Happy Pi Day

Happy Pi Day!  I hope you get a chance to celebrate with a big piece of pie today ... or quiche ... or pizza!  There really are so many ways to celebrate this wonderful day. 

 

While I haven't decided just what form of pie I'll be partaking in today, I've had a couple of other delicious pies recently that I can reminisce on in the meantime. 

 

In my last post I had a picture of peanut butter pie that I made following this recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie.  While I thought that version was perfectly good, Josh didn't really care for the banana flavor of the pie, so a couple of weeks ago I finally got around to trying the recipe again sans banana.  While you wouldn't think it would work, I substituted a block of lightly pressed tofu for the banana, and this version turned out amazing!!!  I also nixed the home-made pie crust and used a store-bought graham cracker one.  And for extra deliciousness, I made a chocolate ganache to layer on top.  I couldn't believe how amazing this pie was.  Plus super easy ...  The perfect recipe!

 

Then just last week I decided to finally get around to trying my hand at a vegan cheesecake recipe.  I stocked up on tons of Tofutti cream cheese and got to work.  Of course it turned out I didn't really need all that cream cheese.  I ended up with way too much filling - probably enough for two cheesecakes - and had a hard time blending it all together because I had too much to fit in the blender at once!  Oops.  Fortunately the great thing about vegan anything is that you don't have to worry about eating it raw.  I used the excess filling as a delicious apple dip!

 

I have to say, what I ended up with really wouldn't pass as "real" cheesecake in any dairy-eaters book, but was still quite tasty.  The vegan cheesecake just didn't have the "kick" that you get from real cream cheese - and sorry, but adding a little lemon juice just doesn't cut it.  But it was creamy, sweet, and felt very decadent.  In fact, the first night I had it I ate two big pieces!  (Yeah, that didn't make me feel too great afterwards.) 

 

While this cheesecake was great as-is, I also experimented with a few different topping options like masserated strawberries and melted chocolate.  The chocolate was definitely my favorite preferred topping.  My drizzle may not be all that artful, but it still tasted great! 

 

 

 

Hope these inpsire your pi(e) adventures today!