By Rachel Rappaport

During the holiday season, most people’s consumption of butter, milk, heavy cream and eggs goes through the roof. You are baking cookies, making candy and sitting down to rich meals. But what if you or a family member doesn’t eat dairy, eggs, meat or even honey and gelatin? Vegans don’t eat any animal or animal byproducts which eliminate a lot of what people think of as traditional holiday fare off the menu.

A lot of non-vegans seem to think that vegan food has to contain unusual ingredients, be overly “healthy” tasting, bland or complicated. Luckily for us, there has been a vegan cooking revolution occurring. Dozens of vegan blogs and cookbooks have immerged in the last year leaving in their wake hundreds of delicious recipes, many of which you would never guess was vegan.

Vegan desserts, appetizers, main courses and even candies can be made with no more effort than traditional recipe. Including a few vegan choices at a holiday party is a perfect way to make sure the vegans and vegetarians in your life enjoy festivities as much as possible. Even better, there is nothing in these recipes that even a committed meat eater would scoff at.

The blog Fat Free Vegan Kitchen has dozens of healthy (and a few not so healthy) vegan recipes. This one for Skinny Figgy Bars is perfect for the holidays. Each bar has only 117 calories and loads of fig flavor.

I’m intrigued by this DIY vegan pumpkin soy nog. It does require a bit of work but the author promises that it is “a nog, not a milkshake”.

After creating jelly candy recipe last year, it quickly became one of my most popular recipes. I’m not vegan myself so I am always looking for ways to make what I think of as “accidentally vegan”-foods that just happen to be vegan and that don’t include any ingredients I wouldn’t normally have on hand.

This barley-rice pilaf would make a wonderful side dish or main course. The addition of pomegranate seeds makes it especially festive.

These easy chocolate vegan cupcakes are a variation on Wacky Cake, a popular old fashioned caked so named because the recipe doesn’t contain eggs or milk, and are so moist and yummy even non vegans will love them.

The beautiful Vegan Yum Yum has a lovely appetizer I don’t think any one would turn away. Simple yet chic chickpea-radish topped crackers.

You can also search FoodieView for hundreds of vegan desserts.

Rachel Rappaport is a food writer and recipe creator who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. You can check out over 600 of her original recipes at her award winning food blog, Coconut & Lime.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 5:32 am and is filed under Recipe Roundup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.