Vegan Cookies - March 12, 2009

Lila was in charge of finding the cookie recipe that we would try, and thus we had our Thursday cooking meeting (one week late due to personal conflicts) at Lila's house. She found 3 recipes online, I printed copies, and brought those and my cooling racks over to her place. The idea of using the leftover frosting from the cupcakes went out the window as we figured the lifespan of the frosting had expired. I did bring the leftover vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips from when we made brownies.

We spread out the 3 recipes on the table, considered the ingredients we had compared to the ingredients in the different versions, and picked which recipe we'd try first. While we pulled out the right ingredients from the multitude of things Lila had spread out, we decided that the next time we tried cookies, she would get the recipe her mother uses.

Alison put together the dry ingredients while Lila mixed together the wet, and I stood away from the crowded counter space calling out to them what to add next to each respective bowl.

At first glance we picked the most difficult recipe - there wasn't even white space on the single sheet / single spaced page for me to jot my notes (though the back of the sheet sufficed for this). The truth was this was the quickest recipe we've done yet.

Alison created a well in the dry ingredients, but not big enough, we quickly saw, for the wet ingredients that Lila had mixed. Nothing to sweat over, though, as the next step was to mix it all up. We blended the dough by spoon, then separated it into approximately half, once we had a good mix. Half the batter got the left-over vegan semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies - that dough made a dozen on one cookie sheet; the other half got craisins (dried cranberries) and almond slivers. That made a batch of 11, fulfilling the recipe's promise of "Almost 2 dozen cookies."

Because of the ingredients we added, and because of the individual touch (making each cookie by hand), we came up with a batch of cookies that were of inconsistent size. We decided that in the future we'd pre-make the dough, roll it into a standard size, and freeze it (for just a couple of hours, to let it set) so we could then slice cookies from the roll and have consistent cookies (the guess was for about 1 cm thick).

Following the recipe we put both pans in to bake, then half-way through the baking process we switched which pan was on the top, which was on the bottom, and rotated them 180 degrees. We ended up leaving the cranberry almond cookies in for a bit longer, and the chocolate chip cookies were in for an additional 2 minutes.





This recipe didn't call for egg or egg replacer (as the other recipes did), but seemed to just substitute oil in (we followed the recipe exactly). In the future we may try replacing some of the oil with applesauce, reducing the oil, or just finding another recipe. The first taste of these was oily. The cookies were good, otherwise, though in the future, if we keep Cranberry Almond on the menu, we'll try adding almond or lemon extract. (We'll try both, but not at the same time).

We took the cookies to gaming, and once again we discovered that the day after our baking, the treat tastes better. These particular cookies were soft to the point of crumbly, and though the day after was tastier, it was still a bit too oily for our preferences. I think something other than straight oil would help with both problems. We will definitely look into other cookie recipes, and keep in mind the trick of working from rolled dough to have more consistent size cookies, all the easier to sell, and to adjust the baking time.

[Recipe found at VegWeb.com, Happy Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies]

Vegan Cupcakes - Feb. 26, 2009

Last week's vegan baking experiment was Vegan Cupcakes - Red Velvet Cupcakes with a Cream Cheese frosting, to be exact.

I never knew that Red Velvet cake (and therefore cupcakes) were secretly chocolate, but the recipe called for cocoa powder, and I brought that, as well as some of the other cross-over ingredients from the brownies (such as the organic unsweetened applesauce, and the soy milk I had on hand and open from a previous baking exercise), a large mixing bowl and my muffin pan over to Alison's place. She had bought the rest of the ingredients, and I think Lila, Alison and I determined we'll try to do cross-over recipes as close together as possible, to help maximize use of common ingredients in a timely manner. Also, we've decided we'll all have on hand flour and sugar at all times - because really, when baking, those are pretty much a must.

