Dried cranberries and a hint of maple syrup add festive flair to this hearty and warming holiday favorite.

Be sure to use sweet, ripe, seasonal fruit in this recipe. Peaches and nectarines are delicious. For a fresh strawberry pie, see hint below.

This recipe was created by one of our cooking instructors at the McDougall Program, Alex Bury. I demonstrated this recipe during the VegSource conference during October 2005 and received so many requests for the recipe that I am including it in this month’s newsletter.

MARK’S NOTE: Replace carob with chocolate & grain coffee with instant coffee granules.

from http://fooddownunder.com/cgi-bin/recipe.cgi?r=94201

Adapted slightly from http://health.rmad.org/sweetrecipe/milletcheesecake.htm.

Carob Chip Cookies comes from the “Recipes from the Weimar Kitchen” cookbook published in 1987. They are a health institute in Weimar, California and this cookbook is full of vegan-type recipes. My husband and I are trying to eat more vegan type recipes and I thought I’d try these just for fun. Was pleasantly surprised at how good they turned out. The recipe calls for walnuts, but I’m allergic to them, so used raw cashews instead and it turned out fine.

I love this simple, yet excellent tasting first course, because it is simple to make, tastes wonderful and has great visual appeal, and can be made in 15 minutes!

Baking intensifies the texture of this dessert, and chilling overnight will optimize the flavors.

Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the apples are soft and it’s all steamy & brown.

Submitted by: anonymous

Submitted by: Kristina Demers

Young kids can help too! My kids like to make small sculptures (like worms, butterflies, etc.) that we can eat.

They came out quite decadent but unfortunately the process of filling the cups was so damn time consuming, that I gave up at #9 and just licked the rest of the chocolate and filling.

Submitted by: Krissy Moore
Recipe by: Eriko Moriyama

Submitted by: Gayle