Mission: Vegan » Sweet Treats

Gluten Free & Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies (and they’re SUPER easy to make)

maida — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 03:40:30 +0000

A stupid stomach bug got in the way of my blogging this week. We all got it within a day of each other, so at least we weren’t all sick at the same time. Still, it was no fun and we haven’t really eaten much but my appetite is slowly returning and today Emma and I made these cookies. They are vegan, gluten free, and really, really simple to make. The best part is that they only require 2 flours!

So this recipe actually comes from the back of the Let’s Do… Organic! brand of coconut flour. Since I had to change it up to make it vegan, I don’t think they’ll mind my sharing the recipe with you. First, I’ll take a minute to tell you that this is the only brand of coconut flour that I use. Not only is it organic, but it’s also the least expensive coconut flour on the shelf at Whole Foods. If you’ve ever made gluten free goodies, you know how spendy all those flours are and how quickly that tab adds up when you need to buy more than one. I like this brand a lot.

Gluten Free, Vegan, and Very Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies
(That You Won’t Even Know Are Gluten Free)

1/2 cup Earth Balance
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 TB flax mixed with 3 TB water (or Ener-G to replace 1 egg)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup + 2 TB brown rice flour
1/4 cup Let’s Do… Organic brand coconut flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (my addition; the original recipe does not call for this, but you need it)
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In the bowl of an electric or stand mixer, cream together the Earth Balance and both sugars. Add the flax egg and vanilla. Beat well. In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix for a minute to incorporate. Stir in the chocolate chips. Drop by the teaspoonful onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-12 minutes until the sides and top are golden brown. Remove from oven and cool on a cooling rack. Dive in!

Gluten Free Cupcakes

maida — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:25:08 +0000

I’ve got a couple of winners to share. If you’re looking for delicious, gluten free, VEGAN cupcake recipes, you’ve hit the jackpot today. These are easy to make and really, really good. No weird gritty texture. No weird aftertaste. None of that nonsense. (For those who don’t eat/bake/experiment with GF stuff, it’s pretty near impossible to find a GF baked good or recipe that doesn’t have egg in it. Gluten free and eggs seem to go hand in hand. The fact that these are GF AND vegan is a real treat.)

Gluten free baking is pretty tricky. I’m still not very good at it, but I learn a little more every time I try out a new recipe. Trying to make a gluten free and vegan chocolate cake was really challenging for me. I tried no fewer than 10 recipes before finding this one, which was so easy to make (and only uses 1 GF flour) that I thought for sure it would be another fail for me. Not so.

I’m telling you– this recipe is a winner. Since it’s not my recipe, I can’t post it here, but you can follow this link to get it. Go now. I did make one small change and that was the addition of 1/8 tsp of xanthan gum. It’s a texture thing– it’ll make it just a tad more chewy and a little less crumby. You can totally leave it out and still get a great result.

And through more experimentation, I found this other little gem. Add some lemon extract to this GF vanilla cupcake recipe here and you’ve got yourself one lemony, delicious little cake. Again, not my recipe, but I’ve made several little tweaks to it which you’ll see in “Note #3″ after you follow the link. I also topped it with a lemon buttercream, which is nothing more than a vanilla buttercream with lemon extract added.

Although I haven’t tried it, I’m fairly certain you could add any extract to the batter to change up the flavor. Orange might be nice, or maybe some lemon and lavender. Or lemon cake with lavender frosting. Actually that sounds REALLY good– I just might have to give that a try next after I recover from my sugar hangover.

Gluten Free Apple Cobbler

maida — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:57:35 +0000

Well, about the only thing ready to harvest from our garden so far are apples. Lots and lots and lots of apples. I can’t tell what variety they are– I had originally thought Jonagold, but only some have the bit of red at the top. They don’t look like Jonagold to me anymore. After some extensive Googling, I am reasonably sure that we have Lodi apples. It was important for me to figure out what they are because I need to know when to pick them. From what I read, Lodi apples are the first of the season, harvested in July and August. Soooo… we picked a few to make an apple cobbler.