When I got to Alison's place she had all the ingredients she had out, and the margarine and tofu better than cream cheese out on the counter to get to room temperature. She set out the soy milk and apple cider vinegar right away to give the milk a chance to curdle. Lila arrived, and she and I sifted the dry ingredients together - Alison had them measured out. We didn't have a sifter, but I did have a mesh strainer with a long handle - Lila poured the ingredients into the strainer, and I shook it to mix the ingredients. In lieu of a second sifting, Lila set to stirring the dry ingredients. This stirred up a lot less dust, and made everyone's noses much happier.

The recipe called for 2 oz. of red food coloring, which Alison bought - McCormick food coloring. At lunch that day my sister said "Gee, I hope that's vegan - you know that for some food coloring to get the red they use ground up beetles." This sent me on a quick Internet search to determine which reds were used in the food coloring (FD&C Red 40 and 3), and if those had beetles in them (Nope, that's Red 4). *Phew* Anyway, that was a lot of red food coloring we added to the batter. We wondered if halving the food coloring would end up with pink velvet cupcakes - an idea for October, or February.

Like with the brownies, we substituted applesauce in for some of the oil (though this time we used vegetable oil instead of canola oil). The fun part was trying to do the math. With the converted recipe we had, the note said to substitute some of the oil for applesauce, but we did not have the amount. Fortunately I had the brownie recipe with me - where 1 cup of oil was changed out for 1/2 cup of applesauce and 1/4 cup of oil. Unfortunately, the cupcake recipe called for 2/3 a cup of oil, which then involved some tricky math - and Alison pulling out her cell phone as a calculator, to end up with 1/3 a cup of apple sauce and 1/6 a cup of oil (which we had to eyeball in the 1/3 cup measure.)

The batter was very liquidy, and so we used the 1/4 cup measure to scoop batter into the cups which was perfect to fill the cupcake cups 3/4 full. We only had a few mishaps, where this blood red batter dripped on the counter or floor, but those were quickly cleaned up. We finished filling the first pan, and put it in the oven, then set to filling the second pan worth of cupcakes. We were a little more generous with these as we finished filling them, but still had some batter left in the bowl, and hey, waste not, right?

The bake time was 20 minutes, so when we finished filling the second pan, we decided to wait for the timer to get down to 10 minutes we'd add the second pan to the oven. When the first batch was done, and pulled out to cool on Alison's broiling pan (I forgot to bring my cooling racks), we started making the frosting. As we were mixing in the 4 cups of confectioners’ sugar (and wiping our brow that my box and Alison's box - both previously open and partially full - actually had enough), we discussed in the future playing with reducing the amount of sugar in recipes, to see how it affects the taste. We also discussed trying to substitute some whole wheat flour for some of the while flour (though my co-worker warns to not do more than half and half, since the whole wheat flour would make things heavier).

With the icing made, and the second batch of cupcakes out of the oven, we set to icing the first batch while the second cooled. We should have probably let them cool a bit more before starting icing, but we were eager to try our creations. One thing we noticed as a difference between the second batch and the first was that we had to put the second batch in for an additional two minutes (they were still goopy) and then the tops didn't just rise, but also spread out a bit (usually on one side) over the cups. I think that was due to the extra batter we put in those cups, but I can't rule out the fact that we were using two different cupcake pans (Lila's and mine), so there is that variable in play, also.

We iced the cupcakes, then dug in. All three of us had problems with a large part of the cupcake sticking to the paper. We pondered foil lined cups, but since all the cupcakes we ate a day later, at gaming, came out of the paper perfectly, it could have been that they were still too warm for good removal from the paper wrappers. Alison and Lila, who have a taste for this sort of thing, discussed using orange extract (or lemon) in the cupcakes, and then adding the same zest to the top of the icing. Likewise, perhaps adding nuts of some kind to the batter, then on top of the icing.

The cupcakes seemed to go over well with our test subjects, ahem, with our friends. We did have more icing than was warranted by the number of cupcakes (we'll have to look at scaling the frosting batch to match the cupcake batch), so when we try various vegan cookies (this week's baking experiment), some of them will be iced, and some will have the remainder of the semi-sweet chocolate chips left over from making brownies.

[We used the recipe found at Mac and Cheese Review for this week's baking.]