Cereal Killing Two Birds with One Stone

May 18 , 2015 by: Amber Trudeau Pie

I know, I know, now you think you’ve accidentally stumbled upon the complete opposite of a vegan dessert blog. Since when does avian murder find its place in this sweet cruelty-free world? I’ll break it down for you. Believe it or not, “killing two birds with one stone” is actually a supposedly well-known expression meaning “accomplishing two goals with a single action” (I know, who would’ve guessed right? 😉 ). So, for instance, staying in bed would fulfil my desire both to not exercise and to keep sleeping. Win-win.

Now that brings us to part two of dessert mashup month to which I introduce to you the delicious (and surprisingly healthy) mashup of pie and breakfast cereal (and coffee actually). These cute and portable beauties deliciously marry all the things you love about eating cereal (while drinking coffee if you’re so inclined), while eliminating all the things you hate about trying to eat said cereal while driving or in transit (plus removing all the pesky effort involved in pouring cereal in a bowl and topping with milk of some kind. That’s a workout right there. Phewf! *wiping sweat from brow*). How many accidents do you think are caused every year because someone got distracted when they accidentally spilled a full bowl of cereal all over themselves while driving? Answer: 1 billion. I know! I was shocked too, I can’t believe the press hasn’t been regularly reporting on this tragedy when it’s such an astronomical (and completely made up) figure! At the current rate the entire human population of the world will have been obliterated by the year 2021. Personally, I think it’s all an evil plot by all the other planetary species to rid themselves of their earth-destroying overloads (namely: us). They’ve gotten organized and decided that death-by-cereal is the way to go (turns out even in the non-humanoid world, the wheat board has a pretty strong lobbying presence) .

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I’ve decided that we need to fight fire with fire (or cereal with cereal in this case), so I’m saving the world one breakfast bite at a time. If you’re the kind of person who has a gnawing hunger for a lot of cereal in the morning and usually consume its oaty goodness out of a punch bowl or trough, you can most definitely feel free to make these either full tart sized, or just straight up fill a whole pie plate with it. No, no, please, hold your applause and accolades. It’s really no big deal – I’m just trying to do my small part to save the world/humanity (*humble shrug of shoulders*).

Breakfast Cereal Coffee Tart

Yield: Approx. 18-20 mini breakfast cereal coffee tarts

Ingredients

  • 1 recipe coconut oil pie crust
  • 1 tablespoon vegan butter
  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon cloves
  • 1/4 cup honey (or sweetner of choice – agave, maple syrup, brown rice syrup etc.)
  • 2 teaspoons instant coffee
  • 1 teaspoon caramel (or vanilla) extract
  • 4 cups rice cereal
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
  • 1/4 cup dried cranberries
  • Vegan yogurt (optional)
  • Raspberries (optional)

Directions

1.Chill coconut oil crust in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes.

2. Preheat oven to 400F and grease a mini muffin tin.

3.Remove chilled crust from refrigerator and roll out to a 1/4 inch thickness. Using a small round cookie cutter, cut out rounds of crust which you will then press into your muffin tin making sure the crust goes all the way up the side. Alternatively, you can be lazy like me, and not even roll out the dough, but just grab small blobs of dough and evenly spread into the muffin tin.

4.Bake Pie crusts for about 10 minutes, or until it just starts to brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely while you create your cereal filling.

5. In a small saucepan on medium-low heat, combine the butter, pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, honey, coffee and caramel extract. Stir constantly until everything is melted and blended together.

6. In a medium bowl, combine rice cereal, shredded coconut and cranberries. Pour coffee-pumpkin mixture over cereal mixture and stir together until completely combined.

7. Carefully remove your completely cooled mini tarts from your muffin tin and fill each with desired level of cereal filling. (Note: If any of your tarts fall apart and/or you have extra cereal mixture left, see note at the bottom of this recipe).

Note: When I was removing my mini tarts, about 4 of them refused to come out and just crumbled 🙁 . Don’t let this go to waste though!, I just took a small container and completely crushed all the leftover/broken pie bits, combined them with a bit of vegan butter and pressed it down to form a crust layer, then topped with my remaining cereal mixture. This can then be cut into small squares.

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About Amber

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Hi, I'm Amber Trudeau.  I bake.... a lot.

I'm also vegan, and found that whenever I went out to a restaurant my dessert choices were limited to sorbet, sorbet, and sorbet.  So I started making my own desserts. I wanted them to taste good though - so my ultimatum was to make delicious desserts that also happen to be dairy-free and egg-free. Every week or so, I challenge myself to try something new.  To recreate some kind of traditional dessert that tastes amazing without using animal products.

Have a challenge for me? Send me a note:

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