Christmas Recipe Round-Up: Part 2

Yesterday I covered the appetizers I made in advance – which was most of them, as I was making the whole Christmas Day meal on the day, so all the better to get the appetizers out of the way! However, I left the dips for the crispy quinoa cakes, pita chips, crudites, olives and other snackeroos to the day of so they’d be ultra fresh!

The trio of dips I laid out (you can see them in the top right corner of the picture below) were, from left, naturally-sweetened cranberry sauce (this was also served with the meal), vegan garlic aioli and vegan roasted red pepper sauce (click for the recipe, as it was previously posted).

Copyright to The Guiltless Life

Here are the recipes for the vegan garlic aioli (this was delicious – I am so glad to have found a vegan alternative, as this my favourite dip to serve with yam fries!) and the cranberry sauce (which my mom made).

And, because this is a Wednesday, I will be linking this up at Jenn’s What I Ate Wednesday party! My eating still doesn’t have any kind of sensible pattern to it (I’m still adjusting to the post-Christmas return to a normal diet!) so showing what I ate on Christmas Day is the best I can do for this Wednesday 🙂

So let’s get to it :)!

Vegan Garlic Aioli

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup cashews, raw
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2-3 tsp minced garlic (to taste)
3 tbsp lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

Throw all the ingredients in a blender – blend!

Naturally-Sweetened Cranberry Sauce (by my mom)

INGREDIENTS:

12 oz bag fresh cranberries
1 cup red wine
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
Zest and juice of one orange
Agave nectar to taste (I go with 3 tbsp but you might want it sweeter)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Put all ingredients into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

2. Lower heat and simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the cranberries begin to pop and glaze over, and the sauce will thicken slightly.

3. This keeps really well in the fridge! It just gets a bit thicker as it cools :).

This guy may have sneaked a few bites – which would explain his tummy…(though a lot of it is fluffy fur, I promise!)

Copyright to The Guiltless Life