12 Days of Christmas: Day Twelve: Black-Eyed Pea Cakes

Well, we did it, chums. You got 12 new posts and I proved to myself that I can create original content on the regular. True, this one is a day late, but that's better than a month late, I suppose.

For this final post of Christmas, I would like to share one of my most successful new recipes: Black-Eyed Pea Cakes.

I got the recipe from one of the food demonstration people at Publix and then I modified it to be vegan. I served them at my New Year's Eve party (for good luck), and they were a huge hit, so my boyfriend and I made them again a couple of days ago. As fast as we could churn them out, they were gone. Here's how we did it.

     Ingredients

• 2 cans black-eyed peas, drained, rinsed, and divided
• 1 8-oz. tub Tofutti (fake cream cheese) or regular cream cheese
• 3/4 cup corn meal
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• green pepper sauce (recipe calls for 2 tsp, but I use a lot more and eyeball it)
• 1/2 bunch green onions, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 almond milk (or soy or regular milk, but I like the almond)
• canola oil
• salt (to taste)
• pepper (to taste)
• other spices (to taste) - this is the step where you get to be creative because I'm not going to tell you what to put in there, mostly because I can't remember. I was just tossing things in willynilly 

1. Whisk together corn meal, flour, and baking soda.

2. Using a food processor or immersion blender, blend together corn meal mixture, one can of beans, green pepper sauce, milk, Tofutti, salt, pepper, and any other spices you wish.

3. Stir in second can of beans and green onions.

4. Form into 4-inch patties.

5. Heat enough oil in a large pan to coat the bottom of the pan, and fry patties 3-4 at a time. Cook for about 2 minutes on each side, or until they start to get brown and crispy.

We served them with green pepper sauce, Thai sweet chili sauce, and/or sour cream. Very popular!