No-Compromise Cinnamon Rolls!

Since being plant-based/whole-foods is pretty much a glorified way of saying "I'm vegan for health reasons rather than ethical ones," obviously some of my go-to recipe books and meal ideas aren't going to apprehend the subtle nuance and will simply be "vegan" in nature.

And while I love and adore and relish so many recipes from the vegan culinary world, sometimes the emphasis on healthy whole foods can get lost in the effort to mainly avoid meat and dairy. As I've said in previous posts, this means vegan butter spreads, white flours, and refined sugars can appear in recipes and then I, in my amateur ignorance, need to experiment with ways to replace or nix them.

Sometimes this works. Many times it flops.

And then sometimes I find a blog, like The Diva Dish, that also values no-nonsense recipes and sets about perfecting them without the compromise.

This was the case with one of Zach's favorite comfort foods: cinnamon rolls!

I love this woman and her truly 100% universally delicious cinnamon rolls! (RECIPE AND INSTRUCTIONS HERE!) Zach, accustomed as he is to the Cinnabon and  Pillsbury versions, was very impressed with them and I honestly didn't find that they tasted at all inferior to your average fat-and-sugar-laden roll of pure indulgence!

Prior to stumbling on this culinary goldmine, I was able to scrounge up vegan cinnamon roll recipes, sure. But they called for the aforementioned no-foods (butter spreads, refined grains and sugars, etc.)... and clearly I couldn't go for that.

But THIS gem of a recipe is almost entirely healthy whole foods! (Things like silken tofu are considered processed and oil is not a whole food, but you may be able to tweak the recipe to make it oil-free! I will try that next time and update you on whether omitting or substituting the coconut oil rendered the same delicious results!).

Don't believe you can make scrumptious cinnamon rolls without butter, milk, or white sugar? Try 'em yourself! It looks like a lot of work on her blog, but it was easy (she's a mom and did it during a 2-hour nap window). Believe it or not, whipping these up was actually fun!

In fact, I was so excited to try them out that they featured in both my waking and unconscious dreams for days. Zach came into the kitchen this morning to see me gleefully dancing around in place while working the dough with my new roller. :)

The moral of the story: you can have rock-your-face-off delicious comfort foods without compromising either nutritional quality or taste! Of course this splurge is a rare delicacy. My threshold for sugar is too low for weekly rations of frosting-smothered pastries (plus I might reduce the maple syrup and/or date sugar a little next time so I don't end up with "sugar mouth" afterward). But I can relish in the knowledge that I've found one perfect recipe for one fun food! So for the occasional indulgence, these are mmm, mmm, good!