This week I made chocolate chip cookies that are vegan, free of refined sugar and gluten. What could possibly be left in such a cookie? Just the yum.
I used the cookie recipe from the Babycakes NYC cookbook. You’re tired of hearing how great this cookbook is by now, right? The recipe in the cookbook calls for evaporated cane juice in place of sugar. I did not have evaporated cane juice and couldn’t find it at several stores so I substituted brown rice syrup. I used the Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips, which are free of more things than I will list here, and incredibly tasty.
The cookie dough was very gooey. So gooey that I added more flour to make it scoopable. I think this must have been because of the brown rice syrup. Adding an extra 1/2 cup of flour to the recipe did the trick, but also resulted in a very cakey cookie. I was hoping for a more traditional chocolate chip cookie, one with crispy edges. If I were to try this recipe again, I would seek out the proper ingredients or spoon out the gooey batter and see if it baked up.
For the frosting between cookies, I used 1 stick of Earth Balance margarine, 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla bean paste and 3 tablespoons of soy milk. This is my go-to recipe for a tiny batch of buttercream frosting. I use a dollop of frosting between two cookies and then rolled the frosting in the chocolate chips. Delicious!
I shared this week’s sweet with my friend Sarah. We met through a mutual friend a few years ago in a bar, the kind of bar that is an unlikely gathering spot for either of us. In bumping into each other a few times after that, I learned Sarah had similar tastes in food to mine and wouldn’t judge my goofy eating habits. And that is a great foundation for friendship, common interests in food!
Sarah is amazingly patient and didn’t laugh out loud at me when I was adapting to clipless bicycle pedals. Well, maybe once…but she stuck with me until I got it down. That little foray took more patience than a friend can ever be expected to have. Sarah is also known as Dr. Sarah and my favorite yoga teacher. I love that she is always learning and is a puzzle solver, both things that make her superb at not just her career but at enjoying life. It was a treat to share cookies with her this week!
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