Roasted Broccoli w/Butternut Squash Cheese Sauce

A co-worker recently made mention of vegan butternut squash mac & cheese. I had never heard of this wonderful idea before, but knew I needed to try it. Like most vegans, I'm always searching for the "best" vegan mac & cheese recipe. When I googled vegan butternut squash mac & cheese most of the results led me back to the same place, Oh She Glows. I had a squash I picked up at the co-op that I needed to use, so I decided I would give it a try. I made the baked variation because I figure most mac & cheese is better baked with bread crumbs on top. The results were good, but I wasn't blown away, and I don't think Chase was either. I had some extra cheese sauce leftover and put it in the fridge thinking I would try to do something with it, but I wasn't sure what.

When I remember to look through all the shrink veggies at work (the ones that we deem not good enough to sell, but almost always good enough to eat), I usually find lots of stuff to take home. Recently there was an abundance of broccoli and cauliflower. I never buy these particular veggies because my husband finds them unbearably bitter, but since they were free, I figured I would take them home and hopefully find a time I could enjoy them by myself. I had been wanting to try oven roasted broccoli for a while, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity. I cut up the broccoli and cauliflower into bite sized pieces and spread them out on a foil lined sheet pan. Using my new Misto olive oil sprayer (thanks mom!), I lightly sprayed them with olive oil, tossing them a couple times to coat all sides of veggies. I sprinkled them with salt and pepper and a few cloves of chopped garlic.

In a 400 degree oven, I roasted them for 10 minutes, turned the veggies with a spatula, and put them back in for another 5 minutes until just starting to crisp up.

They were delicious on their own, but I remembered I had leftover cheese sauce from the day before, and figured I would try to use it up. OMG, the combination of the veggies and the cheese sauce is soo good! I now make the cheese sauce with the intention of eating it on roasted broccoli because it is so good. I can eat a whole head of broccoli in one sitting when it's served this way, and there is nobody to fight me for it since Chase doesn't like broccoli :)

Chocolate Hazelnut Butter Stuffed Sugar Cookies

The Co-op had Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter on sale this past week. If you haven't tried this stuff, you should. It's amazing. It's nothing like the inferior Nutella. It has some texture to it, and has the perfect sweet/salty combination. Since it was on sale, I felt justified in using it in baked goods. Usually I just eat it right off the spoon, but I saw this idea floating around on Pinterest. They were using Nutella, of course, but I new I had to veganize it the second I saw it.
I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe that I found on vegweb.com. I always use ice cream scoops when I make my cookies, something I've learned from my years in food service. They produce the most consistant results. I used two sizes for these cookies, one for the cookie dough, and a baby one for the chocolate hazelnut butter. After I scooped out the cookie dough, I flattened it into rounds and topped it with the scoop of nut butter. I sprinkled the nut butter with a little coarsely ground sea salt.

I gathered the cookie dough up and around the nut butter and rolled them smooth in my hands.
To make them even more delicious, I rolled each cookie in sugar. You could skip this step if you wanted to, but it makes them a little crunchy on the outside and makes them look nicer too.
I baked them for 12-14 minutes, a little longer than called for in the recipe since I was dealing with a much thicker cookie. Let them cool on the pan for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. Enjoy!

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