Today is the first day of Vegan MoFo!  Happy Vegan Month of Food everyone!!  In honor of this great month, I will be posting my first recipe to this blog.  Not many more will follow, but I will bring you some of my favorite tasty recipes every so often.   And check out the official Vegan MoFo blogroll to see some awesome blogs talking about how amazing vegan food can be.

Anyway.

A new product has come on to the markets replacing honey.  Now, I know some vegans eat honey, so this is a non-issue.  But I used to love honey and now I don’t eat it anymore.   I was super excited to try this Bee Free Honee made from apples.  Apples?  Really?  I had read reviews raving about how this product tastes “just like honey!!”  They claimed it doesn’t even taste like apples.

I beg to differ.  The syrup was good, but it did not taste like honey.  In fact, it tasted just like a sweet apple syrup. Hmmm – now what was I going to do with the bottles I had bought in excitement for a product supposed to taste exactly like honey?  I didn’t like the taste of it in my traditional uses for honey (mainly with peanut butter and bananas), so I sought out recipes for this product.

One recipe I found was in “Lickin’ the Beaters 2 – Vegan Chocolate and Candy” by Siue Moffat.  I really love this recipe – it has a lot of steps, but is pretty easy to make.  Go buy the book if you want more vegan candy recipes!

Honee Peanut Centers

1/4 cup margarine
1/3 cup peanut butter
pinch of salt
1/2 cup Just Like Honey (Bee Free Honee works great!)
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups icing sugar
1/3 cup soymilk powder

1. Grease two 8-inch pans
2. Combine margarine, peanut butter, and salt in a pot, mixing on low heat.  When the margarine is melted, add Honee, water, and vanilla, and mix well.
3. Put the icing sugar and soymilk powder in a sifter and gradually sift into peanut mixture.  Make candy into a smooth doughlike ball and press into pan.  Cool and cut into small squares for dipping.

MY NOTES:

• I used a 9×13 inch pan, but you could really use any size pan (the pieces will just be thicker or thinner)
• I put my pan of filling in the freezer to harden for about 10 minutes to make it easier to cut and subsequently dip (these pieces are soft at room temperature)
• I used about 13 ounces of melted chocolate with one tablespoon shortening for dipping
• I keep these candies in an airtight container in the fridge for two reasons: (1) I think they taste better cold and (2) these are too soft at room temperature