The recipe for the cobbler came from a book that I don’t use often enough, The Gluten-Free Vegan by Susan O’Brien. My mother-in-law bought this book for me a few months ago and while I’ve got several recipes marked to try, this is the first one that I have ended up making. The recipe is actually for a peach and blueberry cobbler (sounds so good!), but with a tree full of apples, I thought I could make it work with those.

I followed the recipe exactly, but substituted 6 cups of apples for the 3 cups of peaches and 3 cups of blueberries. I also added lots more spice to the filling and it was perfect!

2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp mace
1/4 tsp ground ginger

It turned out tasting great, but I did have a little trouble while baking. My apples, it seems, are not great for baking. They broke down, but released absolutely no juice. Like none at all. Because there is flour (sorghum) and arrowroot in the filling mixture to soak up all that juicy goodness, I had to improvise and add about 1/2 cup of water. Otherwise, it would had the pasty texture of dry, uncooked flour. It turned out fine, but next time I will add juice to the filling mixture if I use my apples again. I think these guys are best suited for applesauce, though.

Cobbler Close Up

I served the cobbler in a bowl topped with Almond Dream Praline Crunch. It was delicious! The ice cream melted a bit into the cobbler topping and it was so good.

Emma’s Birthday Party

maida — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:22:51 +0000

A little over a month ago, Emma turned 5! I can’t believe she’s ready for kindergarten already. The theme was Tinker Bell and we had a Tinker Bell jumpy house, as well as a few Tinker Bell themed craft projects.

We had some tiny birdhouses (“fairy houses”) that the kids could paint and take home with them.

I bought some teeny tiny glass bottles with cork lids that the kids filled with different colored sand (that I had mixed with the same color of glitter). Both projects were big hits!

Here are some food highlights from her (mostly vegan) birthday party:

Drinks: bottled water, lemonade, iced tea, Sangria and beer. I used this Sangria recipe and should have doubled the recipe. It went fast (and was SO delicious!!). To keep it cold without watering it down, I froze some of it and also added some frozen apples and oranges that I cut in half before freezing. It did the trick!

Food: falafal (some wrapped in whole wheat lavash, some in GF brown rice tortillas), bagels and cream cheese, fruit, veggies with hummus, corn and black bean salsa, guacamole, edamame. Also, all of the cups, plates, napkins and utensils were compostable! We had very little trash from this party.

And the pièce de résistance… the cake! The top tier is GF vanilla, middle is vegan vanilla, bottom is vegan chocolate. There were only a few pieces of the GF left. All the rest got gobbled up!

Holiday Party Cupcakes

maida — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 06:27:49 +0000

Well, vegan mofo came and went and I’m pretty disappointed with my performance. I started out strong, but wasn’t able to keep up in the end. The worst part is that I actually did some cooking and have some recipes to post, I jut don’t have the time to sit at the computer and write them. *sigh*

This weekend, I was hired to make cupcakes for the Redwood City Mother’s Club holiday party. This is my second year doing it and it’s a lot of fun. Emma and I stayed for the party after setting up and we had so much fun. She got to do some art and play with her friends and we got to spend some time together, just the two of us.

Flavors: apple spice with salted caramel buttercream, pumpkin with cream cheese frosting, vanilla with vanilla buttercream, and lemon with lemon buttercream.

This year, I also made some gluten-free vanilla cupcakes following this recipe. I wanted these to also be nut-free, so I made a few substitutions and omissions: soy milk for the almond milk (I’ve also used rice milk and they turned out fine); omit almond extract, add extra vanilla; and quinoa flour for the almond flour. I have to say that these cupcakes are so delicious! It might be my new favorite. I want to play around with this recipe and try to develop a chocolate one.

I’ve got one more holiday party to do this Saturday and after that I should have more time for blogging. I have a yummy recipe to post!

Happy Thanksgiving!

maida — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:20:09 +0000

As a member of Farm Sanctuary, I often get emails from them advertising their latest campaign or fundraiser. (Click here to read about our summer road trip to their CA farm where we got to see some of the turkeys rescued from slaughter.) I don’t always post their campaign information here, but thought this one was appropriate for Thanksgiving. More than 46 million turkeys were slaughtered this year for Thanksgiving alone and I’m happy to say that none were a part of my Thanksgiving day celebration.

