Vegan Chocolate Cherry Dump Cake

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Are you like us and don't live near a hip vegan bakery? Are your primary grocery stores in your small town Walmart and Piggly Wiggly? Do you just want an inexpensive and easy vegan dessert to celebrate a birthday, Valentine's Day, Christmas, Easter or a special guest over for dinner? This is the recipe for you. This chocolate cherry dump cake is inexpensive and tastes great even for non-vegans.

I've spent hours making new vegan cake recipes I've found on the internet for our birthdays, and this simple recipe is still our absolute favorite. It is hands down the winner. It is rich and decadent, and it costs about $4 dollars to make. I highly suggest spending another $4 for vanilla vegan ice cream. It's not healthy, but it is a nice indulgence for holidays and special occasions. The best part is that the dump cake takes 5 minutes to prepare. It's not really a cake. It's actually a cobbler with a chocolate brownie crust on top of cherries. YUM!

Here are some other vegan Chocolate cake mix options I found at Walmart.

Vegan Chocolate Cherry Dump Cake

1 box of chocolate cake mix (vegan)
2 cans of Cherry Pie filling (we use reduced sugar)
3/4 cup of Earth Balance vegan spread melted
Vanilla vegan ice cream* (optional topping but highly suggested)

*We love Soy Delicious Vanilla soy milk ice cream (3 grams of fat and 120 calories).

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Dump two cans of cherry pie filling into a 9 X 11 baking pan (not greased). Spread out evenly across the bottom of the pan. I use a glass Pyrex pan.

Sprinkle one entire box of cake mix on top of the cherry layer. Use a spoon to spread out evenly.

Drizzle the melted vegan butter on top of the chocolate cake mix layer.

Place in a preheated oven 350 degrees. Bake for one hour.

It's not fancy or photogenic.  It's just plain good. We shouldn't have to try that hard with dessert, right? I really hope you try it. Thanks for reading!

How to Use a Chemex Coffee Maker

You can do it.

COFFEE

This is a flip phone pictorial on how to use a Chemex Coffee Maker. You can find many YouTube videos regarding this topic. Unfortunately, along with the gorgeous visuals are the most fussy instructions involving scales and thermometers. These instructions are nothing like those videos. It is Chemex coffee the easy way. I hope this will help explain how a Chemex works minus the coffee snobbery. 

Vegan "Crab" Cakes Recipe

Lord, You have come to the seashore

Neither searching for the rich nor the wise

desiring only that I should follow
HYMN

My sweet friend from work brought me some zucchinis from her garden. Look at these huge zucchinis! We sauteed some with onions and still had some left. So I made a large batch of Zucchini "crab" cakes and froze them for quick meals later. Served in a bun with vegan tartar sauce and shredded lettuce, they could pass for a sandwich at a beach grill.

I save and freeze the drained zucchini liquid to use in vegetable soup later.

Vegan "Crab" Cakes                                      

This recipe was adapted from Connie's "crab" cakes see her amazing original recipe here: Connie's zucchini crab cakes.  I have modified her recipe to be vegan and baked not fried. Thank you, Connie. You are a genius!

Makes about 10 cakes

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/2 cups grated Zucchini (drain excess liquid)
1 flax seed egg ( mix 1 tsp ground flaxseed and 2 tsp water)
2 TBs melted Earth Balance Spread
2 cups seasoned Panko bread crumbs (see recipe below)
1/4 cup minced onion
1 tsp Old Bay Seasoning
1/4 cup all purpose flour

Seasoned Panko Bread Crumbs

2 cups Panko bread crumbs ( I use whole wheat)
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 380 degrees.

2. Grease a cookie sheet OR line a cookie sheet with parchment paper/ silicone baking mat and spread a tsp of canola oil on the liner. The oil beads up, but it's fine.

3. Place 1 cup of the seasoned bread crumbs into a bowl for breading the patties later.

4. Mix the grated zucchini, flax egg, and melted Earth Balance in a large bowl. Then add the remaining 1 cup of bread crumbs, flour, seasoning and onions. Mix well.

5. Now take a hand full of "crab" mixture and form a patty. This is going to be messy. Hold your patty in one hand. Cover both sides of the patty with the bread crumbs using the opposite hand. Place patty on the cookie sheet. Repeat until all ten patties are breaded.

6.  Place cookie sheet in the oven for 15 mins. Then turn the patties over and cook for another 15 minutes or longer until the edges of the patties are brown.

