Impressive & EASY Holiday Appetizers (Vegan)

I look forward to the holidays every year, but planning can be a little stressful. So if you feel like you're in the same boat, this video is for you. Today I am sharing three easy holiday appetizers that look really fancy and impressive, but are actually very simple to put together. I'm also partnering with Vitamix for this video, and today I'm going to be showing you their new Ascent X5 blender and how this incredible device can make your recipe prep and cleanup even easier. I use my Vitamix every single day, whether it's making a simple smoothie, soup, dip, nut butter, or even more, because you know when it's a Vitamix that it's built to last and that it can break down even the toughest of ingredients. Vitamix's new Ascent X5 blender has a sleek, intuitive design and 10 different blending programs, including smoothies, smoothie bowls, soups, frozen cocktails, spice blending, and a handy self-cleaning function. Vitamix is currently having a holiday sale where you can get up to $100 off of Vitamix products, so be sure to check out the Ascent X5. I'll put the link in the description of this video, and you can also check out all of Vitamix's other incredible products. Now let's get on to the first recipe. The first recipe we're going to be making are some cheesy rosemary sweet potato stacks. This recipe is based off of my rosemary sweet potato gratin, which I think is another easy to prepare, but impressive looking dish. But today, since we're focusing on appetizers, we're going to modify the recipe a little bit to be more a single serving, so it can be great as a side for a main dish or to put out with your other holiday appetizers. All these full recipes will be linked in the description of this video. If you want to follow along, you can also save them and print them out for later. But to start out, we're going to need about two pounds of sweet potatoes, which will be between two and three sweet potatoes, depending on how big yours are. We're going to start by peeling our sweet potatoes, so let's do a little bit of movie magic. And just like that, they're peeled and the ends are trimmed. Now our next step is to thinly slice these sweet potatoes. If you have patience, you can do this with a knife, but again, this video is all about efficiency. So we're going to be using a mandolin for this process. I like to use these cut proof protection gloves whenever I'm using a mandolin, just because the blade is sharp. Now all we're going to do is slice our sweet potatoes into a large bowl. I recommend slicing them as thin as possible because that means they'll melt into each other a little bit more, and you'll get to coat each piece in more of the seasoning slash marinade that we're going to be making in just a second. If you're planning on making a lot of recipes, you can slice the potatoes and put them in a Ziploc bag in the fridge up to three days in advance. This doesn't take too much time, but it will make your day of prep even easier. Now that our potatoes are nice and sliced, we're going to move on with our cheesy sauce, which we're going to blend together nice and seamlessly with the help of our Vitamix. I am modifying this recipe slightly because the gratin has a little bit more liquid than the sweet potato stacks, so I will put my notes in the YouTube caption of what I did differently to make this more single serve. We're going to add nutritional yeast, arrowroot powder or cornstarch, vegan parmesan, olive oil, garlic, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and non-dairy milk to our Ascent X5, then blend on high for 45 to 60 seconds or until you form a uniform sauce. Then we'll pour the sauce mixture over the sweet potatoes and add in some fresh thyme and rosemary. Mix everything until evenly coated. You can use a spatula, but honestly, I find it easier to coat each potato by using clean hands. Then we're going to stack up our sweet potatoes and transfer them into a muffin tin. I like to line the muffin tin because it makes the sweet potatoes a lot easier to take out later. Also, don't be afraid to stack the sweet potatoes above the line of the muffin tin. It's all going to stay perfectly connected and they will shrink a little while they're baking in the oven. Now we've got our sweet potato stacks, we're going to go ahead and put these in the oven until they're nice and tender and the edges are just starting to get crispy. While that's resting away, it gives me the perfect time to show you how you can easily clean your Vitamix using the self-cleaning function. I'm just going to give it a quick, not super detailed rinse with water, then fill it halfway with warm water, add a couple drops of dish soap, and then use Vitamix's self-cleaning function, which makes the cleaning process so much easier for your blender. Once the potatoes look delicious and golden like this, you can easily remove them from the muffin tin using the liners. You can serve them in the liners, but they should come easily out, and I think they look extra cute when you pierce them with a toothpick and then arrange them on a plate like so. They just look so pretty and golden and appetizing. I just think these look so delicious and tasty, and I love how easy they are to make. You're really only slicing some potatoes, blending up the sauce, and mixing them, and the blender and the oven are doing all of the work for you. I'll take a bite of one so you guys can see the texture. First off, the rosemary garlic flavor is insane. You get like layers of tender potato with crispy edges. Overall, incredibly delicious. Next up, I'm going to show you how to make my absolute favorite vegan spinach dip. