Let's go v-v-v-vegan!
I parked the car carefully in the garage and headed into the house to find Sarah attacking a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. I dropped my bag on a chair and went to get a glass of water.
"Making vegan cookies again, I see. What's the special occasion?" I asked.
"Sarah jammed the wooden spoon into the dense dough several times as if the spoon were an icepick. "It's Sammy's turn to bring treats for his playdate."
I stifled a snigger by coughing.
She narrowed her eyes at me shrewdly. "Kelsey Hayes, just because your mother was the best cookie baker in the world doesn't mean I can't make a decent treat."
"It's not your skills I doubt, it's your ingredients," I said, picking up a jar. "Substitute nut butter, flax, protein powder, and agave. I'm surprised you don't put recycled paper in those things. Where's the chocolate?"
"I use carob sometimes."
"Carob is not chocolate. It tastes like brown chalk. If you're going to make cookies, you should make--"
"I know. I know. Pumpkin chocolate chip or double chocolate peanut butters. They're really bad for you, Kelsey," she said with a sigh.
"But they taste so good."
Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck pg 7-8
I couldn't resist. It sounded like a challenge just waiting to be grasped. So let's make some vegan cookies!
My first stop was to Pinterest vegan cookie recipes. Pinterest is the new Google, you know. I landed on some Coconut Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies that can be found from the blog Cooking Quicknunc. I like coconut. I like chocolate chips. Let's do this!
Wait. Let's talk about what I did to this recipe. Mostly, I followed it. But honey isn't technically a vegan ingredient since it is an animal product. Although I love honey, I pulled out my coconut sugar instead. For the chocolate chips... well, I really wanted to make an true vegan cookie, so I used 100% chocolate. No milk fat or anything in it. Did you know... that stuff is dark! And bitter. And, well, not very pleasant to the taste buds.... we'll get to that in a bit.
Mix your dry ingredients together (flour, coconut sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt).
The recipe says to soften and thicken the flax seed/water mixture. Yeah, missed that bit and I was impatient. You too can be impatient like me and skip that step. Or don't! (Note: this is ground flax seed. Unground flax seed is undigestable.) Mix these ingredients together.
Fold the wet stuff into the dry stuff.
Check out that dough! It certainly wasn't dense like Sarah's cookies were. But wait... there's more!
Oiy. See that? 100% unsweetened chocolate. If you like this stuff, girl power to you! For the rest of us, pick up the semi sweet chocolate chips or an 80% bar or something. Unless you actually are vegan and have some other stuff you use (like carob). Anyway, add those ingredients in and mix a bit more.
Cook, cool, test. Except for the 100% chocolate, we really liked these cookies! They were moist enough the first day and got more dry a few days later. They were sweet enough without being a sugar overload. With some sweeter chocolate, these would have been a huge hit! So the challenge results are, in the words of Kelsey, "It's not your skills I doubt, it's your ingredients."
Do you have a favorite vegan cookie recipe?
Coconut Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies
makes 18 to 22 cookies
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups white flour, organic
1/2 cup organic coconut palm sugar
1/3 cup virgin coconut oil, melted (measure before melting)
*add an extra Tbsp of oil for extra rich & buttery cookies
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips (semi-sweet and/or vegan )
1 banana, mashed
1/3 cup warm water + 1 tsp flax seeds (whisked and set aside for 5 minutes to thicken a bit)
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup unsweetened finely shredded coconut
1/2 - 3/4 cup walnuts, raw
note: I use *unrefined* virgin coconut oil for a more coconut-y flavor
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, lightly grease or line baking sheet.
2. Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon. Toss.
3. Melt the coconut oil in the microwave - just a few seconds should soften.
4. Combine the flax/water mixture with the oil and vinegar and the mashed banana. Slowly fold this mixture into the dry mixture. Make sure it is not too hot of it will made the dough chewy.
5. Fold in the walnuts and coconut. Last, fold in the chocolate chips.
6. If you want perfectly round cookies, you should fridge the dough for 5-10 minutes and scoop into balls. But I just like to add the dough as is in semi-messy rough balls. This makes for more bumpy, bubbly cookies!
