Tag: recipes

20 Best Vegan Christmas Cookies

Cookies never go out of season, but the winter holidays are truly the best time to stay warm by the oven and indulge your sweet tooth. So much of the experience has to do with spending time with friends and family, creating memories that will long outlast those cherished treats.

The end results spread joy to all those gifted, and it’s easy to make enough to go around. If you’ve been waiting for a reason to bake cookies, this is your prime opportunity.

Guided by tradition, certain morsels show up to the party year after year. However, there’s always room on the cookie platter for something new.

Whether you’re looking for a twist on a classic or an entirely different way to shake up the dessert course, I’ve got you covered. These are some of my favorite holiday cookie recipes that are guaranteed to keep your celebration sweet.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)13 Comments

The Everyday Vegan Cheat Sheet

There is no such thing as too many cookbooks when it comes to practical, trustworthy recipes than both comfort and inspire. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but I’ve got the cheat sheet for sure-fire hits every single meal. It all starts with a sheet pan, and my upcoming cookbook, The Everyday Vegan Cheat Sheet!

Move over, one-pot meals: Sheet pans are here to stay! Offering ease, speed, and minimal clean-up, unlock a diverse array of bold flavors and satisfying textures with this essential kitchen staple. While there’s a certain charm to slowly simmered stews bubbling away on the stove, a relentless parade of mushy mains quickly loses its appeal. Banish boredom from the dinner table with over one hundred tried and true recipes for success. It’s time to put the stock pot away and start pre-heating the oven.

Bring back nostalgic favorites like plant-based meatloaf, prepared alongside buttery mashed cauliflower. Bake up bulgogi with broccoli that’s even better than takeout. Prepare pancakes for a crowd without flipping a single silver dollar. Heck, you can even mac it out with the creamiest, cheesiest mac and cheese ever, no boil, no fuss, no regrets.

For new cooks and seasoned chefs alike, there are tips and tricks for making the most of your ingredients throughout the year. Endless options for variations keep these formulas fresh, flexible, and adaptable to all taste and dietary preferences.

Eat well every day. You really can have it all with just one pan.

Pre-order your copy today!

Hannah (BitterSweet)4 Comments

Viva Vegetariana

Fledgling vegans are spoiled for choice, without ever realizing it. Beyond the obvious conveniences of readily available meatless meals in both restaurants and grocery stores, newbies might not know that the entire cookbook section has been turned upside down in the past decade. In fact, that distinct lack of vegan baking books is what motivated me to write My Sweet Vegan to begin with.

Compared to Nava Atlas, however, I was still late to the party. Truly a pioneer in the culinary world, activism, literature, and art, Vegetariana first hit bookshelves in 1984, before I was even born. It’s unbelievable how far we’ve come since then, thanks in no small part to such bold moves. Now, 37 years later, Nava’s premier work encompassing recipes, food lore, and imaginative illustrations has been reborn for a whole new generation of compassionate cooks.


Reprinted with permission from Vegetariana by Nava Atlas

While I’ve often flippantly declared that I could never use a cookbook without photos, Vegetariana has made me eat those words, along with a wide assortment of sweet and savory delights. Nava brings these recipes to life with her incredibly artful drawings and stories, giving them even greater presence on the page than a mere snapshot could allow.

These recipes have truly stood the test of time. Tested and tasted again and again, over the course of nearly four decades, they’ve been polished like diamonds, each one a culinary jewel. I’ve had the great fortune of working with Nava for a mere quarter of this book’s lifetime and can easily attest to this fact. Not once have I hit a single dud through the course of our collaborations.

Given such extensive experience with Nava’s work, it’s hard to pick even a dozen favorites from the bunch. Tofu Rancheros make eggs obsolete in this upgraded Tex-Mex standard. Perfect for breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner, there’s no time I would ever turn down a heaping helping.

Sweet & Sour Cabbage Soup could soothe the soul better than any scrawny chicken. Tangy and tart, sweet and soft, every spoonful is bright, full of vibrant flavors the belie such a simple preparation. Humble, affordable, and accessible ingredients are transformed into exquisite creations with minimal effort.

Speaking of fast favorites, Quinoa Sloppy Joe or Taco Filling is the all-purpose meatless stuffing for any lonely bun, bread, or tortilla you’ve got on hand. Made for one or an unexpected hoard of visitors, it scales easily, keeps beautifully, and reheats like a champ.


Reprinted with permission from Vegetariana by Nava Atlas

Prepare to add a whole new collection of instant hits to your standard recipe arsenal. Nava Atlas has been so generous to kick-start that inspiration by giving away three copies of Vegetariana to those hungry for comfort food, and food for thought.

To enter, leave me a comment below about your favorite go-to recipe. What’s the dish that you’ve made a hundred times, and could easily make a hundred times more? Don’t forget to come back and fill out the entry form to log your submission, and unlock a number of additional methods to rack up extra entries.

Vegetariana: A Rich Harvest of Wit, Lore, and Recipes by Nava Atlas

Hannah (BitterSweet)11 Comments

Ode to Avocados

Prized as a delicacy and an aphrodisiac, avocados have been cherished since the early Aztecs first harvested the wild fruit over 10,000 years ago. While that’s an impressive history, proving its long term staying power, I’m disquieted to imagine any point in time that this most precious, indispensable stable didn’t exist. Rarely does a day pass without some form of avocado appearing on my personal menu, and often more than once. I hate to play favorites when there are so many incredible fresh finds out there… But I know avocado is the one I couldn’t live without.

Once the underdog of the produce world, avocados have enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity only during the later half of the 20st century. Now ubiquitous, Americans alone account for over $2.6 billion in avocado sales annually. No wonder millennials can’t afford to buy houses anymore. The buttery flesh may be green, but its really worth it’s weight in gold.

As National Avocado Day looms ever nearer on July 31st, the whole event seems curiously redundant. Don’t we already pay our respects at the shrine of the ahuacatl more religiously than most conventional deities? I don’t really need to suggest a celebratory round of guacamole, as if it wasn’t the most obvious serving suggestion in the book? Besides, you have a whole separate holiday to rock out with your guac out, on September 16th.

There’s no wrong way to eat an avocado. In fact, my favorite method is to scoop it right out of of shell with a spoon, gilded with tiny pinch of flaky salt over the top. If you’d like to pull out all the stops for this party and try something special, however, I do have a few more ideas that are sure to make any avocado lover swoon.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)8 Comments