cookies

Short ‘n Sweet: Peanut Butter Cookies

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

I’m keeping things short and sweet tonight, mostly because there’s not much to say about peanut butter cookies. It’s peanut butter… in a cookie. With chocolate chips, if you’re me. You really can’t go wrong.

I made the Crispy Peanut Butter Cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance tonight. Actually, I think these are the first straight-up vegan p.b. cookies I’ve ever made; I baked a batch of the Big Gigantoid Crunchy Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Cookies from VWAV last year, but yeah, not exactly the same. These are simple cookies that get the job done. What else is there to say?

Actually, I will say that these cookies are more sandy than crispy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I prefer a chewier cookie, but still. They didn’t hold together very well during the baking sheet —> cooling rack transfer, although I might’ve been a little overzealous in my transferral and moved them before they were properly cooled. Whatever; they’re still tasty enough. I can’t say I’d rush to use this particular recipe again, but that’s due to personal preference more than major recipe fail.

Don’t worry  – my final two MoFo posts will be way more creative than this one. Pinky swear!

Food Frenzy Friday

/ Kelly / 7 Comments

Get ready for some seriously good eats, folks! I’ve been a busy little vegan during the past 24 hours, and I have photographic evidence. But before the good must come the bad, alas. Thankfully, the only bad eats I’ve had lately were not made by me. Tonight my aunt I and went out to dinner so we could catch up and I could update her on some Important Life Events (more about those in the future). We decided to forego our standard favorite eateries for a new Thai place nearby; we felt adventurous and willing to give a new business a shot. Unfortunately, I wish we’d stuck to our tried and true restaurants, because this place was just not good. We ordered pad thai and a dish with steamed veggies and fried tofu, hoping to share the two between us. Well… we did share them. We shared the slimy, overcooked pad thai noodles and the flavorless steamed vegetables that probably came right out of the freezer. The only decent part of the meal was the peanut sauce, and even that was nothing to write home about. My aunt is much more assertive than I am and complained about the pad thai, so we didn’t end up paying for it (or eating it, for that matter.) Oh well – at least our conversation was satisfying.

Now we’ll move onto better – and tastier – things! My parents are away for a short vacation, so I’m enjoying having the run of the kitchen. Not that they don’t love it when I cook for them, but I kind of enjoy being able to blast my music while I’m cooking! Plus I can experiment with new recipes and not have to worry about anybody seeing my failure… not that I’ve failed lately. Yet. Anyway, when I filled out that Vegan’s 100 List last week, I was shocked to realize that I’ve never made vegan chocolate chip cookies. Although I’ve only been officially vegan since the beginning of this month, I’ve made exclusively vegan baked goods for almost a year now. So when I saw some dairy-free semi-sweet chocolate chips on sale at the grocery store, you know I had to snatch up a couple of bags. Last night I decided that I should make some cookies to accompany the new Office episode. I debated between using a chocolate chip cookie recipe I found on the PPK and the Happy Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe that has rave reviews on VegWeb. Ultimately I went with the VegWeb recipe. All those laudatory comments left me with pretty high expectations. So how did they turn out? Well… they look pretty!

Happy cookies?

And they taste pretty good, although I’m not sure these are my holy grail when it comes to chocolate chip cookies. I found the dough waaay too dry and ended up adding extra soy milk, so I’m a little skeptical of this recipe. At first I was not impressed at all, but after I ate a couple the taste began to grow on me, and today they taste even better. But I’m definitely going to try another recipe next time I get bitten by the chocolate chip cookie bug! What about you guys? Do you have a tried and true chocolate chip cookie recipe?

My next kitchen endeavor occurred this morning when I consulted the wonderful Vegan Brunch in search of a waffle recipe. I ultimately settled on the Chelsea Waffles, since I wanted a pretty neutral flavor that would pair well with my marinated apple topping (chopped apples + cinnamon + turbinado sugar + maple syrup). It turned out to be an excellent choice.