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I actually prefer spinach dip to spinach artichoke dip. Maybe try this recipe and you'll agree with me. I've already prepped all of my ingredients, so we're actually going to start this recipe on the stovetop. Warm your oil in a pan, then we'll add some diced leek and saute for three to five minutes until translucent. Then we'll add our garlic and saute for an additional minute until fragrant. Then we'll remove this from the heat and transfer to a large glass bowl, and you can immediately add frozen spinach that you've thawed and drained, and we'll also add some diced water chestnuts, and we'll mix everything together to lower the temp of the leeks even further. We're going to let the veggies cool off a little bit more and make the cheesy part of the dip in our Ascent X5. We're going to start by adding some silken tofu to the blender, along with about eight ounces of vegan cream cheese, plus some nutritional yeast, tomato paste, and salt. Seal this up, and then we're going to blend this until it's smooth using the tamper that comes with the X5 as necessary. Once the mixture is smooth, we're going to pour it over our veggies and mix well until everything is evenly combined. I do recommend chilling this in the fridge for at least 15 minutes to let the flavors combine, but then all that's left to do is serve it up. I made a cute little bread bowl and plopped my spinach chip in the bowl. I think that just adds a little extra something to the presentation, and I always like to serve my spinach chip with something soft and something crunchy, so I did a mix of leftover bread from the center of the bowl and some crackers. I don't know if this is like a classic holiday app for everyone, but I have distinct childhood memories of enjoying spinach chip around the holidays, so I always love making it this time of year, and I think it's a great thing to bring to a party or a great thing to make as a host because you can make it several days ahead of time. So instead of chilling in the fridge for just 15 minutes, you can store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to three days, and if you prefer to serve this warm, I also have an option for that in my blog post too, so that will be linked down below if you want to check it out. I hope you're still paying attention because in my opinion, I saved the best recipe for last. We are going to be making my pesto star bread. I make this religiously every holiday on multiple occasions, and I always get compliments because it looks super fancy and on theme, but it's so simple to make. This recipe is also the ultimate hack because if you want to, you can go totally store-bought and use store-bought pizza dough as well as store-bought pesto, but today we're going semi-handmade, and I'm going to show you how to make some pesto. So I will say basil tends to be a little bit more expensive in the winter, so we're going to be making an arugula pesto, and the crazy thing about this is there's absolutely no basil in it, but if you don't tell someone that it's arugula pesto, I really don't One of the many great things about the Vitamix Ascent X5 blender is that it can act as a blender or a food processor. So you saw in my last video, I was able to use the tamper to make more of a thick dip, and today we're going to be making the pesto in our blender. Start by adding your walnuts, garlic, nutritional yeast, and salt, and we'll stuff in all of that arugula, and we're going to slowly drizzle in some olive oil as we blend everything together, and once your pesto reaches your desired texture, you're all done. You're only going to need about half a cup of that pesto for the recipe, but you could save the rest as a dipping sauce for the bread later on, or use it in another recipe if you prefer. The only other ingredient you're going to need for this recipe is some pizza dough and some olive oil for brushing. You can go the extra mile and make pizza dough if you like. Typically, I just like to buy it from the store, but I will link some recipes for homemade pizza dough in the description of this video as well if you want to go that route. So going to need two batches of pizza dough. We're essentially going to be creating a pizza dough sandwich, so I've got one of my balls of pizza dough. I'm going to set this off to the side. You're going to want a wooden cutting board or work surface and some extra flour for dusting, and I also have my prepared baking sheet here. I just sprayed it with a little bit