Our cruelty-free meal started with homemade pizza and salad and ended with homemade caramel apple pie with praline ice cream.

The pizza was delicious. I ended up making one pepperoni and olive, one veggie no eggplant, and one that was half plain cheese and half veggie with eggplant. I mentioned in a previous post that I am in love with eggplant and eat it all the time, but Matt doesn’t share the same appreciation. Seriously, I bought 3 eggplants this week and have already eaten 2 of them. You can check out this post for my tips on making vegan pizzas.

The pie is one that I’ve made before, but the last time I made it I thought it was too sweet. I had also added vanilla, as some of the comments suggested to, and I didn’t like that either. So this time, I used all Granny Smith apples and made only half a recipe of the caramel sauce to pour on top. I also only had one crust in the freezer, so mine doesn’t have a top crust. This time it turned out perfect! I loved it. Funny thing– Emma was the one who begged me to make apple pie for dessert and she ended up not liking it. She loved the pizza and ice cream, though!

What did you do for Thanksgiving? I’d love to read all about it.

Banana Cookies… But First A Gripe

maida — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:00:42 +0000

A while back, I blogged about how my copy of The Joy of Vegan Baking fell apart. I was a little annoyed that it just came apart like that, so I contacted the publisher and sent them pictures of it all torn to bits. They were so generous in sending me a replacement copy… THAT HAS ALSO FALLEN APART!!!!

What the heck? When will cookbook publishers get smart and start using spiral binding? Cookbooks are not the type of book that you sit in bed and leisurely read while sipping a cup of tea. No, they get battered and bruised and things spill on them and they get put in those cookbook holders so that they stay open… I’ve never had a book fall apart the way this one has and I have half a mind to contact the publishers again to complain. I don’t want to be a nag, but I would hope a cookbook could stand up to normal use. Anyone else have problems with this book? I swear, I’m no more rough with this cookbook than I am with any of my others and yet my two copies have both fallen apart.

So anyway, I had 4 bananas that needed using. They were past the point of spotted and nearly black and had only hours of life left in them. I had already made banana muffins a couple of weeks ago and still have a stash of those in my freezer, so I wanted to do something different. I had the idea of making cookies with them and googled a few recipes, but had the good fortune of this recipe finding me. Jennifer just blogged about it on Monday… what excellent timing! In her post, she mentioned two slight changes that she made to the recipe: halving the amount of sugar and oil. I decided to give it a try with her modifications.

Of course, I made a few modifications of my own. Since I had 4 bananas, I doubled the recipe but still halved the amounts of sugar and oil. I also used brown sugar instead of white, omitted the coconut (I love coconut, but the dried stuff in baked goods is an unpleasant texture for me) and instead added a generous handful of chocolate chips. Hey, chocolate makes everything better!

These baked up fluffy and moist and almost have the texture of a muffin top. The best part is that Emma likes ‘em too.

Spicy Carrot Zucchini Muffins

maida — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:41:12 +0000

So I missed a day, but I did actually start this post yesterday. I was just too busy to finish it. I do have some good news to share: Amanda is feeling better and it turns out she just has a cold. Her lab work came back negative for any of the major viruses that cause the flu. The best part is that she slept well last night, which means I actually got some sleep. It was nice!

In my last post, I said I was going to make muffins and I actually got it done! I ended up making LOTS of mini muffins because I like to save some to stash away in the freezer for Emma’s lunches or for snacking on when we’re low on snacks. Besides that, when you’re making muffins, it’s not that much more work to make a double recipe– it’s certainly less work than making a single recipe on two separate days, right? I like to think so. My doubled recipe made about 5 dozen mini muffins.

I’ve been making lots of variations of this muffin recipe lately and it’s served me well. I can change it up a bunch of different ways and it has always turned out great. Use fruit in place of the veggies, add some dried fruit, change the up the spices– the possibilities here are endless. The only fruit I wouldn’t try in this recipe are bananas. While I’ve never tried bananas here and can’t say for sure how it would turn out, I can say that I’ve never had luck making banana bread or muffins when the recipe uses vegetable or canola oil as the oil. The best banana bread I’ve made uses vegan margarine.

