Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice, i.e.: Butterscotch, Chocolate, & Mint

We've been eating a lot of cookies and cookie-type things around here lately. By "we" I mean me and my family, since I'm in Pennsylvania right now, and foisting baked things onto anyone who crosses my path. (Not that they're a hard sell.) I mean, we've eaten real food too, but none of it was as photogenic as the sweet stuff. This is the time to be over-the-top unhealthy though, right?

Truthfully, at this point, I'm pretty sugared out, but I thought I'd indulge in one last cookie-laden post, before I start into healthy soups, salads, and Gillian McKeith-style recipes.

Living in the present: Cookies 'N' Mint Ice Cream. Following what seems to be the vegan holiday zeitgeist, I got myself to the new(-ish) Brooklyn Trader Joe's, before joining the family in Pennsylvania, to pick up some of the revered Candy Cane Joe Joe's. Upon finding out that I was one of the uninitiated, the boy at the register basically warned me that Candy Cane Joe Joe's are like crack. I took advantage of my parents' ice cream maker to whip up a batch of this mint ice cream with crushed up Joe Joe's. The result was pretty delicious: creamy mint ice cream with chunky chocolatey, minty cookie bits. I used the ice cream recipe from Veganomicon, but with 1 - 1 1/2 tsp mint extract added, and 1 tbsp of vodka (the alcohol helps keep the ice cream from getting too hard in the freezer, a trick I picked up here); when the ice cream had started to thicken I added the chopped cookies allowing the paddle of the ice cream maker to swirl them in.


Continuing with the mint-chocolate theme: Chewy Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies. You may notice that these seem pretty similar to the Mocha Chip Chocolate Cookies from the last post. They are, with a few small, but critical changes: 3/4 tsp mint extract instead of espresso powder, semisweet chocolate chunks (or chips) instead of coffee chocolate chips, and mint chocolate lentils decorating the tops instead of the mocha lentils. Although the vegan status of the latter is now in debate, the mint lentils do appear to be vegan. I've e-mailed Koppers about their mocha lentils, and am holding off using them until I hear back. In the meantime, I just baked another batch of these cookies with the mint lentils to gift to my former piano teacher, who I'm meeting today for lunch.

For some reason I'd started thinking about Snickerdoodles after not eating one for probably ten years or so. I'm not exactly sure why, but even though they are made from what is basically sugar cookie dough, they seem so much better than sugar cookies. Maybe it's the fact that there is no pressure to decorate them up all pretty-like. Taste-wise, I prefer the simplicity of cinnamon sugar to gobs of icing any day. I used this recipe from the now pretty-much-defunct VeganCore blog, which brought back memories as being on of the first vegan blogs I checked regularly. My only criticism is that the directions say that the cookies should be 3 tbsp-worth of dough. I did this with the first tray and it was too much--I went with about 2 tbsp for the proceding trays and it was perfect. I came out with 20 cookies this way. Really good with a cafe au lait.

Speaking of the pressure to decorate cookies. I made gingerbread cut-outs from the Gingerbread Punk recipe over on ThePPK. My cookies are nowhere near as impressive as Isa and Terry's punks, but they were still really tasty. Especially the un-iced ones, because I kind of hate royal icing. I was too lazy to decorate more than three kitties this year, two of which turned out pretty (unintentionally) scary-looking.

This Emo Kitty is sad because I suck at decorating cookies. Apparently my piping skills didn't always suck though...?

The great triumph of Christmas baking was veganizing the blondies I used to make in my omni days.

The moment I found vegan butterscotch chips in Williamsburg, I knew it was time to veganize those blondies. Sure, you can make blondies with semisweet chocolate chips, but to me it's not really worth it.

The original recipe came from the May 1998 issue of Martha Stewart Living. And, in fact, one summer when I was in high school I baked pans of these to sell at a local farmers market. My mom's friend loved them, and actually a lot of them were probably sold to her. I was excited to be able to veganize them and gift her with some blondies after many blondie-less years.

While the veganized recipe ended up being very different from the original--what seemed like a case of easy substitutions resulted in me adjusting the amounts of sugar, significantly modifying Martha's recipe. The second pan was spot-on. Here's the recipe.

Vegan Blondies

2 tbsp tapioca flour
1/4 cup soy milk
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup evaporated cane juice (or vegan granulated sugar)
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup pecans, roughly chopped (leave them very chunky)
3/4 cup vegan butterscotch chips (parve/kosher)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Toast pecans on a baking sheet in oven for about 5 minutes. Be careful not to burn them. Let cool while you mix up the batter.

Lightly grease an 8x8 inch baking pan. (I sprayed with Pam.)

In a mixing bowl combine whisk together tapioca flour and soy milk. Add sugars, canola oil, and vanilla extract and continue to whisk until emulsified (or nearly so). Set whisk aside.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into wet ingredients and stir to combine with a wooden spoon.

When ingredients are combined, stir in butterscotch chips and toasted pecans.

Pour batter into baking pan and smooth the top with your spoon or a spatula.

Bake at 350 F for 40 to 45 minutes, or until blondies have puffed and fallen a bit, and are golden. The center should be set but still chewy and soft. Cool in pan for about 15 minutes, then loosen the edges and turn out onto a wire rack to cool the rest of the way.

When completely cool, cut into squares. I got about 16 blondies.

Pack them up to share with someone you like.