7. Serve in a hamburger bun with shredded lettuce, tartar sauce*, and/ or  ketchup.

* For a simple tartar sauce, I use:

1/4 cup Just Mayo vegan mayonnaise
1 heaping tsp sweet pickle relish
1/4 tsp onion powder.

TO FREEZE:

It is incredibly easy to freeze a double batch for quick meals. Wait until the cakes are cooled and then stack them with a small piece of parchment paper in between each patty. Then place the patty stacks in a freezer bag. Then place the bag into another big freezer bag. It's easy to reheat them for 20 mins in the toaster oven or in the regular oven at 380 degrees. I've kept them frozen up to 3 months in the freezer. They may last even longer.

This recipe really helps satisfy a desire for seafood flavors and can help you use up extra zucchinis. I hope you try it. Thank you for reading!

Coffee On the Cheap

Therefore stay awake- for you do not know 

when the master of  the house will come.
MARK 13:35

In my past life, I would buy a Starbucks Venti Unsweetened Iced Coffee with soy milk almost daily.  It was one of my few little splurges. Those little splurges really added up:

$3.50 per coffee (including tip) x 260 days a year (5 times a week)= $910.00 a year

Costs to make our coffee at home:

$156.00 one brick of coffee a week for a year
$104.00 one creamer/ almondmilk a week for a year
$100.00 in coffee supplies (filters, sugar)
$360.00 a year for the two of us

$910.00 - $180.00 (for just me) = $730.00 a year SAVED

I blew a thousand dollars a year on coffee. Sigh. I need you to know what I'm going to say comes from a loving place. Commit to start making your coffee at home today. Here are some tips for coffee on the cheap:

1. Invest in a nice travel coffee cup that you love.

You may want to buy a couple travel mugs to use throughout the week. Buy something that works and is easy to clean. 

2. Buy a Chemex coffee maker. 

My brother bought us a Chemex for a wedding present six years ago, and it changed our lives. Prior to the Chemex, we were spending $6.00 a bag for coffee. The Chemex is a miracle worker. It can make really inexpensive coffee taste incredible and not bitter. This saves you so much money because you can buy the cheap stuff. The Chemex is also easy to clean. I always felt uneasy about the cleanliness of our Mr. Coffee. I had no idea what was growing in the pipes and parts of that thing. The Chemex is glass. It is easy to clean, and it is durable. It isn't some electronic gizmo you have to upgrade every two years. It isn't going to suddenly quit working one morning. It is reliable, and I need that in a coffee maker. Once you taste the coffee made in one, you will never go back. How to use a Chemex Coffee Maker.

3. Buy Cafe Bustelo espresso style coffee.

Go to your Walmart and look for the yellow and red coffee bricks they are usually on the bottom shelf. It is cheap usually under $3.00. Cafe Bustelo was always my favorite coffee, but the Chemex made it taste even better. It makes a smooth, strong cup of coffee. Trust me, it will put pep in your step.

4. For espresso, buy an old school stove top espresso maker.

For the coffee drinkers, just add water to the espresso and you have an Americano. If you live alone or in a studio apartment with very little counter space, this is the coffee device for you. You don't need one of those complicated espresso machines. Stove top espresso makers are simple- no filters or space necessary. (Thank you, Mrs. Seaux, for giving me my first Cuban coffee maker for my tiny little apartment.)

5. Splurge on the stir ins.

It's okay to buy the pumpkin spiced flavored creamer and some sugar in the raw. Go crazy. Buy anything that makes you enjoy your coffee at home. Whatever flavoring, creamer, or topping you purchase is nowhere close to a thousand dollars.

6. Make it easy for yourself.

If you like iced coffee like me, use old coffee from the day before and store it in the fridge. And don't forget the straws!

7. Go to the coffee shop as a social treat. There is still nothing better than catching up with a good friend over a cup of coffee. It is a great way to spend time with someone and not spend a lot of money. Lunch, a movie or even some beers can quickly become $20.00 or more. Getting coffee as an activity is a very inexpensive way to hang out. 

One last thing.. 

8. Place the empty coffee bag in your bathroom trash can.

It is an awesome air freshener.

Chemex Coffee Maker    Stove Top Espresso Maker

For my iced coffee I like the Tervis Tumbler with a Tervis Black Lid. 

Anything you buy to make good coffee at home is worth it. As long as you don't spend 900.00 a year- you will be under what you'd spend at the coffee shop. Take the money you save and buy a real treat.

Thanks for reading!