And in the mornin', I'm makin' WAFFLES!

Oh, yum. These were awesome! I didn’t have barley malt syrup, so I substituted a mix of brown rice syrup and blackstrap molasses. This worked really well, although I think it made the waffles sweeter than they should have been. Still utterly delicious, though. But what else should I have expected from this book?! Duhhh.

My final cooking experiment came from Vegan Dad. Although I’ve been a huge fan of his blog for ages now, I’ve never actually tried one of his recipes before today! But I’ve had a box of vital wheat gluten sitting in my pantry for about a month, and I decided it was time to tackle a seitan-based recipe. Now, I’ve only actually eaten seitan twice in my life before today. Both times it was from Whole Foods’ prepared foods bar (the two times I tried it were the only two times I’ve actually eaten there). But I enjoyed it, and since everyone and their mom seems to whip up seitan in their sleep, I knew I had to attempt it.

When I was omni, I was never a huge wings fan, but somehow the idea of vegan wingz really appeals to me. I’ve made the tempeh wingz from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk twice; the first time I didn’t have panko and they were really kinda gross, but the second time I absolutely loved them. So I thought that trying out Vegan Dad’s Ultimate Vegan Hot Wingz would be an appropriate way to attempt seitan. And I was right.

Wingz, baby.

Although wingz aren’t the most photogenic food, I think these lil guys are sorta cute. I ate them with about 3/4 of a red pepper, not because they were spicy at all but because wingz feel like junk food to me, and in my mind I can counter eating junk food by eating straight-up, super-healthy, raw veggies. Whatever. In any case, the wingz were surprisingly yummy! I was a little nervous that they’d be too squishy; a few commenters apparently had that problem and I was concerned that I’d used too much onion and destroyed the delicate liquid/dry balance. But the dough stayed together perfectly well, and I loved the feel of it! Is that weird? I’ve always been a tactile kind of girl; I love polymer clay and Play Dough used to be one of my favorite “toys”. So I got a kick out of the strangely-textured seitan dough, I’m not gonna lie. And the end result was so good. I used the wing sauce recipe from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk instead of Vegan Dad’s, since I really like that one, but other than that I didn’t stray from his recipe at all. And I’m glad I didn’t.

So, all in all, the past 24 hours have been an EPIC SUCCESS. And who knows what the weekend will bring! I’ve got the kitchen to myself for two more days… muahahaha.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

/ Kelly / 3 Comments

I’m pretty sure that this might be the recipe of VeganMoFo 2009. Isa’s Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles captured my eye when she first blogged about them, and they’ve been dominating the MoFo cookie-related posts lately. It seems like every other blogger is making and then raving about these cookies, and this post is not going to be any different.

So I’ll keep it simple, I think. These cookies rock. Like hardcore, head-thrashing, wild dancing rock. The texture, the taste, the cayenne that slowly builds ’til it kicks you in the throat… it’s all perfect. And they look damn good, too.

Mexican YUM.

All I can say is, I’m totally buying Isa’s and Terry’s new book as soon as I can get my grubby little hands on it. Their cookies can invade my cookie jar any day of the week… if ya know what I mean. ;) Ohhh yeahhh.

Coziness in a Cookie

/ Kelly / 4 Comments

I love cookies. I love baking them and eating them and sharing them. I especially love sharing them. Because even though I could down a seriously impressive number of cookies in one go, I love the warm fuzzies I get when I can make someone’s day by giving her a homemade cookie. It’s a wonderful feeling.

So last night, I whipped up a batch and a half of these Molasses Cookies from Hell Yeah It’s Vegan. One batch of cookies is usually enough to share between my parents and I, but I had something special in mind for these babies and needed to make extras. I just couldn’t resist this recipe; I’m a huge fan of molasses cookies, and I was salivating just looking at the pictures of these beautiful little buggers. They seemed like the perfect cookie for a chilly night. Because I’m not a huge fan of it, I omitted the crystallized ginger. I did include the ground ginger, though, because I don’t really mind it when it’s not in chunks. The dough came together wonderfully, and my sampling of said dough reassured me that the finished products were going to be fantastic. I’m not ashamed to admit that I probably “sampled” at least two cookies’ worth of dough while it was chillin’ in the fridge. It was that good. But the finished cookies were even better. See?

