Hello everyone,<\/p>\n

Today my friends hosted an easter potluck complete with tasty treats and mimosas made with fresh squeezed orange juice. I hope you all had a relaxing day as well!<\/p>\n

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I quickly wanted to share my potluck treats with you. First, I made a simple pasta salad. This dish is delicious and really easy. If you are ever hard pressed on time, just whip up a pasta salad. If you can boil water and open cans, you can make this dish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I like to find novelty pasta shapes for holidays, and my quick trip to World Market did not let me down. Look how cute these shapes are!<\/p>\n

<\/a>I opted to add in olives, chick peas, and banana pepper rings. I seasoned the dish with the Italian salad dressing spice from Penzey’s Spices and finished it off with fat free wishbone italian dressing. I can’t help it. It’s my favorite pasta salad dressing even though I know it isn’t the most healthy or natural option.<\/p>\n

Now onto the ‘star of the day.’ I’ve been browsing the Earth Balance recipes<\/a> more and more lately. They all look so good! I opted to give the Vegan Pear Frangipane Tart<\/a> a try. If you ever find yourself with more than a few pears lying around, don’t hesitate to make this dish! I went with the original recipe for the most part. However, rather than fresh ground slivered almonds, I used almond meal. I also ended up using three pears, not four.<\/p>\n

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The crust is a basic almond meal crust, which I think it a pretty good ‘standard’ crust to use. It actually does a fair job of holding up and doesn’t get too crumbly.<\/p>\n

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The frangipane is a mix of butter, almond meal, sugar, salt, spices, almond milk, and extracts. It looks really thick, but it honestly came out tasting okay. I think the next time I might use more milk and less almond meal. I peeled and sliced three pears and placed them in rounds on the frangipane. You want to be sure they are at least 50% covered in the batter.<\/p>\n

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And voila. After about 35 minutes it comes out of the oven looking like a masterpiece!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>I simply can’t say enough good things about this tart. It is a little bit time intensive, but I really think it’s worth it. This is a sweet, fruity tart that is unique among desserts. Why make a standard pie, when with a little more effort you can make something like this!<\/p>\n

Cheers!<\/p>\n

Jocelyn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello everyone, Today my friends hosted an easter potluck complete with tasty treats and mimosas made with fresh squeezed orange juice. I hope you all had a relaxing day as well! I quickly wanted to share my potluck treats with you. First, I made a simple pasta salad. This dish is delicious and really easy. … Continue reading Easter Potluck Treats<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[7,30,33,34,41,60,61,1,107,134,149,169],"tags":[384,595,604,611,647],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n