So you’ve read tons of information on why and how to be vegan. You’re ready to step into the kitchen to create some delicious meals, but where do you start?
Let me begin by listing my favorite cookbooks. Well, to be honest it would be easier to just list my favorite vegan in the world – Isa Chandra Moskowitz.
God.
Author of my favorite cookbooks (a.k.a. my bibles), such as Vegan with a Vengeance and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, creator of the Post-Punk Kitchen, and a goddess as far as I am concerned, the world of veganism would be a sad, sad black hole without her. You need her books; they will save your life and explain everything you need to know. She taught me how to cook when my mother looked at my first block of tofu with complete doubt. I never want to meet celebrities but I might crumble into a weepy mess if I ever met her, shouting “Oh my god you changed my life!” as security carried me away. Okay, not really, but you know.
If you can’t afford cookbooks at the moment, here’s the PPK website.
I would also like to suggest this website, a kind of Food Gawker for vegan recipes. I’ve discovered so many incredible recipes and vegan blogs through this website.
That being said, here are two wonderful cookie recipes from Isa’s “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.” People are often skeptical of vegan foods, but I promise that these are amazing.
Chocolate Chip Cookies – these are chewy and I rarely make them because they’re so good that I know I’ll eat all of them.
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup soymilk
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 and 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cups chocolate chips or carob chips (I used way more, not gonna lie.)
Oven at 350F
1. combine sugars, oil, milk and cornstarch and mix for a few minutes until it’s creamy. mix in vanilla.
2. sift in 1 cup of the flour, then the baking soda and salt. Then add in the rest of the flour and chocolate chips.
3. roll ping-pong sized balls up and flatten them slightly on the baking sheet
bake for about 8-10 minutes
Gingerbread cookies – perfect for making houses, people, or just blobs for lazy people like me.
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup soymilk
2 cups flour (pastry flour will make these even lighter, but I can never find that)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
spice blend:
1/2 teaspoon EACH of ground nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon
1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1. whisk together the oil and sugar for about 2-3 minutes, then add soymilk and molasses. Whisk it until it looks like caramel.
2. whisk together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl so they’re well blended, and slowly sift these dry ingredients into the wet ones, mixing the whole time. it’ll be a stiff dough so your arm might hurt from mixing…I promise it’s worth it! The directions say to flatten the dough into a mix and wrap it in plastic wrap, but I made it into a log and wrapped it in parchment paper. Then chill it in the fridge for at least an hour (3 days max). I keep it there for about a day.
3. when you’re ready to bake them, preheat the oven to 350F. line your cookie sheet with parchment paper.
4. roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thick on a floured surface and use your cookie cutters, the fun part! Place them on the cookie sheet and cook for about 8 minutes.
Let them cool before icing them – otherwise the icing will melt and drip everywhere.
Icing:
-use powdered sugar – 4 cups, ish.
-soymilk (about a tablespoon per cup of sugar. I don’t measure for icing though. I just used little drops of soymilk at a time until I liked the consistency. remember – a little bit goes a long way.
– vanilla extract (1/2 teaspoon. or a drop, which is what I do.)
whisk it all together! I keep the icing fairly thick, because it’ll dry on the cookie and look professional. I basically cover the whole top of the cookie, but you could take it one step further and coat the whole cookie if you like super sweet things: cover one side, let it dry completely, then do the other side. yum!