Cozy goodness.

They’re perfectly chewy on the inside and the tiniest bit crunchy on the outside, thanks to their roll in a bowl full o’ sugar. I just couldn’t get enough of them. The spice blend provides a wonderful little kick, which is complemented by the rich molasses flavor. I used a mix of blackstrap and regular molasses, which I think worked really well. These are the ultimate “cozy” cookie. I predict I’ll be making them fairly often come winter, perhaps even for Christmas. Yum.

I did have to restrain myself from really chowing down, however, because I needed to save ten of these lovelies for a special purpose. They’ve left the nest and are on a one-way trip halfway across the country to my boyfriend, because I’m feeling a little maternal at the moment and I want to feed him lots of yummy baked goods, especially ones that make you feel all cozy inside when you eat them.

So adios, my delicious, cozy, cookies! I hardly knew ye. ;)

Tried and True and Tried Again

/ Kelly / 6 Comments

Having go-to recipes is fun. I get a funny little thrill when I can say, “Oh, yeah, this is my go-to recipe for awesome cookies,” or “Isa’s Bakery-Style Berry Muffin recipe from Vegan Brunch is a no-fail delight.” It makes me feel like a real cook, y’know, like I’m starting to chalk up a sizable amount of experience points in the kitchen. Go-to recipes are solid and reliable; the results are predictable and comforting in that predictability. I appreciate that in a recipe. I really do.

But sometimes, you’ve just gotta mix things up a bit.

I’ve been craving super-chocolaty cookies for a few days now, so last night I decided to rely on a fall-back recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance – the Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies. I’ve made these a few times in the past – and mentioned them once – and even when I make them too big and kind of obscene-looking, they still taste damn good with cherry or apricot preserves in the center. But after my post on innovation in the kitchen, I felt like messing with a good thing. I meant to do it that very night, but it was late and I live with my parents and I didn’t think they’d appreciate me banging around in the kitchen and whatnot. So my experimentation was postponed ’til last night.

And, oh, what a lovely experiment it was. I decided to use Hershey’s Extra Dark cocoa in my cookies, because I’ve fallen hard for the beautifully dark color and sinfully rich depth of chocolate flavor that Dutch-processed cocoa imparts to baked goods. And I also decided that the perfect pairing for dark chocolate cookies just had to be peanut butter. So I made two versions of these chocolate-peanut butter delights; for most of the cookies, I just put a small bit of peanut butter  into the thumbprint-y center of the cookies. I thought it’d create something like the inversion of those peanut butter cookies that are ubiquitous at holiday parties, you know, the ones with Hershey’s Kisses in the center? I imagined a cross between those and the original Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies. But because I’d mixed the peanut butter with confectioner’s sugar to make it a little more solid and to sweeten it up, it didn’t spread in the center like jam usually does in thumbprint cookies and thus just kind of made a little peanut buttery blob in the middle. Which, if you think about it, is pretty akin to those holiday cookies. It just wasn’t what I was hoping to achieve; I’d wanted it to spread out a bit, to create a little pool of peanut butter… not a lump. See what I mean?


(This photo is horrible. Please forgive me.)

Luckily, my second experiment yielded much yummier results. I added enough confectioner’s sugar to the peanut butter so that it reached an almost dough-like consistency, and then I rolled this into smallish logs and twirled them with thicker logs of the chocolate cookie dough, creating a marbled, swirly-type effect. I used to make clay beads with this technique all the time, and cookie dough is just edible clay, right? Heh. In any case, the marbly cookies were the stars of the bunch – the contrast between the rich chocolate and the salty, stickier peanut butter is amazing. I wish I’d done this for all the cookies!

