I got Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar from the library in prep for thanksgiving, and then I made some cookies, and we ate lots of cookies. Man, what is it with me and the baking lately? I assume it is the "cold weather," although you know today it's supposed to be a high of something like 65F, and that's just wrong, WRONG, even though we live in California again and I have to shut up and get used to it. Anyway.
First I made blackstrap gingersnaps. Changes: I used wheat flour, which was fine and good. These definitely taste like a serious gingersnap, and are worth the minimal effort. They get harder overnight, however, so I suggest eating them all immediately, or maybe freezing some preshaped dough for later impulse baking.
Baking with liquid oil instead of solid butter is surprising at first. I think the sheer liquid quality of early-stage batter could easily scare people who aren't prepared. Of course, once you add the dry ingredients, everything comes together into a totally normal finished dough. No problem.
Annnnd I seriously have no pictures of the gingersnaps. Moving on.
Next up: banana everything cookies.
These were really easy up until the "form into balls" stage, at which point the dough--or, really, the mass of oats stuck together with banana and etc--decided that it would like nothing more than to attach to both of my hands forever and ever. Next time I will be using two teaspoons to drop misshapen oat lumpules onto my cookie sheets. I also left out the nuts, but added a handful of extra chocolate chips. While this tasted great in the end product, it made the dough even more resistant to shaping. Maybe something in the dried fruit area would be a better substitution.
While awful to form, the finished product tasted great. Oats, banana, and chocolate are clearly an excellent match, and the high proportion of grain provides great taste without consequent glurge.
They also kept for a full week without any ill effects--great if you want to eat them for breakfast every morning. I'm just saying.
3 comments:
Oh man, cookies! The vegan gingersnaps look outstanding!
I have no stand mixer and no room for one, and am always on the lookout for cookies I can make without having to cream butter and sugar by hand. Thanks for pointing these out.
Mmm those cookies look yummy!
Haha I love that you suggest eating all of the blackstrap gingersnaps immediately! To solve the dough sticking to your hands like crazy problem, I use an ice cream/cookie scoop. Makes things much easier. I use my ice cream scoop for scooping muffin batter too. Or scone batter that's way too sticky to be patted out and cut. From the vegan cookies invade the cookie jar, I love the cowgirl cookies and the peanut butter chocolate pillows are good too!
COOKIES INDEED.
It really is much easier to mix by hand (or, well, by big wooden spoon) using oil rather than cold butter. I sometimes melt/severely soften butter to facilitate mixing, though. It can compromise the finished texture--the last batch I tried totally spread out and melted together--but it does work.
Man, if I only had an ice cream scoop, I'd definitely be all about using it for these. You might have to be careful about getting oats stuck under the sliding band, though. Still. Experimentation for the win!
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