Christmas Cookie #8: raw thin mints

Here is our eighth Christmas cookie recipe: raw thin mints
We used deglet noor dates. They are smaller than Medjool dates, so we added twice the amount. One can use maple syrup or honey instead of agave. Honey is a 1:1 ratio.When using maple syrup add a little less, it is sweeter and a thinner liquid. One recipe made a dozen cookies; however we tripled the recipe. We did dip them in chocolate. These are good.
http://rawdorable.blogspot.com/2008/01/chocotastrophy-do-try-this-at-home.html

Christmas Cookie #7: raw gingerbread men

Here is our seventh Christmas cookie recipe: raw gingerbread men
http://thechalkboardmag.com/how-to-make-the-tastiest-raw-gingerbread-man-cookie
We used 1 cup of coconut palm sugar instead of maple sugar, plus 2 TBS of maple syrup. We still needed to add 2 TBS of water. We used soaked, dehydrated walnuts instead of pecan (allergic to pecans). We decorated them with dried cranberry pieces. This recipe yielded 18 gingerbread men.

Our Thanksgiving Meal

For Thanksgiving we served the traditional turkey, gluten free stuffing, gluten free gravy, green beans with raw onion rings, a tossed salad, and baked potatoes/sweet potatoes, but we will also include a few vegan recipes as well as a couple of raw recipes, including raw cranberry relish, raw drinks raw cookies, and a raw pie.

For appetizers we had dates stuffed with goat cheese, daiya cheeze or almond butter, ranch dressing with veggies, and cheese/cheeze with gluten free crackers.

The raw onion rings (from Ani's Essential Raw book - thinly sliced

onions bread with soaked/sprouted, dehydrated, then ground buckwheat with herbs and dehydrated until crisp to top the lightly steamed green beans.

For the salad dressing we served two dressings.
The first is a Caesar type dressing. The recipe is as follows: ground pumpkin seeds (1/2 cup), 4 TBS olive oil, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 TBS maple syrup or honey, 4 TBS raw apple cider vinegar or the juice from 1-2 lemons.

The second is a vegan ranch dressing 2 cups vegan mayo, 2 TBS parsley, 1/4 cup raw apple cider vinegar, 2 TBS onion powder.

Olive and vinegar were also available.

For the vegans we serve a roasted stuffed pumpkin. We stuffed the slit pumpkin with a sunflower seed based stuffing from http://rawveganpower.com/recipes/raw-vegan-thanksgiving-recipes/
and baked it at 350 for an hour and a half.

We made a raw cranberry relish.
We used 2 cups of raw cranberries, 1/2 cup of raisins, and 3/4 cup of dates dates in the food processor. After welled chopped, we added the 1 orange and 1 apples to pulse until well mixed. We also added the juice of one orange. At first we went with a 1/2 cup of dates, i loved it, but it wasn't sweet enough for the rest of the family.

We will finish off the meal with a raw "walnut" pie. We altered the recipe using hazelnuts and walnuts in the crust and just walnuts in the filling due to a pecan allergy. We added a chocolate layer on top of the crust, pouring the walnut and date filling on top of it. The recipe link is from http://heal-thy-self-cb.blogspot.com/2013/11/raw-walnut-pie-pecan-

We also had a plate of raw cookies. The link is http://heal-thy-self-cb.blogspot.com/2013/11/12-raw-christmas-cookies.html
My husband wanted WholeFoods' Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie, so we had that as well.

Our beverages were nutnog from
http://www.rawmazing.com/raw-pumpkin-spice-hazelnut-nog/
For the Hazelnut milk we soaked 1 cup of hazelnuts overnight. In the morning we drained them, added them to the blendtec with 3 cups of water to make milk. We then followed the recipe for the raw pumpkin-spice hazelnut nog.

and Kombucha Sangria from  http://heal-thy-self-cb.blogspot.com/2013/11/kombucha-sangri.html

We also served iced tea and coffee.

Raw Chocolate caramel hazelnut tort (orange and peppermint)

Oh My Goodness, this is the best raw cake we have made. Even the hubby likes it!!! We only zested two oranges, and that was plenty of orange flavor. This yielded about half of the zest needed for the recipe.
For Christmas, we made this with crushed dye free candy canes and peppermint gluten free cookies (i know the sugar) and replace the orange extract and juice with peppermint extract and tea.

I also wonder if a date paste would work instead of the maple syrup, or even splitting it.
The recipe can be found here
http://www.rawmazing.com/orange-chocolate-hazelnut-tort-with-hazelnut-caramel-topping/

Christmas Cookie #6: raw almond cranberry cookie

Here is our sixth Christmas cookie recipe:  raw almond cranberry cookie
http://www.inhabitots.com/how-to-make-delicious-healthy-raw-vegan-almond-cranberry-cookies/
We dehydrated these for 1 hour at 140 and then 116 until slightly crisp. This recipe made 4 dozen cookies plus quite a bit of dough for sampling by our son.

Christmas Cookie #5: pistachio cherry macaroons

Here is our fifth Christmas cookie recipe: pistachio cherry macaroons
http://www.rawmazing.com/pistachio-dried-cherry-macaroons/
This recipe made 18 cookies. We followed the dehydrating directions in the recipe. They were put into the freeze after the chocolate was poured over them.

Christmas Cookie #4: raw wedding cookies

Here is our fourth Christmas cookie recipe:  Raw Wedding Cookies http://rawdorable.blogspot.com/2008/12/hawaiian-wedding-surprise.html
To make date paste, soak 1 cup of dates for 1-2 hours. Place the dates in the food processor with 2 TBS of water and process until smooth. This can be frozen to store  for up to 3 months. We placed 2 TBS  in ice cube trays to freeze. These cookies are really good not dehydrated but with no crunch. The recipe made a dozen cookies