Vegan Coconut-Oat Pancakes with Blackberry-Peach Compote

It’s January, which means many of us are attempting to eat healthier to negate the many calories packed on over the holidays.  I'm trying to eat better this year, but not because I overate this past month (or did I, hm), but because my detox diet last year made me more attuned to the types of grains I eat, so my sort-of resolution for this year is to eat less gluten and, if I do eat gluten, it should be of the whole grain variety.

Although there is no way I am giving up pizza at Roberta’s. So when I made pancakes for brunch last weekend, I started to scheme about how I could make them healthier. Add to that the fact that, for the past few months, I’ve been getting a number of requests for egg-free recipes, and I came up with this.

Thai Eggplant Green Curry Chocolate Cake with Coconut-Thai Basil Ice cream

Here it finally is: my slightly belated post about my dessert for Dirt Candy’s 2nd birthday at the end of October. I already detailed how this unique opportunity came about so I’ll save this space for how I came up with the concept for the chosen dessert and, following that, an at-home version of the recipe that I shared with Amanda and staff.

As I previously mentioned, Amanda had asked me at the very end of August to come up with a vegetable-based dessert, thereby giving me nearly six weeks to come up with a concept, test, and finalize it before sending her my recipe the last week of October. Because it was still late summer, my head was wrapped around berries and stone fruit and corn but I quickly realized that those items weren’t really in season in late October (even though they could certainly be sourced at that time) and so I decided against them. Within a week, I was fully certain that I wanted to use one of the namesakes of this blog: eggplant.

Tropical Dinner Part 2: Coconut Coriander Rice

I'm not really sure where the inspiration for this came from; all I know is that the words coconut and coriander popped into my head when I was thinking about what to add to the rice that was going along with the rest of this tropical-ish dinner, so I decided to run with it. It worked out perfectly: the coconut milk lent a silky quality and subtle perfume and flavor of coconut to the rice, and the coriander was just the right foil - smoky and earthy - to the sweetness of the coconut.