7. Cook for 15 minutes or until the edges brown and darken a bit. Cool. Serve. Store in the fridge or freezer if not eating within a day.
recipe adapted from lunch box bunch
"Making vegan cookies again, I see. What's the special occasion?" I asked.
"Sarah jammed the wooden spoon into the dense dough several times as if the spoon were an icepick. "It's Sammy's turn to bring treats for his playdate."
I stifled a snigger by coughing.
She narrowed her eyes at me shrewdly. "Kelsey Hayes, just because your mother was the best cookie baker in the world doesn't mean I can't make a decent treat."
"It's not your skills I doubt, it's your ingredients," I said, picking up a jar. "Substitute nut butter, flax, protein powder, and agave. I'm surprised you don't put recycled paper in those things. Where's the chocolate?"
"I use carob sometimes."
"Carob is not chocolate. It tastes like brown chalk. If you're going to make cookies, you should make--"
"I know. I know. Pumpkin chocolate chip or double chocolate peanut butters. They're really bad for you, Kelsey," she said with a sigh.
"But they taste so good."
Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck pg 7-8
I couldn't resist. It sounded like a challenge just waiting to be grasped. So let's make some vegan cookies!
My first stop was to Pinterest vegan cookie recipes. Pinterest is the new Google, you know. I landed on some Coconut Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies that can be found from the blog Cooking Quicknunc. I like coconut. I like chocolate chips. Let's do this!
Wait. Let's talk about what I did to this recipe. Mostly, I followed it. But honey isn't technically a vegan ingredient since it is an animal product. Although I love honey, I pulled out my coconut sugar instead. For the chocolate chips... well, I really wanted to make an true vegan cookie, so I used 100% chocolate. No milk fat or anything in it. Did you know... that stuff is dark! And bitter. And, well, not very pleasant to the taste buds.... we'll get to that in a bit.
Mix your dry ingredients together (flour, coconut sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt).
The recipe says to soften and thicken the flax seed/water mixture. Yeah, missed that bit and I was impatient. You too can be impatient like me and skip that step. Or don't! (Note: this is ground flax seed. Unground flax seed is undigestable.) Mix these ingredients together.
Fold the wet stuff into the dry stuff.
Check out that dough! It certainly wasn't dense like Sarah's cookies were. But wait... there's more!
Oiy. See that? 100% unsweetened chocolate. If you like this stuff, girl power to you! For the rest of us, pick up the semi sweet chocolate chips or an 80% bar or something. Unless you actually are vegan and have some other stuff you use (like carob). Anyway, add those ingredients in and mix a bit more.
Cook, cool, test. Except for the 100% chocolate, we really liked these cookies! They were moist enough the first day and got more dry a few days later. They were sweet enough without being a sugar overload. With some sweeter chocolate, these would have been a huge hit! So the challenge results are, in the words of Kelsey, "It's not your skills I doubt, it's your ingredients."
Do you have a favorite vegan cookie recipe?
Coconut Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies
makes 18 to 22 cookies
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups white flour, organic
1/2 cup organic coconut palm sugar
1/3 cup virgin coconut oil, melted (measure before melting)
*add an extra Tbsp of oil for extra rich & buttery cookies
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips (semi-sweet and/or vegan )
1 banana, mashed
1/3 cup warm water + 1 tsp flax seeds (whisked and set aside for 5 minutes to thicken a bit)
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup unsweetened finely shredded coconut
1/2 - 3/4 cup walnuts, raw
note: I use *unrefined* virgin coconut oil for a more coconut-y flavor
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, lightly grease or line baking sheet.
2. Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon. Toss.
3. Melt the coconut oil in the microwave - just a few seconds should soften.
4. Combine the flax/water mixture with the oil and vinegar and the mashed banana. Slowly fold this mixture into the dry mixture. Make sure it is not too hot of it will made the dough chewy.
5. Fold in the walnuts and coconut. Last, fold in the chocolate chips.
6. If you want perfectly round cookies, you should fridge the dough for 5-10 minutes and scoop into balls. But I just like to add the dough as is in semi-messy rough balls. This makes for more bumpy, bubbly cookies!
7. Cook for 15 minutes or until the edges brown and darken a bit. Cool. Serve. Store in the fridge or freezer if not eating within a day.
recipe adapted from lunch box bunch
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Really enjoyed the books!
-Mariam