Spicy Carrot Zucchini Muffins

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/16 tsp mace

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp allspice

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup non-dairy milk

1/3 cup oil (or half oil, half applesauce)

1 TB vinegar

1 cup carrots, grated

1 cup zucchini, grated

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray or line with paper liners.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, sugar and spices.

3. In a large bowl, combine all the wet ingredients and the carrots and zucchini. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir well.

4. Fill muffin tins 2/3 full and bake. Mini muffins take about 10 minutes. Regular size muffins take about 15.

Friday is our turn to bring snacks to Emma’s preschool and she wants to take muffins. I’ll be making an apple cinnamon batch of these tomorrow and will post that recipe variation. Enjoy!

Zucchini Coffee Cake

maida — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 22:15:44 +0000

I used up the last of my zucchini last night when I whipped up this coffee cake to have for breakfast this morning. I definitely put the zucchini to good use, though, since it tasted so delicious that my kid even ate a piece. Of course, she’s not likely to pass up anything with the word “cake” in it. The cake part is spiced up with some cinnamon and nutmeg and the crumble topping is kicked up with cinnamon, brown sugar and pecans. Perfect for a weekend breakfast.

I made this by combining a half recipe of the zucchini bread with the crumble topping recipe from the coffee cake recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. Does that even make any sense? Didn’t think so…

If you wanted to make this exact coffee cake, prepare half a recipe of the zucchini bread using whole wheat pastry flour and half oil/half applesauce. Pour that batter into a greased 8″ cake pan. Next, prepare the crumble topping recipe from the cinnamon coffee cake and sprinkle on top of your zucchini batter. For the crumble topping, I also used whole wheat pastry flour and half oil/half applesauce. Bake the whole thing at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.

I LOVE this book! If you were ever going to invest in one baking book– vegan or otherwise– that’s the one I’d recommend over any other. My one complaint is that the binding totally sucks. You may remember my post about how my original copy of this book completely feel apart… well, the replacement copy that the publisher sent me has also completely fallen apart. When will publishers get smart and publish cookbooks with spiral binding? Doesn’t that make the most sense? And really, this has not happened to any of my other cookbooks. This is the only one that has serious binding issues.

Vegan Baby Shower

maida — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:15:18 +0000

My good friend hosted a baby shower for me yesterday. Actually, it was more of a “Big Sister” party for my 4-year-old to get her excited about her baby sis. Everything was completely vegan and I don’t think any of the guests actually noticed.

I only took photos of the cake and favors, but here’s a list of the snacks we had (it was an afternoon party, so no need for a full meal): pretzels, popcorn, chips with guac and salsa, pita chips with hummus, veggie platter with dip (veg soup mix stirred into Tofutti sour cream), olives, and bruschetta with sundried tomato pesto and sauteed portobellas. Everything was really good!

The cake. Top tier was zucchini with vegan cream cheese frosting; bottom tier was chocolate/chocolate.

This time, I took a video of the cake, which I’ve never done before. I should do this more often. (YouTube is in the process of doing an audio swap so that you hear music with it instead of my kiddo’s chattering. I don’t know how long this will take, but hopefully it will be done soon.):

And here’s the favors. Lemon cupcakes frosted like flowers and topped with gum paste butterflies. I boxed these up the day before and by the party time, the butterflies had melted into the frosting. This has happened to me before and it wasn’t totally unexpected, but I wouldn’t have had the time to box them up the day of the party. While these cupcake boxes are attractive, they are a pain in the rear end to put together. I had all of the lids and bottoms pre-assembled, but it still took me over an hour to box up and all of the cupcakes. I was thankful that I only had 16 to do. I would definitely not recommend these for wedding favors or something, unless you’re paying someone else to do it for you. (BTW, the butterflies softened I think due to the moisture from the cupcake from being enclosed. This happens every time I top the cupcakes and enclose them in a container that doesn’t allow air to circulate freely.)

If you’re interested in making these cupcakes yourself, here’s where I got the idea, but I didn’t follow the instructions exactly: