vegan chocolate chip cookies that taste good

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

2 cups unbleached flour

2 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp.salt cinnamon to taste (optional)

vegan chocolate or carob chips – put in as many as you like

1 cup raw sugar (turbinado #1, sucanat works too but sucks up a lot of the moisture)

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup water

Directions: VERY IMPORTANT-make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. It will work if they’re not at room temp but it works MUCH better if they are. Also while your oven is pre-heating put the cookie sheets you are going to use on top of the oven so they get preheated as well. Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon (if you choose). Add chips. Make a well in the center and set aside. In a medium size bowl mix vegan sugar and oil. Mix it well. Add the vanilla and then add the water. Mix it well. Add the wet to the well in the dry. Mix it well but be careful not to overwork it. Add more chips if you need to. Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheets. Put them in the oven. Bake for 5 minutes and then flip and rotate the sheets.(top to bottom,and 180 degree rotation) Bake another 4 minutes and check them. The cookies are done when they seem a little bit softer then you want them to be. They will harden up some as they cool. I usually go in two minute increments from here untill they get to where I like them. Take them out when they are done and move them to wire cooling racks. If they split or come apart when you try to remove them let them sit on the pan for 2 minutes before transferring them to the racks.

Serves: almost two dozen Preparation time: 15 mins?-10 to 12 cooking time

I have made cinammon chocolate chip cookies for year; it was something I did pretty frequently in high school, and they were always huge and dense. It was not weird for me to bake late into the night. I think I stayed up late sometimes in high school because things because I really wanted to buy into this idea of myself of being lawless and free-spirited, though by 11:00 at night the only thing I could think of to do was bake cookies or check my email repeatedly, because clearly I was incredibly badass. Not so much badass as just generally unsupervised. I may have been channeling that when I made these.

I made them for a community meeting the nonprofit I work for had; there’s lotsa vegans. And vegans need treats too.

Things I will say about this recipe:

I found it randomly on the interweb; but I recommend it highly. Vegan baking is still a slippery slope as far as I’m concerned, but this recipe delivers. It’s a pretty damn good recipe. I’ve been staring at people intently while they’re eating them and saying,”They’re vegan! Can you tell??” Consensus says no. The woman who crafted this recipe has a 6 year old. If 6 year olds are into it, then it’s a good chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Carob is disgusting. I don’t care who you talk to, but I spent an obscene amount of money buying vegan chocolate chips that didn’t taste like ass. Vegans may convince themselves otherwise because they are broke and hungry…..but it’s just not the same thing. We can make something yummy out of dumpstered fruit, but this carob shit is not going to work for either of us.

That’s the other thing. The non-carob option is pricey. DAMN.

I don’t make cookies often, I don’t really have positive feelings about baking cookies, but I do love cookies because they are quite stackable, and easy to share, and many people will restrain themselves when food that is indulgent becomes a production, ie cake uses a fork and therefore is far too much, whereas a cookie you can convince most people to eat. Though it then becomes a thing of I’m-eating-six-cookies-and-now-I-feel-crappy. Or maybe I just have some association of cookies with Oprah with an overeating/self-loathing cycle. Which is no fun.

In other food news, I’m going to venture back to the produce stands in the International District to see what I can see and I promise to come up with something amusing.

Also, I’ve had a longer-term dalliance with hibiscus than may or may not be documented here (the first tea I drank consistently was tazo “passion” which is all about hibiscus, orange hibiscus scones were one of the first recipes on this here bloggy blog) and anyhow someone brought me a baggie of lemon hibiscus tea, which upon first sniff I thought smelled like grass, and was unmoved, but made it for my friend who wanted something herbal, and my arsenal of black tea wasn’t gonna do it, and actually was really tasty-I had a lot leftover saved in my little teapot in the fridge, which was kind of great.

I got rid of a lot of stuff in the last couple of days, and filed my taxes; I’m getting back what I normally make in a month.

fuck to the yeah.