I am a Vegan Baking Whore (And Proud of It)

I don't normally post recipes here, but I've been cooking (and in particular BAKING--which is a new adventure on my end since I've never been much into baking) a ton since I done up and went vegan, so I'm feeling compelled to share. And YOU WILL LOVE ME FOR IT. Oh yes. Or you will be destroyed.

Things That I've Cooked Recently:

• A wicked good and spicy corn chowder from Vegan With a Vengeance. So easy. So tasty. So fricking healthy for you that it should be jailed for indecency. Or something like that. In food-jail of course. Because yeah, that exists.



• A broccoli-spinach vegan quiche from The Peta Celebrity Cookbook--I even made the crust myself (Look, Ma, no hands!) and it was fricking good, if I may say so.



• My tried and true Stuffed Peppers (stuffed with portabellas, wild rice, and those little tiny orzo noodley things) from the big white vegetarian cookbook that's sitting on my shelf at home and whose title is eluding me (but I know my friend Shanna bought it for me back in the day and I done stoled it from my ex- when we broke up so now it is mine mine mine and thank god because I could not live without you, oh stuffed pepper recipe).

Things That I've Baked Recently:

• Vegan chocolate chip cookies--I remember not from which or where nor who or why. I am useful like that.



• A Fat-Free Vegan Banana Bread (with semi-sweet chocolate chips and sunflower seeds)--this turned out a bit moister than I would've liked. And the semi-sweet chocolate chips tasted a bit too bitter for my taste. Whine whine whine.



• Corn bread from The Lantern Vegan Family Cookbook. Num diddly num.



• Amazingly good peanut-butter and oatmeal cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance--I wish I could track down the recipe for you all on-line because they were INCREDIBLE. If you cook anything that I've mentioned here, let it be this one--it will be like a week-long orgasm. However, I suspect that they could very easily kill you (the cookies, not the week-long orgasms)--I've never put so much oil and peanut butter into one recipe. I made them for my friend D for his b-day, and I actually felt obligated to order him not to eat too many in one sitting, they are THAT unhealthy. They are addictive too--I found myself chowing on multiple reject cookies all week from my fridge and was both happy and sad to see the last one go. They are super-soft and super-gooey and super-fricking-peanutbuttery. And I could just eat mounds and mounds of the uncooked dough. And now I just keep craving them *ALL* the time, mostly because for some reason, many items in my house smell exactly like them, including my cat.



• A vegan yellow cake with butter-cream frosting from La Dolce Vegan!--the cake was so fucking dense that it should've been called "bread" by the recipe-makers, but the frosting was gloriously rich and yummy and heart-attack inducing (I've never put so much butter into one item).



• The world's worst raspberry-swirl brownies you ever did taste:
  
  E's mom was ever so sweet and got me the fantastic dessert-filled cookbook Sinfully Vegan: Over 140 Decadent Desserts to Satisfy Every Vegan's Sweet Tooth so I eagerly jumped in to try out their raspberry-swirl brownies (replete with tons of glorious cocoa and raspberry preserves). Before I get any further, let me just make it clear that I suck and not the book. Not like you couldn't've figured that out anyways. But yes, I am high in suckage. Anyways, these brownies looked glorious going in (and man was the raw batter good to wolf down) and they looked glorious coming out. And they tasted glorious in their warm gooey goodness as I tried not to burn my tongue. But come the next morning, they were stiff and rubbery as a car tire. I suspect this is not the fault of the recipe, but the fault of The Fear that Accompanies Vegan Baking--this fear is overcooking/undercooking items. Many vegan bakery items actually have to firm up outside of the oven as part of the cooking process, so it is often incredibly difficult (especially with cookies) to tell when it is done--many times it'll feel squishy as shit and seem completely undercooked but if you leave it in due to The Fear That Accompanies Vegan Baking, you will overcook. I suspect I did exactly that with the brownies, partially because I also doubled the recipe and cooked them in a larger pan, so I was worried that they should be baked longer and overcompensated on the baking time. The rubberiness may also partially be due to a lack of eggs. But one cannot be quite sure. Damn you though, you weird binding ovals from hell!



• And most recently, beer cookies! Who'da thunk it. These are by no means the most amazing thing I've ever baked--they come out light and squishy and sweet but aren't knock-your-socks-off--but hell, they're a lot of fun to make, mostly because a batch only requires about 3/4 of a beer, so you'll end up dancing around your apartment while you bake, downing the excess in your bottles so as *not to be wasteful* ahem yes that's the reason. *AND* they were incidentally vegan (as in, I was roaming aimlessly looking at recipes and stumbled across these babies on a non-vegan website)--alls you gotta do is use some vegan beer in the recipe, and your vegan friends will love ya.
  
  These yielded a tiny bit shy of 2 dozen cookies.
  
  INGREDIENTS:
  2 cups all-purpose flour
  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  1/2 cup packed vegan brown sugar
  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  1/2 cup vegan butter (I think I used Soy Garden brand)
  1 1/4 cups room temperature beer (When I baked these cookies most recently, I used their Holy Moses beer (which is my favorite beer of the moment--god bless you, coriander)--for more vegan beers checkHERE)
  1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  
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  DIRECTIONS:
  1. Cream together the butter or margarine and the brown sugar. Cut in flour, baking soda and spice.
  2. Blend in beer slowly to form a soft dough.
  3. Drop by teaspoonfuls and top with a walnut piece.
  4. Bake 12-15 minutes at a 350 degree F (175 degrees C) oven until lightly brown. Cool one minute on cookie sheet and remove to wire rack.
  
  (from All Recipes.com)
  
  The cookies were nicely squishy (which I like in a cookie) and gave you potent enough beer breath that it had the added amusement of making everyone at work smell like they'd just dragged themselves out of an awake-through-the-morning drinking binge. When I have some spare cash, my goal is to pick up a 12-pack of Great Lakes Brewing Co. beer (with it's 4-different beer assortment) and try out these cookies with each of the beers. I also intend to tamper with the recipe some so that they're a bit more flavorful and to turn them into KILLER beer cookies that will immediately get me laid.


And that's all I can think of. Now run along and pick up Vegan With a Vengeance and make some of them there PB-Oatmeal cookies. Better than crack, better than winning the lottery, better than that one-night-stand you just woke up from to blearily read this blog. Get ye.

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