Baking with a vengence

I have a dream. It involves peanut butter, as all dreams should. There's chocolate, banana and marshmallow too. It's called a fluffernutter, and if I could eat one everyday, I would. Friday I was brainstorming cookies with my friend Maggie (there, are you happy? You have partial credit now!) . I was expounding my love of peanut butter in a manner that didn't make me look lik a freak, and came off looking like an obsessed psycho. I probably shouldn't have mentioned that I would bathe in it if I could. Anywho, all of the sudden, I shouted "fluffernutter cookie!" and I knew it should be done. So I did it. I wanted to make a peanut butter banana cookie, but didn't know if I should go for crunchy, if possible with the banana, or cakey. I knew I wanted to make it a sandwich cookie though. So, I pulled out La Dolce Vegan, knowing there was a decent small batch peanut butter cookie in the book, and made that one. It was popular among my Christmas cookie tray. I used pureed banana and soymilk as the egg replacer, and also as a sub. for the oil. I wanted as much banana flavor as possible. What I got was a cakey cookie that could have used more peanut butter, but was good nonetheless. Pic:

This was only the first step of the journey to cookie perfection. Here's the recipe, with all my changes in parenthesis:

Wolffie's Peanut Butter Cookies (La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer)

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

egg replacer to equal 1 egg (1/4 cup pureed banana)

1/4 water (I used soymilk, which I added with the banana in the blender)

1/2 cup peanut butter (I used half crunchy and half smooth)
1/4 cup oil (1/4 cup pureed banana)

3/4 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup demerara and 1/4 cup organic sugar)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

This is all me now:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda and salt. Add pureed banana, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla, and stir until well combined. The dough is wet, so you can't roll it with your hands. Spoon it into mounds on your cookie sheet. They don't spread too much, so make sure they are the size you want. Bake for approximately 8 minutes, until edges are starting to brown. Let them cool for a couple of minutes on the sheet, then transfer to cooling rack to cool further. I got 18 cookies.

Next time I might bake them at a lower temp. Since the cookies came out nice a cakey, I decided to make them into fluffernutter whoopie pies. I have been eyeballing the whoopie pies in My Sweet Vegan for awhile, but I have never gotten around to making them. I decided to use the recipe for the creme filling in that book for these pies. It's just powdered sugar, shortening, vanilla and soymilk whipped together until light and fluffy, your basic frosting type deal. My hand mixer went kaput in the middle of making the creme, so I ended up beating it by hand for several minutes, and it turned out fine. Though, my arm is a little sore. I'll be feeling that one in the morning. Maybe I should go back to the gym...

I chilled the creme for a bit in the fridge, and decided to melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips to put in the middle of the sandwiches. My initial thoughts were to dip the sandwiches in chocolate, which I may still do at some point. I also pondered drizzling them with the chocolate. I will try both in the future, but for now the chocolate and creme filling worked out great.

I pulled the creme out of the fridge and made some magic. Proof:

Can you deny such blatant photographic proof? They truly are magic.

Group huddle!

Nuts!

A month ago, I wrote 'pistachios' on my grocery list, which hangs on my fridge. I had a specific recipe that I wanted to try, and I needed pistachios for it. Now, weeks went by, and I finally bought a bag Thursday night (on sale - $2 bucks!). For the life of me I couldn't remember why I wanted them, but I knew I needed them. I thought, thought and over-thought some more about what I was going to use the pistachios for (by the way, pistachios is a super fun word). It's still nagging at me, but in the meantime I decided on another recipe: Nutcase Cookies from My Sweet Vegan. Have I mentioned how much I love this book? I cut the recipe in half and followed as is, only subbing pecans for cashews. I got 18 cookies. They were definitely the most colorful dough I have played with in a while:

Here they are on the sheet waiting.

These cookies are strictly 'party on the outside, business on the inside,' as they aren't overly sweet, but will definitely satisfy a nutty craving. By the way, mine look nothing like the picture in the book. You can see the speckles from the Sucanat. Good crunchy cookie.

Pistachios...

I think my peanut butter addiction has become fairly obvious. If it hasn't, then I'm not trying hard enough. Observe:

This is only a small sample. I really wanted to showcase my love for Peanut Butter & Co. peanut butters. LOVE! (Holy cow! I just noticed they have maple flavored peanut butter. Yowza!) I bought a load of it in these small jars on sale a couple of months ago. I zeroed in on the spicy flavor, The Heat is On. Yes, it's also a song by Glenn Frey, and I have had it stuck in my head all morning. You know, the song from Beverly Hills Cop? Yeah...

