Vegan Peanut Butter Blondies (A Fire and. . . )

I am on my second batch of these peanut butter blondies. I won't lie--they are THAT good! Why a second batch? I had the unfortunate pleasure of sharing the remainder of the first batch with our local firemen. Gee, Kelly, why were you sharing these with firemen? Well, because a neighbor's home caught fire Wednesday morning. Luckily nobody was injured. Luckily I had enough wits about me to run home--make a thermos of hot tea and grabbed my half-eaten pan of the blondies. What the heck else is someone so freaked out by the scare (seeing five fire engines parked along your street will do that) going to do? Especially someone like me who is prone to having extremely poor self management skills in the area of "emergencies". Short of running around like a "screaming meemie" and ringing my hands, I felt I lent just about enough help to keep everyone else aware of "the woman with the thermos of hot tea and blondies" tending to the needs of the victims with hot refills of Tension Tamer. It was awful. One minute all is well. The next, not so much. Like an angel from above, the Red Cross showed up within a few short minutes. They are angels, truly.  

I will say the best moment for us all was seeing two people who had made it out, with dogs no less, tucked one under each arm--safe. There was another brief moment of near-nervous breakdown when the third dog had yet to be found. Suddenly a fireman approached, dog three found, albeit completely freaked out--but alive. I had nightmares about this whole ordeal for the next two nights. Lord only knows how the nights were for the victims. I guess my dream of becoming a Red Cross volunteer can be kissed good-bye. I am not cut out for human drama. But feel if someone were needed to bake and provide hydration, I may be able to handle that.

I am knee deep into the preparations for a major fundraiser right now: the 10th Annual Sweat-4-Pets 5k/10k Run and 1 Mile Fun Walk benefitting Opspot.org. OpSpot is dedicated to elminating the unnecessary euthanasia of unwanted pets. Just wriring that: "unwanted pets" makes my stomach churn. We provide low-cost spaying and neutering for families with pets. To me, someone who has been through it all  in my Almost Fifty lifetime, especially in the area of "rescuing" animals (having to get a kennel license several years ago  because of the number of "pets" in our own home)--this fundraiser, needless to say, is very personal. It's been a long, long, long ten years. I won't go into the details of the past years and how in the beginning to have just twenty-five folks show up (god love them)--made us consider throwing in the towel in year one. Then, the next year, fifty. (Another consideration of towel throwing). Year three, finally a hundred participants. And tipping out at nearly three hundred participants last year. Well, here we are at year ten, and already--we have almost three-hundred pre-registered participants! God bless us for sticking with it! If you feel the passion for something, AND you have friends who will support you, who will stand with you, help you get the funds (the money, as with everything else--is always a hurdle) needed for the basic requirements of laying the foundation for the launch of a fundraiser--then by all means, do it! When I first approached my now dear, dear friend, the director of OpSpot with this as an idea, the Susan G. Komen running thing was kicking off--I thought, Well, if folks will run for breast cancer--surely they'll run to help keep unwanted animals from the gas chamber. And they did. And they do--for ten years now. *By the way--my friend with breast cancer is doing quite well--I am so proud of her--her strength through this very diffcult time is nothing but amazing. I have a standing phone call with her every Sunday morning and she lays it all out for me--the good, the bad and the ugly. The hair, the wigs, the hats, the nurses, her daughters--their support--the chemo drip--ugh--plus all the other lovely side effects of your body doing bad things to you. She loves our chats. I asked whether I could do anything else--she said, I love the phone calls. So call I do. I picked up a super deal of a price on the Gourmet cookbook two Sunday's ago at Borders (I love Borders!-seriously--it's a $40 cookbook--they had two of them marked down to $9.99)--and bought them both, took one to her at work. (She's a hairdresser in the mall.) I said: Here, if you just have NO appetite whatsoever, flip through this and whet your appetite--then have one of the girls make you something! My other job is to keep her laughing.

In almost all cities across the country--there are 5k and 10k fundraisers every weekend. Just go the the local running calendars and check them out. For St. Louis--the passion and giving for all causes runs high--we are a very charitable community. Perhaps you receently took note during the elections last week--Missouri had a measure on its ballot to increase the mandates for dog breeders, because, unfortunately Missouri had earned the moniker of the country's Puppy Mill State. A cringe-inducing nickname if ever there was one. This was the very first time in my voting life I put up a political yard sign--Vote Yes on Prop B. And thankfully, the people of Missouri spoke and we passed it--by a thin margin--a nail biting, thin margin, but it passed! Thank god there was a group of super passionate folks running herd on the measure for all its worth. It was a rough week all around, but ended on a very good note. So I made another batch of blondies Thursday morning.

These peanut butter blondies were my answer to NOT being able to fully gorge myself on my all-time favorite candy: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. If I ran into one more FULL display of these for the candy holiday--I was going to scream. I had had it--I was making my own vegan indulgence! As I said earlier--these came with me to the fire--and as I left--with pan in hand and both giddy and stressed over the fire that morning--walking up my street were eight firemen. It was totally like out of some movie because they were walking up the hill--stretched across the road--looking like we had just come out of armageddon or something--the heroes. I flipped open the top to my tray: Blondies anyone? And of course, they each politely took one, and I heard, Yum. (This could have been because they were seriously famished from the morning's life saving)--but Yum, nonetheless. Then I stated in a very nonchalant way: Oh, by the way--they're vegan! Two of them turned around and said, Seriously? I am like, Yep. The recipe was requested. I then felt like I had truly fulfilled my duty. I plan to take this recipe down to the firehouse as soon as I can!

Vegan Peanut Butter Blondies

(Adapted from: Taste of Home Cookies)

1 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (you can substitute some of this with some white whole wheat)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)

1/2 cup Florida Crystals

1 1/2 teaspoon Ener-G Egg Replacer whisked with 2 tablespoons water

1 tablepsoon canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup unsweetened soy milk

2/3 cup unsalted vegetable margerine

3/4 cup peanut butter (I used Jiff Natural)

1 cup chopped peanuts

Preheat oven to 325. Lightly spray a 9 x 13 baking pan. In a small bowl, sift together the dry ingredients: flour and baking powder set aside. In a large bowl--or bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the peanut butter and sugars. Add the oil to the egg replacer and whisk together well. Add this mixture to the milk, then add the vanilla extract to this and mix well. Add both the milk mixture and flour mixture alternating one then the other--beginning with the milk mixture, ending with the flour to the bowl with the butter and sugar. Don't over mix! After the mixture is pretty well mixed, fold in the chopped peanuts. Spread into the baking pan. Bake for about 35 minutes. While this bakes, prep your frosting. I decided I needed a little extra something on the top of these, so I dressed them up with more chopped peanuts and mini chocolate chips.

For Frosting

1/4 cup dark baking cocoa powder

2 tabelspoons unsweetened soy milk

1/4 cup vegetable margerine

1 tablespoon lite corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

mini chocolate chip (optional)

chopped peanuts (optional)

Mix together the butter, chocolate, milk and corn syrup and vanilla extract. When this is blended really well--add the powdered sugar until you feel you have the consistency you need. Spread over tray of cooled blondies. Slice and store in an airtight container.