Tempeh with Mole Sauce, Stuffed Avocado Salad, Mexican Chocolate Cake

This week’s homemade Candle 79 meals were:

Avocado Salsa
Stuffed Avocado with Quinoa Pilaf and Chipotle-Avocado Dressing
Tempeh with Mole Sauce
Mexican Chocolate Cake

mole

I’ve never made a sauce with almonds, raisins, and sesame seeds before.

Couldn’t find plantains, so I replaced it with banana instead.

mole4

I was looking forward to the mole sauce since it was spicy and sweet, and had chocolate in it, and it delivered. I’ve never made anything like it, and I already have been dipping other things in it (left over tamales…yum).

I also took a shortcut with the tempeh and didn’t marinate it ahead of time (due to me putting off going to the store to buy it until the last minute). We were pretty full from the salsa and salad by the time we got to the tempeh, but the mole sauce was so good. I also didn’t buy enough tempeh (duh), but I figured since we were having dessert, we wouldn’t go hungry.

salsa salsa2

The avocado salsa was more like a guacamole than a salsa, but since I love guac, it was delicious it no matter what you want to call it.

I didn’t follow the quinoa recipe exactly. I added corn and red onion in as the veggies, and left out the rest. I also did the dressing the lazy way, I just stuck all the ingredients in my Ninja blender and let it do it’s thing. I didn’t saute the shallots or anything, and it was still really good.

salad

Avocado to be stuffed.

We kind of ended up eating the stuffed avocado as an entree instead of a salad. The chipotle-avocado dressing was to die for. I think I’m going to make it and keep a jar of it in the fridge at all times. It was really good in the quinoa, and the avocado made the salad pretty filling.

I almost went without the chocolate sauce, but I made it in the microwave at the last minute. Totally worth it.

The chocolate cake couldn’t have been simpler. Seriously. I made it ahead of time just to get it out of the way and it was one of the easiest things I’ve ever baked. Plus, it tasted great. I made it in cupcake and mini cupcake form, since that’s usually easier, and single serve bites are fun.

I added bananas because the Mexican chocolate brownie at the restaurant came with bananas. They aren’t too rich, but it mellowed out the chocolate a bit.