than over-the-top sweet, this was somewhere between a nice cream and a smoothie bowl in my opinion. I actually made it for lunch and really enjoyed it that way! But it could absolutely be considered a dessert as well if that's your preference.
I followed this one exactly, except that I added some extra water to get my blender going. I topped mine with slivered almonds and chopped up dried mango. It was delicious! I'll definitely be making this one again. Made 2 large bowls for me!
Wrap Up
There's installment #5 of the Coconut Bowls Project! We are basically ⅓ of the way through this challenge! I hope you continue to follow along with me, and don't forget to use the coupon code joyfulbalance-10 for 10% off your very own copy of the Coconut Bowls cookbook if you decide to get a copy for yourself!
Until next time, stay well!
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