All in all, my experiment was a success, I’d say. Reese’s were always my favorite candy in my pregan days, and I think I’ve found a way to approximate that flavor contrast in cookie form. Hooray!

In ‘n Out

/ Kelly / 1 Comment

Hey, friends! I wish I had another fun recipe to share today, but I’d be lying if I said I did. I spent the weekend up in Syracuse visiting my sister; it was family weekend at her college, so up the family went. Unfortunately, our big ol’ family van decided it was high time to get sick, and since it was a Sunday when that happened, the local auto places had no access to the part we needed. So my dad stayed up in Syracuse with the van while my mom rented a car and drove home with my grandmother, her boyfriend, and me. Good times!

To be honest, we probably would’ve just spent another night in Syracuse if not for the fact that I have a flight to catch this afternoon. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I’m flying out to Wisconsin for an on-site interview. I applied to this company at the request of my BFF and didn’t expect anything to come of it, but one thing led to another and now they want to meet with me in person. Pretty crazy, huh? So I’m flying out today and have all-day interviews and tours tomorrow, and then I fly home bright and early Wednesday morning. I’m a little bit nervous, but mostly just curious – even if I don’t wrangle a job offer out of this, it’ll be a great experience. :)

So that’s that. I’ll leave you with a photo of some AMAZING peanut butter-chocolate chip-oatmeal cookies I made a few weeks ago. My family couldn’t get enough of these suckers.

The definition of delicious.

I used this recipe, and it definitely lived up to the 4 1/2 star rating. I appreciate the use of whole wheat flour and the small amount of canola oil; most of the fat in these cookies comes from the peanut butter. These made the perfect indulgent, sweet, late-night treat.

Again, sorry for the sparse posts! I’m probably going to bring my laptop with me, since I won’t have much to do tonight and tomorrow night, so who knows; maybe I’ll get a post up tomorrow night. In any case, happy Monday, friends!

Absence Apologies

/ Kelly / Leave a comment

Hello, friends! I apologize for the silence this weekend – my parents, sister, and I drove to upstate New York to help my sister move into college, so we were extremely busy! I can’t quite articulate how strange it felt to see my little baby sister getting ready to start college. She was a big bundle of nerves, but I felt so proud and excited for her! And I’m a little envious that she’s just beginning her four years at college. I’ll admit it – I am a little disappointed not to be returning to school this year! It feels so strange to know that, until grad school at least, I have no academic obligations. I’ve always loved school, so I feel a little lost now that it’s September and I’ve nothing to do but apply for jobs and study for the GRE. I guess I’ll have to live vicariously through my little sister! :)

Anyway, I had very few chances to get online this weekend, and honestly, I didn’t miss it. Sometimes I like to take little technology breaks; knowing that I’m constantly connected in one way or another sometimes makes me feel obligated to keep up on Facebook/email/blogs/Twitter/everything, which stresses me out a bit. So I enjoyed the mini break.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to eat at my first vegan restaurant this weekend! My sister’s college is in Syracuse (it’s not SU, though!), so my family and I journeyed to Strong Hearts Cafe for lunch on Sunday. I’m so thankful to have a very veg-friendly family; my mom is mostly vegetarian (she eats fish occasionally), my sister used to be vegetarian (grr), and my dad (who is an awesome cook) is more than happy to cook vegan meals for the whole family, since he knows it helps his tendency toward high cholesterol. My brother is the most omnivorous of all of us, but he was home tending to the dogs this weekend and thus couldn’t complain about going to a vegan restaurant. ;) We did take my sister’s boyfriend, though, and although he loves his meat and spent a good portion of our meal making jokes about “vegan water” and such, he pronounced his french toast “delicious.” Victory!

