Vegan Cookies that ROCK!

my father, bless his heart, has been on this infuriating diet for years now...granted, he is thinner than he's been in 35 years, and granted it does a lot to make him worry less about hereditary heart problems, but GAH! dr. dean ornish is a brilliant man, but sometimes i'd like to write him a letter, informing him that he needs some damn mashed potatoes! with cheese!

so, i've adapted this recipe (that lovely, lovely jane sent me) to be even healthier than it was before. now, i'll be real with you...the next time i make this, it will be at home, and i will use 1/2 cup brown sugar, and i will put chocolate chips in this beast, but this is pretty good. it's vegan, whole grain, sugar-free (except for the naturally occurring fuit sugars...i can't speak to its diabetic-friendliness), and oil-free (again, excepting the naturally occurring oil in nuts. yeah, i typed that.) now the texture of these cookies will be a bit fluffier than you'er used to. if you use brown sugar or molasses instead of sugar-substitute, it should weigh them down slightly. also, i find that using quick oats instead of the old-fashioned oats that i prefer can get your cookies a little more mucked-up and squooshed together. what? shakespeare made up words too, you know.

Your ingredients:
1- 1/2 c. mashed bananas
1/2 c. applesauce (dad makes his own, out of his homegrown, organic apples, with no added sugar. isn't he precious? i love it here.)
2 t. vanilla extract
1/4 c. + 1Tbsp Sugar-equivalent sweetener. (we use apriva, which is a splenda knock-off)
1 c. whole wheat flour
1- 1/2 t. baking powder
dash salt
dash nutmeg (i always add more nutmeg than asked for, especially with bananas or peaches...so let's call it a smidge!)
1 t. cinnamon
3/4 c. oatmeal
1 c. add-ins (i used 1/2 golden raisins and 1/2 crushed pecans. on a related note, how will i ever go back to my apartment and our small-sized cuisinart, which i have to get off the shelf and plug in every time? i am spoiled by food processor accessibility.)
peaches. (this one is the kicker. i only figured this out after the first batch, because my father is also tooling around in the kitchen. he's making peaches to freeze and eat later, because he bought 30 lbs of ripe peaches from the farmers' market yesterday and there's really only so much you can do in 24 hours. so he parboiled them, then threw them in icewater [to stop the cooking process, and it also makes it so you can shrug them right out of their skins.] then he removed the skins, cut them up, and threw them in a big bowl with more artificial sweetener & a bunch of cinnamon and nutmeg. this is what i had on hand, which makes me a lucky young lady. you may use whatever you'd like, but i'm betting canned peaches will do the same thing.)

perhaps you find yourself wondering what song was stuck in my head the whole time?

so, anyway,


preheat oven to 350*

i think there should be a degree symbol key, so i choose asterisk in defiance.

blend bananas, applesauce, vanilla, and sugar or sugar substitute. you guessed it. i used the food processor.

in another bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, & oatmeal. don't be shy here. add more cinnamon, more nutmeg, some almond extract, a dash of clove...do what you will! it'll be lovely!

pour wet and dry together, mix 'em up, and then fold in additions.

drop those babies onto some parchment paper on a cookie sheet (see? no need for oil here either! plus, easy cleanup!). now comes the beauty part. did you ever have those cookies when you were little that looked like a hershey's kiss was growing out of them? do that, but with peaches. you will thank me for it. i prefer to add the peaches after 3-5 minutes of baking time, so that the cookies are starting to take form before i squish something into them. bake for about 15 minutes, total. when done, you can pluck them right off of the parchment paper.





so here are a couple of observations ala kate:





i feel comfortable eating 1,237,583 of these, as i have convinced myself they are basically a warm sip of smoothie. feel free to follow my bad example.





vegan cooking and baking can be fun, if you have the right substitutions! i've been on such a butter kick lately, i was starting to forget! of course, i am eating one of these warm, delicious cookies right now, with a huge glass of milk, so stick that in your vegan organic corncob hashpipe and smoke it.





i watched julie and julia today. it was lovely and made me proud to have this blog, even if the only people who look at it are my dear friends that i force to read it! except that the other day, we got a comment from a person named amber. who are you, amber? are you evan's girlfriend? are you a friend of lis'? are you *possibly* just a random person? in any case, thanks for liking the blog. here's to you, amber.





here's to you, dad! i'm proud of your commitment to healthy eating and living. i'm proud of your commitment to having a light carbon footprint (even though you don't call it that...to you it's just the way you know to love the planet). thank you for influencing me to be a workaholic who spends her few days off in the kitchen, entertaining, cooking, baking, laughing, and generally caring for my loved ones, near or far. you're a prince, daddy.

Bradley's Butter-Scotchies

from kate:
cupcakes take time, you know.

don't judge me. i'm adding a cookie recipe. i work for this theatre company, and the associate artists and other folk who have been there forever (like myself) are pretty much like a family. and one of us has a serious amount of back pain right now, so we are all worried... because we love our family, and this man is the sweetness and the heart of the universe. also, when things start to go sour, i make cookies in the toaster oven downstairs. it helps. a warm cookie goes a long way in making people feel comforted. so this is a toaster oven recipe for bradley, whom we all want to get better soon.

First, i wanna say this: you always hear that baking, unlike cooking, is an exact science. measure carefully or your baking will turn out like some sort of nightmare. well, i think that's just what other bakresses say to make themselves feel superior about their type-a personalities. suck on that, other bakresses! (to be fair, it is much more important in baking cakes which need to rise than in baking cookies.)

anyway, this is my alteration of the back-of-the-bag recipe. it is lower in fat and has about half the sugar of the other recipe, but let's be honest here: that's really because i ran out of some ingredients. but they taste pretty effing good, so it's all gravy!

Get Yourself Some Stuff:
1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. cinnamon
1 stick u/s butter, softened
1/4 c. extra virgin coconut oil (which is my moon goddess)
1/4 c. white sugar
1/2 c. packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla (i used that tasty vanilla bean paste again. damn, that stuff is delicious.)
zest of one orange
3 c. oats (either kind. old-fashioned will make your cookies have a different texture. quick oats will taste just as good, but be more uniform in texture...they break up more during baking. i like old-fashioned, but the most important thing, to me, is that they have that quaker guy on the front. because i'm a quaker. and i think it would be funny if i looked like him.)
11 oz pkg (1 2/3 c.) butterscotch chips

Live the Dream!
~combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in small bowl
~beat butter, coconut oil, sugars, eggs, vanilla and zest in mixer until well combined.
~gradually beat in flour mixture
~stir in oats and chips
~drop in enormously overflowing tbsps onto teeny toaster oven cookie sheet (put some foil on that beast! you're at work!)
~bake at 375 for 9 (-11) minutes. they will be soft and squishy and oh-so delicious!
~then think for a second about how much you love somebody, anybody...and wish them good health.