Decadent Vegan Chocolate Pie And A Vegan White Russian

You may be wondering why I am blogging about a chocolate pie and a vegan cocktail in the same post. I have to admit that it’s a bit odd. But the decadent chocolate pie I made today called for coffee liqueur. So I figured that since the coffee liqueur was already out of its usual hiding place in my locked up cabinet, I would make myself a little vegan cocktail. And since the cocktail was so good, I decided to post about that too. And the vegan chocolate pie with the vegan White Russian certainly does scream decadence, does it not?

I am still sipping my drink as I write this post. So if my grammar is incorrect, please assume that it’s the drink. Anyway, I have been craving a luscious dessert for a few days, so I pulled out this dairy-free chocolate pie recipe from my untapped collection. This recipe, which I tweaked to make vegan, was adapted from Alton Brown’s book “Good Eats: The Early Years.”

These are the ingredients you will need to get started…

Ingredients

You could use agave nectar to replace the honey in the original recipe, but I wanted to try this “Bee Free Honee” which is made from apples. I actually tried this product at The Seed event about one year ago, and decided to revisit it for this recipe. It worked out perfectly…

Bee Free Honee

I also used a store-bought prepared chocolate wafer crust to make things easier. I found this Chocolate Pie Crust by the brand “Wholly Wholesome” at my local Fairway Supermarket. The label clearly states that it is “suitable for vegans.”

Wholly Wholesome Chocolate Pie Crust

The bigger issue here was finding a vegan coffee liqueur. As you may know from my prior post entitled What About Beer, Wine And Spirits?, not all alcohol is vegan. Since I had a bottle of Tia Maria coffee liqueur in the house which was unopened, I searched the website Barnivore to see if that brand was vegan. Lo and behold, it is. For your information, you could also use Kahlua, but only the original version is vegan.

I began preparing this very simple dessert recipe by melting some vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used the brand Enjoy Life) mixed with the coffee liqueur in a metal mixing bowl over simmering water in a 4 quart saucepan, stirring with a rubber spatula until melted…

I removed the mixture from the heat and stirred in some vanilla extract…

I combined this chocolate mixture with some silken tofu and the vegan “honee” in my blender until smooth…

Then I poured the mixture from the blender into the crust and refrigerated for 2 hours, so that the filling would firmly set…

And voila! A decadent vegan chocolate pie!

Decadent Vegan Chocolate Pie

DECADENT VEGAN CHOCOLATE PIE

Adapted from Alton Brown’s “Good Eats: The Early Years”

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

13 ounces vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/3 cup coffee liqueur (I used Tia Maria)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 lb. silken tofu

1 tablespoon agave nectar, vegan “Bee Free Honee” or other vegan sweetener of your choice

1 9-inch prepared chocolate pie crust (I used the Wholly Wholesome brand which is suitable for vegans)

Directions:

Place enough water in the bottom of a 4-quart saucepan to come 1 inch up the sides. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

Place the chocolate chips and liqueur in a medium metal mixing bowl, set over the simmering water, and stir with a rubber or silicone spatula until melted. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract.

Combine the tofu, chocolate mixture, and sweetener (agave nectar or sweetener of your choice) in a blender or food processor and spin until smooth (about 1 minute).

Pour the filling into the pie crust and refrigerate for 2 hours, or until the filling sets firm.

*Note: The pie was delicious by itself, but I thought that an awesome coconut dairy-free whipped cream dolloped on top of it would have been even more decadent! Click here for a simple vegan coconut whipped cream recipe, if you desire.

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So now that we’re already using the coffee liqueur, we might as well make a vegan cocktail too!

To make a Vegan White Russian, you only need three ingredients… vegan vodka (Absolut, Stolichnaya or Grey Goose is vegan), vegan coffee liqueur (Tia Maria or Kahlua) and soy creamer (I used the Original Wildwood brand made with Organic soy milk).

Vegan White Russian

VEGAN WHITE RUSSIAN 

Ingredients:

Serves 2

1 cup vodka (vegan)

1 cup coffee liqueur (vegan such as Tia Maria or Kahlua)

Soy Creamer

Directions:

Fill two lowball glasses with ice. Shake together vodka and coffee liqueur and divide between the glasses. Top with a splash of soy creamer.

Enjoy!