My dad also enjoyed his spicy tofu scramble, mostly because anything spicy is automatically good in his book. Mom loved her chickpea sandwich and “Dreamsicle” milkshake; I had a few sips of that and it was indeed a dreamy, creamy delight! My sister and I both got the BLT, and although I was really excited about it because I used to love BLTs but haven’t had anything remotely like one in ages, I was a little disappointed. I didn’t realize they’d use quite so much Teese and vegan mayo, and I really wasn’t keen on that addition. It would have been much tastier without all that extra crap. Once I scraped it off the bread, though, the taste improved considerably. VeggaSis, however, didn’t really care for the sandwich at all and only ate half. We wrapped up the rest so my dad could have a snack later for the 5 1/2 hour drive home, but it ended up getting a little soggy in the cooler and thus went to waste. :( Ah well. Overall, I really enjoyed the restaurant and can’t wait to return next time we’re in Syracuse visiting my sister! Oh, and I apologize for the lack of photos – I’m still a little shy about taking food photographs in public. ;)

I do have a couple of photos for you, though. On the night before she left, my lovely little sister and I made vegan sugar cookies. I doubt many of you are familiar with the Mighty Boosh, but we made Boosh themed cookies!

Come with us now on a journey through time and space!

I won’t explain all of the cookies; just ask if you’re curious! And you should definitely check out the show if you like surrealistic, dark, British comedy. They’ve just released their DVDs in the US, so I know what I want for Christmas!

I also have to admit that my posts will be few and far between in the next week or so. My boyfriend is flying in for a visit, another friend from Carleton will be starting grad school nearby, and my BFF is also visiting! It’s going to be a mini Carleton reunion and I think I’m going to be quite busy. :) Apologies!

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. I’ll leave you with a close-up of a few cookies – this is a bottle of Baileys (“Have you ever drunk Baileys from a shoe?”) and Vince Noir’s glam red boot.

Creamy beige...

Snickerdoodles, Studying, & Sunshine (with bonus chocolate!)

/ Kelly / 5 Comments

Happy Monday, folks!

I’m pleased as punch that summer has finally come to Rhode Island. If we’d gone the entire summer without a day over 90˚F, I probably never would have forgiven this state. Luckily this week promises to be hot, humid, and sunny – just the way I like it. I celebrated by doing some GRE studying (ugh) outdoors (yay) and then lounging in the pool with VeggaSis. My dad has some ridiculous packrat/collector tendencies, and I remembered that he’d gotten this huge Star Wars Clone Wars blow-up pool floatie thing years ago, so we convinced him to bring it out and pump some air into it. This sucker is AWESOME. Not only is it a fantastic floating lounge device, but it’s Star Wars themed! AND it has cupholders. ;) Love.

But before hitting up the pool, I baked some cookies. Normally I’m not a morning baker, but I made a batch of these snickerdoodles from Have Cake, Will Travel a few days ago, and my mom liked them so much that she requested I make a batch for her to bring to the big back-to-school bash she and all her teacher friends like to have at the end of August.

Nom nom nom!

That’s a photo of the first batch I made, but the second came out just as delectable-looking, despite a minor mishap wherein a quarter of my wet ingredients had a surprise meeting with the floor. These cookies are seriously delicious, soft and sweet and bite-sized. Needless to say, I doubled the recipe (which is halved on Have Cake, Will Travel, anyway) because 7 cookies just isn’t enough for this family. ;)

Yum.

Mmm. I also whipped up a batch of the Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies from VWAV for a get-together with friends a few nights ago, and these little chocolate lovelies were devoured in no time. I always alter this recipe slightly, substituting vegetable oil for the peanut oil and extra vanilla extract for the almond extract, to make it nut allergy-friendly. I’ve never actually made them with the original nutty ingredients, but the nut-free versions are little morsels of chocolaty perfection, chewy and moist and adorable.

Thanks, Isa!

The cookies in that photo have apricot and cherry preserves in their centers, but for the batch I made for my friends I just used cherry, since I think anything with a cherry and chocolate combination is automatically delicious and sophisticated.

And that wraps up today’s helping of cookie p0rn! I highly recommend both these recipes; they’re fast, easy, and – most important of all – delicious.

Ciao!