Posts tagged with cookies
It was nasty, rainy and a little icy but people still came out. Atlanta’s Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti this Saturday raised $1365 for Doctors Without Borders. Holy Crap! A special thanks to Kristin for organizing the whole thing and Criminal Records for not just agreeing to let us do it in front of their store, but letting us take over the back of the store when the weather turned nasty. Those guys rock!
Kristin has a great round-up of participants here. I’d like to also add thanks to Alicia Simpson, author of Vegan Comfort Food, Alison Brown, Lisa Bennett and a guy named David, I think, for bringing out goodies to sell. The hard work of everyone involved enabled us to turn a bit of labor and ingredients into a much larger donation for Haiti.
And now, for some of my crappy pictures!
Setting up in the back of Criminal Records
Becky & Kristin load up Table 1
Front of Table 2
side of table 2
Some of my contributions:
hearts and flowers sandwich cookies, mini marble bundt cakes, brownies, beard-friendly mini cupcakes on a stick
hearts and flowers cookies close-up
nekkid bundt cakes before they got their glaze
Brrr it got cold here! Saturday I was being stubborn and didn’t want to turn on the heat. So I baked a bunch of oatmeal cookies to warm up the house. Then I broke down and turned on the heat anyway. The animals were really happy about that. There were cats draped over floor registers all over the house. Now I’ve got too many cookies in my house. That’s a terrible problem, I know. These have chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and walnuts in ‘em. I don’t hate raisins, but I prefer not to have them in my oatmeal cookies. Not sure why that is.
Most of yesterday was spent busting out cookies for Danielle Distefano’s art show opening at Youngblood. If you didn’t come down last night you missed the cookies, but the show runs through August 31st. So you can still check out all the lovely ladies. And I dare you to get out of Youngblood without buying something.
So what about those cookies? These cute little guys are Almond and Rosewater cookies. I even made Kevin decorate some of them.
Kevin suggested we do some thumbprint cookies. These are kind of a pecan shortbread filled with strawberry jam. All filled by Kevin!
Sometimes, you just have to make something ridiculously decadent. Chick-O-Stick white chocolate chip cookies are absolutely decadent. Where the heck do you get vegan white chocolate chips? From Cosmo’s of course! Chick-O-Sticks? Your local gas station or convenience store.
These were a last minute decision. How can you make a bunch of cookies without including any chocolate? So I made a batch of cappuccino cookies with chocolate chips.
It’s always a good idea to have a few gluten free recipes up your sleeve just in case. And gluten free baking fascinates me. So I keep my eye out for interesting looking recipes. I had the ingredients around for these Coffee Biscuits so I whipped up a half batch. I used the buckwheat flour and potato starch options. Oh, and a couple of other changes. I used guar gum and soy milk. And of course, the vegan options. The texture was really nice. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. The buckwheat flour taste was a little strong and I can see how it might turn some people off. These don’t have a long shelf life and started getting stale within 3 days. They started getting crumbly too. I’d say these should be eaten within a day of being made for the best texture.
As the weather gets warmer, I enjoy lighter dinners. After two nights of the avocado grapefruit salad and then sushi at Rusan’s I moved on to a lovely Mediterranean Kale Salad from Raw Food Made Easy. I love raw kale and I don’t know why I don’t eat it more.
So how did I negate any possible health benefits I got from eating this lovely plate of greens? I made peanut butter cookies. With chocolate chips in ‘em. And ate four. If you haven’t tossed chocolate chips into your favorite peanut butter cookie recipe yet, you’re missing out.
Last night I got experimental with the POM Wonderful pomegranate juice. Instead of stocking up at the liquor store and mixin’ and drinkin’ until I ended up with my arms wrapped around the toilet, I decided to try something a little safer. Pomegranate Bars. You know, like lemon bars, but pomegranate. I also tossed in some orange zest to make it interesting.
I was a little concerned when I tasted the filling. The pomegranate wasn’t coming through as much as I’d like. Also, the mixture ended up a kind of muddy greyish pink. So I added a little food coloring. The finished bar actually tasted better than I thought it would come out. But it still needs work. The bars would be awesome if some pomegranate seeds were stirred in just before pouring the filling into the bars. It would be pretty and give an interesting texture to them. To get more intense pomegranate flavor, next time I would reduce the pomegranate juice a little over heat to concentrate it. Another possibility is to mix it with lemon or lime juice to give it more of a tart flavor.
Last weekend Kevin and I had a secret mission in South Carolina. The internets told me that Food Lion has these magical vegan butterscotch chips. Okay, maybe more chemical-filled than magical, but it’s not every day you can get your hands on vegan butterscotch chips so I bought a few bags. Since the damn things hadn’t baked themselves up into anything tasty all week, I took matters into my own hands this evening and busted out these butterscotch bars. They came out nice and crisp at the edges and chewy in the center. Good stuff.
I keep forgetting to take pictures of food. I’m cooking food, I’m eating food, just not taking many pictures of it. Mostly it doesn’t matter, but I’m kind of bummed I forgot to take a pic of the Mini Wellingtons from Vegan Lunch Box that I made for Xmas dinner. I used some of the laminated dough I had made before that was hanging out in the freezer. The odd thing is that in the past I’ve had a lot of trouble with the Earth Balance oozing out of the dough and essentially frying rather than baking whatever I was making. That didn’t happen at all this time. Huh. I wonder if that’s because I froze and thawed it. More experimentation is necessary. 
For breakfast Xmas morning, Kevin made pancakes. We had them with some Match Meat Breakfast Sausage and purple potato hash browns.
I also made a bunch of cookies that I’ve been trying to distribute before they all go in my mouth. There were white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, chewy chocolate raspberry cookies from Veganomicon and gingerbread cookies. I’m dumb and only took a picture of the gingerbread cookies:
With the extra time off, I tried to make a few items to freeze. The recipe floating around for Apple Sage Sausage caught my eye, so one day I whipped those up. So far, we’ve eaten them for breakfast in a sort of hash form with more purple potatoes and a bit of red bell pepper. The colors are so pretty!
Because there weren’t enough sweets in the house with all those cookies hanging around, I decided to make Egg Nog Cupcakes. Well, Soy Nog Cupcakes. Other than REALLY wanting to stick to the pan, they came out great. Also, I left the booze out of the frosting and made up for it with more Soy Nog, although I don’t think it needed the extra liquid. I gave a bunch away at work so I wouldn’t eat them all.
You know the Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies in Veganomicon? Well, I only had cherry preserves. And not even enough of that, so I had to add some sour cherry butter to get up to the right amount. Still, these came out perfect. Warm out of the oven, slightly crispy edges and soft on the inside. Mmmmmmmmm.
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