Friday, November 21, 2008

Peanut Butter Filled Chocolate Cookie

Ever since I discovered Trader Joe's all natural peanut butter (the best peanut butter I've ever had AND less than $2 a jar!!) I've returned to my old ways of peanut butter sandwiches and peanut butter cookies.

The recipe I used for these cookies is on so many vegan blogs and cookbooks that I'm not sure anyone knows who can be credited for the original recipe. I changed it just a little bit to make the chocolate flavor richer after I found my first batch to be not chocolaty enough.


Ingredients:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup cocoa powder
½ teasp baking soda
½ cup margarine, softened
½ cup vegan white sugar
½ cup dark brown sugar
¼ cup soy milk
1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips
½ cup powdered sugar
½ cup natural peanut butter


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Mix flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda in a small bowl. In a large bowl, cream white and brown sugar with margarine. Stir in soy milk and chocolate chips. Combine wet and dry ingredients. It will be a little dryer than your average cookie dough because you'll have to manage the dough in your hands.

In a separate bowl, combine natural peanut butter (don't ever cook with that weird vegetable oil stuff) and powdered sugar.

The next part is a little more involved. With your hands, scoop up about 3 tablespoons of the chocolate batter and smoosh it into a disk. Place about 1 teaspoon of the peanut butter mixture in the center of the disk and fold the sides of the disk up, smoothing out the seam. Place on the cookie sheet seam-side down.

Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes. Enjoy the gooey peanut butter and chocolate deliciousness.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Banana Coffee Cake

This cake was made during the awkward time between classes and meetings on Friday. I was craving something sweet, but not too sweet, and the only fruit I had on hand were some bananas. The result was quick, somewhat healthy, and delicious.

I heavily altered (and dehealthified) a recipe from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen.



Ingredients:
2/3 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons Ener-G Egg Replacer
3 tablespoons water
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup sugar
2 bananas
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a 8 inch circular pan (I use Pam Baking Spray in a flash).
Combine vinegar and soymilk and set aside.
Mix Ener-G egg replacer and water with mixer or in food processor until foamy.

In a small bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.
In a large bowl, combine soymilk mixture, egg mixture, vanilla extract, and sugar until smooth.
Pour dry ingredients into large bowl and mix until just combined.

Pour half of the mixture into the prepared pan. Slice bananas and lay on top of mixture. Cover with remaining mixture. Combine brown sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl and sprinkle on top of cake.

Bake for about 25 minutes.

Invite friends over and enjoy it warm. While it still good the next day, it was not near as delicious as when it was fresh out of the oven. In retrospect, i think it might have been better had I used brown sugar in the batter and white sugar in the topping.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

high on pie

Last night our country made one of the greatest decisions in its history, so today I decided to celebrate and bake a pie.




Ingredients:
-pie crust (buy it, make it, your choice)

pie filling:
-1 package silken tofu
-12 oz bag of dark chocolate chips
-1/4 cup vanilla soy milk
-2 tsp vanilla extract
-2 tsp cornstarch

topping:
-1/3 cup peanutbutter
-3 tbs maple syrup
-2 tbs agave nectar


To make it:

Melt the chocolate chips. Mix all of the filling ingredients in the blender until smooth (sadly, the blender at our apartment BROKE, so I used our fun little hand food processor, otherwise it would have come out smoother).

Pour the filling into the pie crust and bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

After that, let it cool for about 30 minutes, then put it in the fridge until it feels firm (2 or 3 hours).

Once cool, mix the ingredients for the topping and simmer over low heat. Once it heats up and turns the color of caramel, spread it on top of the pie and VOILA.

Delicious.

welcome !

This blog is a collection of vegan cooking experiments done by Melie (vegan) and Laura (halfgan). We're students at William and Mary; we love to cook, we love to eat.

Simple as that.