Vegan Brie en Croute

Artisan Vegan Brie with Sliced Apples, Brown Sugar and Chopped Pecans, 

Baked in Fluffy Crescent Crust.

It haven't been blogging this month, though I have been eating plenty!  I've been a little obsessed lately with cheese.  Handmade, aged, small batch, decadent, cheese.  It all started with the VegNews and the September - October Cheese issue.  Aged Chevre with Herbes de Provence, Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella, Fromage de Brie, Deli-Style Swiss, Sharp Cheddar, even Cream Cheese!  These truly awe inspiring cashew-based recipes are the creation of Miyoko Schinner, author of Artisan Vegan Cheese. They take some patience to prepare, but the results are well worth it.

Well, it just so happened that I had a wheel of Miyoko's Brie aging on my kitchen table when I learned (entirely by chance) about the Artisan Vegan Cheese contest to promote her new book.  There were only a few hours left to enter and I immediately thought of Baked Brie, but the only recipe I knew involved puff pastry and apricot marmalade.  I had neither. 

But I did have one apple and pecans and handfulls of brown sugar and cinnamon.  I popped over to my Pinterest board and grabbed this vegan crescent roll recipe and whipped up a batch.  

I rolled out a little less than half of the dough to cover my brie, topping it first with half of the apple sliced, as much brown sugar as I could balance precariously on top, a heavy sprinkle of cinnamon and a couple of handfuls of chopped pecans.  Scientific right?  

 I then wrapped the corners over each other and mushed them all together and baked at 425 for fifteen to twenty minutes (just until golden!).   Doesn't look like much on the outside...

But inside is just magic...

I got third place in the contest!  I won a fifteen minute Q & A to pick Miyoko's brain about cheese or vegan cooking in general - how exciting!  What should I ask?!

Now for the reason I have not been blogging lately....  I renewed my commitment to losing weight, so I have been busy calculating the nutritional info for all of my recipes.  So from now on I'll be adding that to blog posts.  Disclaimer:  I am human and don't do this stuff for a living, so don't expect 100% accuracy.  What I can tell you is that a serving size of this, at 1/8 of a wheel,  is almost 600 calories!  So I had to give a good deal of it away.  

My neighbor took a piece immediately after I made it and declared it was the best thing she had eaten in a long time...then asked for seconds.  When the subject of vegan cheese came up at a friends wedding reception, she declared it:  better than chocolate!   

So here is the damage:

Serving Size: 1 serving

Amount Per Serving

• Calories 583.7
• Total Fat 38.5 g
• Saturated Fat 20.6 g
• Polyunsaturated Fat 4.0 g
• Monounsaturated Fat 11.3 g
• Cholesterol 0.0 mg
• Sodium 44.7 mg
• Potassium 445.8 mg
• Total Carbohydrate 56.9 g
• Dietary Fiber 5.2 g
• Sugars 9.9 g
• Protein 9.5 g