I've been wanting to do something special with it, as I can't see myself eating it as I would other peanut butters. I tend to use them in sweets, rather than savories. Inspired by mexican chocolate cookies, I made Spicy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. The recipe is based on the Peanut Butter Cookie recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I tweaked it by using The Heat is On, instead of smooth or crunchy PB, and adding about 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper and the absolutely essential chocolate chips. This was for a half batch. I also nixed the egg replacer since I would have only been dealing with enough for half an egg, and used soy creamer instead of s'milk. I was skeptical of the dough because it was wetter than I was used to peanut butter cookie dough being, but it was fine. The cookies spread nicely. I got 15 large cookies. They are actually good! The heat doesn't really kick in until they start to melt in your mouth, then they hit you like they are pushing you out of bed in the middle of the night; you hit the floor, wake up and wonder what the hell happened. And no harm is done. Or something like that.

Very deceiving cookies. They look like average, ordinary chocolate chip cookies. I forgot to criss-cross the tops. Oh, well. My coworkers are in for a surprise tomorrow. Mwhahahahahahahaha!

Walk with me won't you?

It's a beautiful day outside, why sit at the computer? Let's go for a walk at the park!

What a nice view.

Should we roll down the rocky hillside or take the steps? Steps? Wussy.

Oh, look. They painted the bridge. Not bad.

I could have sworn there used to be more trees here. When did they tear them down? Yes, it has been while since I have been to the park.

I like how the river sparkles in the sun.

This bridge could really use a colorful paint job.

Oh. I spoke too soon.

They will shamelessly promote popular university sports anywhere they can. Oh, and spread positive messages about loving your neighbor.

It would appear a pack of Cub Scouts got a hold of this bridge. They sure do like to paint bridges around here.

A waterfall. Ha.

Cloudy water closeup.

Pond scum!

Oh, jeez. We have to walk back up these? I better have buns of steel when this is over. Let's go back to my place and make cookies. No that's not a euphemism, I really mean that I want to make cookies.

Peanut Butter Bombs from My Sweet Vegan.



Two of my bombs 'sploded. There were no casualties.

Blurry, but delicious inside shot. I defused that bomb with two bites.

New Cookbook Overload

In the past few weeks I have bought three new cookbooks. I never got around to mentioning it, or even making anything from them, until now. Which books you ask?

I think I'm in love.

I ordered My Sweet Vegan from Barnes & Noble's website, and stumbled across the other two in store. Which was a weird experience for me, because these just aren't the kind of books you find around here. To say I am happy is an understatement. I grabbed the books and held them tightly to my chest, even though the chances of someone trying to steal them from me were non-existent. There were two other people in my vicinity, and neither looked like they even knew what 'vegan' meant, or how to turn on their oven.

Last weekend I made Peanut-Plus Cookies from My Sweet Vegan and Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I just wanted something standard as these were going to work with me, and my co-worker's are leery of "weird" foods - so basically anything I bring.

The Peanut-Plus Cookies were AMAZING. Crunchy, peanut buttery and soft - all in one cookie. Okay, I was a little put off by the ingredients, but that didn't stop me. They involve ground lentils (dried of course), mashed potato flakes and cornstarch. Yesterday I was stopped by a woman at work that wanted to know all about these cookies. She was thoroughly impressed by the taste and texure, and intrigued by the ingredients so I copied the recipe for her.

My picture differs from the book. In the book you can see flecks of red from the lentils. I must have ground mine finer. Anyways, they turned out wonderful. I halved the recipe and followed it as is. I got 13 cookies.

I love trying different chocolate chip cookies, even though all the recipes are basically the same. The ones from The Joy of Vegan Baking were really no different, just written to be gigantic. I didn't want huge cookies though. I halved the recipe, used a flax egg instead of Ener-G and chopped up an Organic Dark Chocolate Chocolove Bar instead of chips. I dropped them by tablespoons onto the sheet and baked them just until they started to get lightly brown on the edges. I love slightly undercooked cookies. They spread like mad, and came out huge anyways. I have no problem with that.

I got about 18 cookies. They were chewy and gooey while still warm, and stayed soft even the next two days. They lasted until about lunchtime on Tuesday. I was told that I am spoiling my coworker's and that they don't deserve it. They probably don't, but somebody has to eat them - I can't do it all by myself and still fit in my pants.

This weekend I am going to tackle the Cookies and Cream Pound Cake from My Sweet Vegan and some cookies, though I haven't decided which. I have a box of goodies to make up this weekend for a friend. I hope to find something in Eat,Drink & Be Vegan.