I quite like this frosting! I don't think either the flavour or the texture is nearly as good as non-vegan frosting, but it's still very nice. And I appreciate the simplicity of the recipe: just two ingredients and only maybe 10 minutes of active time and you have a declicious vegan-friendly chocolate frosting. You do have to plan ahead a bit, since it requires several hours of chilling before it's ready to use, but it's a very easy process overall.

ATK reported issues with separation when making this frosting with bar chocolate, so they recommended using chocolate chips instead. The stabilizers in the chocolate chips prevent the mixture from separating like it would with regular chocolate. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any chocolate chips that didn't contain milk ingredients. I looked at both dark and semi-sweet chocolate chips from three different brands and the ALL contained some form of dairy! So, in the end, I had to use bar chocolate. Luckily I didn't see any separation in my frosting. I think there may have been some stabilizers in my coconut cream, so perhaps that was enough to compensate for the lack of chocolate chips.

Vegan Chocolate Frosting

Slightly adapted from The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients

• 400mL coconut cream¹
• 575g dark chocolate chips²

Directions

1. Combine the coconut cream and chocolate and heat, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is completely melted and mixture is smooth.
2. Press plastic wrap into the surface of the icing and chill in fridge until mixture is the consistency of cream cheese (2-3 hours), stirring halfway through.
3. Transfer to a stand mixer and beat with whisk attachment until light and mousse-like (2-4 minutes).

---

¹ The original recipe calls for chilling 3 cans of coconut milk for a day or more in order to get the cream to separate out. You can then skim the cream off the top and discard the residual milk. This approach works fine, but I actually happened to have a tin of coconut cream in the fridge, so I just used that. It saves a lot of time and effort and means that you're not wasting the residual coconut milk. The original recipe only called for 1 1/2 c. of coconut cream (~360mL), but I had a 400mL can, so I just used the whole thing and added a little bit more chocolate to compensate. ^Back
2 Check the ingredients to make sure your chocolate chips are vegan. If you can't find vegan chocolate chips, you can try using bar chocolate instead (with the same diligence in checking for added dairy), just be aware that your frosting may be prone to separation without the stabilizers from the chocolate chips. ^Back

Ube Waffles (Purple Yam Waffles)

I was looking for birthday cake ideas the other day and stumbled across a few recipes for ube cake. I liked the idea of an ube chiffon cake with coconut icing, but I ultimately decided that I'd rather have an Italian cream cake for my birthday. While I was looking at all the various cake configurations though, I also spotted this waffle recipe. It sounded intriguing enough that I couldn't resist giving it a try.

Since this is a new recipe and uses a few ingredients that I don't often bake with (ube and tapioca starch), I followed the recipe pretty closely this time. The only change I made was to swap out half the sugar for monk fruit sweetener (the kind with erythritol, so it's 1:1 with regualr sugar). So, these waffles are very not dietary. They are, however, quite delicious. The original recipe promised crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. We had a little trouble getting them to be nicely crispy outside, but they certainly delivered on the chewy on the inside aspect. (And the crispiness improved a bit once the waffle iron temperature was dialed up as well.)

I'd like to try making this with coconut milk in place of coconut cream at some point as that would go a long way toward making these waffles a bit healthier and less calorically dense. But if you're not counting calories or just want a fancy dessert waffle, then I feel like these would be an excellent choice. An ube waffle topped with mango ice cream and a bit of whipped coconut cream would make for an excellent, decadent, and visually striking dessert.

Ube Waffles

From Hungry Huy

Ingredients

• 134g thawed frozen grated ube/ube purée
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 tsp. ube extract
• 2 large eggs
• 385mL coconut cream
• 1 Tbsp. oil
• 290g tapioca starch
• 73g rice flour¹
• 70g all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 200g sugar
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground

Directions

1. Whisk the ube, water, and ube extract together into a smooth mixture.
2. Mix in the eggs, coconut cream, and oil.
3. In a separate bowl, sift together the tapioca starch, rice flour, all-purpose flour, and baking powder.
4. Mix the sugar and salt into the dry ingredients.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix to combine. Stir until just combined, but still lumpy.
6. Let the batter rest for 10-20 minutes.
7. Preheat your waffle iron to a slightly higher temperature than you normally use for waffles.
8. Cook waffles, but leave them in the waffle iron for an extra 20-30 seconds beyond what you normally would.
9. Transfer waffles to a rack after cooking so they can crisp up a bit more.
10. Serve with whipped coconut cream, fresh mango, mango ice cream, halo-halo, cream of coconut, and/or halaya jam.

---

Variations

Lighter Ube Waffles (untested)

Ingredients

• 134g thawed frozen grated ube/ube purée
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 tsp. ube extract
• 2 large eggs
• 385mL coconut milk
• 1 Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce
• 290g tapioca starch
• 73g brown rice flour
• 70g whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 200g monk fruit sweetener with erythritol (or 1:1 sweetener of your choice)
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground

These changes should just about halve the WW Points cost of these waffles. They're still not dietary by any stretch, but they're at least a bit less reprehensible from a calorie standpoint if made this way.

---

¹ NOT glutinous rice flour, just regular rice flour! I acutally used brown rice flour for mine. This seems to have worked nicely, so I might try swapping out the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour next time just to get a little extra fibre in and make these decadent waffles slightly healthier. ^Back