Sweet Tatos and Banilla Soft Serve

I know finally I made some banilla soft serve! After what, a few weeks of saying I was going to make it. Well I finally got around to it, but first you must eat dinner to get dessert.

My friend over at veganaphrodite had posted this recipe for sweet potato falafels. She got the recipe from 101 Cookbooks blog. So I went over to that site and got the recipe for myself because it sounded really good. So I of course made my own tweaks to the recipe and I loved them! Once I saw the recipe I automatically wanted to make a fennel cashew cream dipping sauce to go with it. I have been dying to make one of my own (and not at work) but I did face a few problems trying. First my blender is not cut out to make a cashew cream sauce, so I had to move the mix to the food processor instead, but then there wasn't enough for the blade to mix it, so I had to add a few more cashews and a little more water. But hey I have more for another meal. (Along with the extra falafel.)

So here is the recipe I made:

Baked Sweet Potato Falafel

1 jumbo sweet tato
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 clove of roasted garlic
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1 nice handful of parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup of chick pea flour
1 teaspoon oil
salt and pepper
black sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cut the sweet tato into small cubes. Season with a little salt and pepper and the oil.

Roast for 30 minutes, but do not let the brown, you just want the sweet tato to be cooked and soft.

Place the cooked tato in a bowl.

Add in the seasonings, 1/2 cup of the flour, lemon juice, parsley, and garlic.

Mash until it becomes smooth. Add in the remaining flour if the mixture is still too wet. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for a few hours. (I went and worked out at this point, so it was in the fridge two hours or so.) Preheat oven again to 400 degrees.

Scoop out tablespoon fulls of the sweet tato mixture, roll into a ball, and

coat in the sesame seeds.

Place on a parchment paper lined baking pan and bake for 30 minutes. You want the falafel to firm up and they have cracks in them.

For the Fennel Cashew Cream Sauce
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/4 cup hot water plus more while blending
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon ume plum vinegar
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

Place the nuts and hot water in the blender or food processor. Let it stand for a few minutes, so the nuts can soften.

Add in the other ingredients and blend. Adding more water if necessary to make a smooth sauce.

There you go, dinner.

Now how about some dessert! I decided to make my first banilla (banana and vanilla combined) soft serve flavor to be...

Cherry Chocolate Chip Banilla Soft Serve
1 1/2 frozen bananas
12 cherries, pitted and chopped
2 tablespoons (ok more) grain sweetened chocolate chips
1 tablespoon cacao nibs (this is what chocolate is made from)

Place the banana in a food processor. Pulse it a few times to start chopping the bananas.

Once the bananas are in smaller pieces, puree.

And in just a few seconds you will get a creamy banana ice cream. Its amazing.

Top with your cherries, chocolate chips, and cacao nibs. Eat. (I swear there is soft serve under there.)

I cannot wait to make the other types of soft serve I thought up!! It was really yummy and so easy. Why did it take me so long to make it? Who knows...