I'm Julia Child...bon appetit!!!

Ok so I'm really not Julia Child, I'm Lauren Cosentino (Hi, nice to meet you! We should hang out sometime...) But I dressed up as Ms. Child for Halloween and was channeling her all day on Saturday in preparation for our Moorhouse Halloween party. Our house was crazy with costume construction and food preparation, but the party was fantastic - we even had a sexy sax man live performance! And now, as children are running amuck feeding themselves on corn syrup and red #42, I give two much more appetizing (and real) options for your own, more sophisticated sweet tooth (or your "pretend to be more sophisticated sweet tooth"..because we all know there's a little mini trick or treater at heart...)

Pumpkin S'mores Cake
adapted from Pumpkin S'mores Cake

• I'm not going to post the full recipe because it's really labor intensive (really needed Julia's help with this one) but here are the modifications I made...
• I used gluten free graham crackers 
• Substituted a homemade simple syrup for corn syrup (equal parts sugar and water)
• Substituted soy creamer for heavy cream so it would be lactose-intolerant friendly!

Yes, it's complicated (I don't exactly have a blow torch lying around my kitchen), but it's so worth it and was completely cleaned off by the end of the night! 

Vegan Pumpkin Cheesecake

Crust

• 6 TBS Earth Balance Vegan Butter
• 1 3/4 cups gluten free gingersnaps, crushed
• 2 TBS brown sugar
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• pinch of salt

Melt the butter in the pie plate in the microwave. In a small bowl, combine the gingersnap crumbs, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Pour the gingersnap crumb mixture to the pie plate and, using a fork, coat completely with the butter. Using your hands, starting with the middle, press the crumb mixture outward up the sides of the pie plate. Then...

Pumpkin Cheesecake

• 1 12oz. package silken tofu
• 1 8 oz. container vegan cream cheese (Tofutti...best name)
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (fresh is better, but canned works just as well)
• 1 cup raw turbinado sugar (or brown sugar)
• 3 TBS almond flour
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1 TBS ground cinnamon
• you can also substitute these spices for a little over 1 TBS pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 350F. Puree all ingredients in a food processor or blender. Pour into gingersnap crust. Bake at 350F for about 50 minutes. Let cool and refrigerate. If you have leftover filling you can...

• add 1-1 1/2 cups flour of choice, 1 cup brown sugar, and some chocolate chips to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
• add non-dairy milk of choice to the blender and blend to smoothie consistency for an awesome pumpkin pie smoothie (the roommates loved this!)

I don't have all the Roomie Reactions, but I know that both of these tasty morsels were GONE by the end of the night and enjoyed by veg's and non-veg's, gluten-frees and non-GF's alike...so even though Halloween is ending, I hope you still enjoy the rest of the pumpkin season and from my fluttering paper heart to yours...Bon Appetit!!