of oil. I'm using a round baking sheet because it can double as an easy presentation tray, but you could use a regular baking sheet if you want. We're going to lightly flour the dough as well as our rolling pin, and we're going to roll this out to form a rough circle. You want the dough to be about half an inch thick. Obviously, the bigger you roll out, the bigger your star is going to be, and it doesn't have to be totally perfect. We are going to be able to stretch it out some on the baking sheet. If you don't have a bench scraper, yeah, I would also really recommend it. Sometimes the pizza dough is more wet. Sometimes it's more dry. You can add flour as necessary, but it's very helpful for picking up the dough, and this is probably like less than five dollars. I use it all the time. As you can see, this does not look perfect, but it's going to be good enough. I'm just going to slide this forward and place my baking sheet here. I've rolled my dough up on my rolling pin, and now I'm going to roll it out on the baking tray, and it doesn't look great, but again, that's okay. Now that it's on the baking sheet and the baking sheet is prepared, you've sprayed it with a little bit of oil, it's very easy to stretch the dough out to the edges. Now we're going to repeat the same process with our second set of dough. This one you have a little less wiggle room because you're going to be sandwiching on top, so my recommendation would be to make sure your your work surface is extra floured, which is going to help the removal of this, make it that much easier. So again, we're just going to roll it out to form a rough circle. That being said, you will have a little wiggle room because we're going to obviously be putting the pesto in between, so the dough is not going to be sticking to itself, um, and it will, you will be able to stretch it out some. All right, I got my second concept of a circle. Now I'm going to set this aside and go back to our original circle of dough. Now we're going to take our half cup of pesto and just plop it in the center of our dough, then use a spoon to spread it around. Once that's even, you're going to place the second circle of dough on top of the first circle and do your best to line the edges up. And now we're going to cut it into a star. Use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut the dough into 16 equal pieces. The easiest way to do this is to cut it in quarters and then cut each fourth into four more pieces. Now we're going to create eight pairs using two adjacent strips of dough. You're going to hold one strip in each hand, then twist the strips outward from each other two to three times, then pinch them at the end. This is going to be a point of our star. Repeat this with the remaining dough. And if you need more help, I have a slower video on the blog, but I promise it's simpler than it looks and you're going to get the hang of it so fast. All you need to do is to brush the top of the dough with oil. Then we're going to place it in the oven and bake for only 13 to 15 minutes and the dough will get nice and fluffy and golden on top. I like to let the bread cool on the tray for about 10 minutes or so, then it should be good to pick up and you can just bring it to a party or set it out just like this. And the great thing is because you already did all the cutting and the work, it's very easy to just pull it apart and take a piece from it. I like making this with pesto, but you could also mix in some red sauce if you wanted a red and green effect or just do red sauce or you could even make a sweet version using like Nutella or a jam or something if you want a more dessert option too. This recipe, like all the other recipes, is on the blog and I will also link the arugula pesto as well as another nut-free pesto that uses basil in the description of the video. See if I can hold it vertically while pulling a piece off. You get cute little handheld rolls with crispy edges, but then the inside is still nice and fluffy and there's pesto rolled all in it so you know it's going to be delicious. And that concludes my video of three easy and delicious holiday appetizers. Honestly, if I showed up to a party or event and any one of these were on the table, I would be so happy. Don't forget to check out all the recipes in the comments of this video and thanks again to Vitamix for sponsoring this video. Don't forget to check out their x5 blender and shop their holiday sale on Vitamix.com where you can get up to $100 off of Vitamix products. They're great for anyone who loves to cook or even someone who doesn't love to cook and wants to make their life easier in the kitchen. I feel like this is a great product that will get someone into the kitchen more and making more homemade wholesome and delicious food. Thank you all so much for watching and happy holidays from me to you. I hope you're doing well and able to celebrate with your loved ones and relax at some point and enjoy the fact that you made it through a year and get to eat some food maybe as well. Take care and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.