Hotluck and awesome nature of blogging

Steph has nicely summarised the hotluck nicely here, so has Tahn but I thought I would talk about what we made.

Toby made two types of sushi, one was the avocado and tempeh sushi from Tempting Tempeh and the other was cream cheese and cucumber sushi inspired by cucumber sandwiches as shown below. We discovered however that rolling sushi is actually harder than it looks. It was his first time and neither of us were sure if he was doing it right, so we sadly had to watch a few utube videos. I preferred the cream cheese cucumber sushi.

I made my friend Dan's amazing chickpea pate recipe, I normally put cajun spices around the edges but at the last minute realised that we didn't have any so settled on dry parsley which didn't quite do it justice.


I also made the cheesecake truffle recipe that Tahn kindly posted here, these were so easy and delicious and I will certainly be making them again, I've reposted the recipe just in case something happens to her blog and I've left without the recipe:

Chocolate-Macadamia Cheezcake Truffles from 1000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson


2C vegan semisweet chocolate chips (I used 2 blocks of lindt dark chocolate)
1 container vegan cream cheese
2C confectioners' sugar
2T pure vanilla extract (I used only 1 since our vanilla extract sucks)
1C ground macadamia nuts (I used ground cashews)

Melt the chocolate chips.
In a food processor, combine cream cheese, sugar and vanilla and process until well mixed. Add the melted chocolate and blend until well mixed. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and refrigerate until chilled, at least 2 hours.
Roll the chilled mixture into 1-inch balls and place them on an ungreased baking sheet.
Roll the balls in the nuts, turning to coat. Transfer truffles to a serving platter, refrigerate for 30 minutes and serve. Cover and refrigerate any leftovers.

And lastly I made raspberry lemonade:
I've been obsessed with old fashioned American style lemonade since I made the Lebanese lemonade from wheres the beef months ago and while I was in London I fell in love with a bottled raspberry lemonade which I have since discovered that they now sell in Coles. I simply altered the Lebanese lemonade recipe:

Raspberry lemonade

5 1/3 cups water
1 cup castor sugar
1 1/3 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice (around 7-8 smallish lemons or a bag of lemons)
1/2 cup of frozen raspberries

Stir together the water, sugar and half dozen raspberries in a saucepan over low-medium heat, until the sugar is dissolved.

Transfer the sugar syrup to a serving jug using a mesh strainer and a spoon to squeeze the raspberry juice out and keep the raspberries out. Stir in the lemon juice. Chill in fridge. I then added some frozen raspberries to act in place of ice since I was taking it to the park.

I think I might try the lavender lemonade from here next. Lemonade is just so refreshing!


It was a great potluck, with so much great food and great to have some new friendly potluckers present who will hopefully become regulars. Danni made the oreo truffles which were a big hit and reminded me how awesome blogging can be, recipes are a bit like fashion, and can become circular in nature but with a much shorter circle. The oreo truffles were a huge blogged about recipe a little while ago, that I was influenced by and then SJ posted the recipe and the circle started again with Danni and Vicki and others making them and no doubt it will do the rounds again in the near future because it is an easy and yummy recipe. It's great how influential blogging can be and just when you start to forget about a recipe, it does the rounds again and you think ok yeh I forgot about that, I should make them again. By the way there is also an awesome peanut butter version, where you substitute peanut butter for cream cheese that are equally yummy that I blogged about here. And there is also a gingersnap version which I haven't tried but look good.