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Rugelach

Published September 9, 2009 Chocolate , Cookies 3 Comments

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My grandmother used to make the best Rugelach; growing up, I remember visiting her once or twice a year, and the sweet cinnamon smell of the cookies would fill my senses. My dad remembers her baking them all the time when he was growing up as well. She would make them in different shapes, sometimes in the horn shape (of which Rugelach gets it’s name from), or sometimes she would roll the dough into one long log and then slice it into bite-sized pieces, like mini-cinnamon rolls. My dad also remembers her baking it in the log shape and then eating it that way, in one long cookie roll! That must have been the ultimate treat for a kid! Whatever shape you want to make them in is fine, although if you make the long roll you will have to adjust the baking time. I chose to make mine into the horn shape, which is the most labor-intensive but I find it to be the most aesthetically appealing.

The more traditionally filling is cinnamon-sugar with raisins and walnuts mixed in, so I made half of my cookies that way. But because I’m a chocolate-fiend, I filled the other half of the dough with chocolate! If you want to make a batch that is all chocolate, or all cinnamon-sugar, simply double the amount of filling ingredients listed and forget about the other type of filling ingredients.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup Earth Balance margarine, cold
8 oz. (1 package) Tofutti vegan cream cheese
1/3 cup vegan sour cream

For Cinnamon Sugar Topping:
1/2 cup finely ground walnuts
1/2 cup golden raisins, chopped
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 Tblsp. cinnamon
1/8 cup Earth Balance margarine, melted

For Chocolate Topping:
1 cup finely chopped semi-sweet chocolate
1/8 cup Earth Balance margarine, melted

Combine and mix the flour, sugar, and baking powder in a medium-sized bowl or in a food processor. Add the sour cream to the flour. Cut the Earth Balance and cream cheese into small pieces and cut them into the flour using a pastry cutter, or pulse with the food processor. Your dough will be creamy and a little gooey. Divide the dough into 4 equal balls, and gently flatten each into a disk shape. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate the disks for 2 hours.

While the dough is chilling, you can prepare the fillings. In one small bowl, combine the sugar, cinnamon, walnuts, and golden raisins. Set aside until your dough is chilled. You can set aside your finely chopped chocolate as well.

Once the dough is ready, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees, and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Pull out the disks of dough one at a time as you’re ready to roll it (in order to keep the dough cold and easier to work with). The dough is a little sticky, so be sure to lightly flour your work surface as well as your rolling pin. My dough was particularly soft and creamy and therefore sticky, so I placed my disk of dough in between two pieces of parchment paper and rolled over it that way. Roll each disk into a 9-inch circle.

Brush a thin layer of the melted Earth Balance on top of each disk. Evenly divide and spread the cinnamon-sugar mixture on two of the four disks, and sprinkle the chocolate pieces over the other two. Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut each disk into 12 evenly sized triangular wedges. Gently pull out individual wedges and roll the dough from the widest edge towards the pointed end, so that the pointed end is on the outside. Place cookies on the prepared pans, with the triangle points stuck gently under the cookie, so that they don’t unroll during baking. Brush a bit of extra melted Earth Balance on the tops of each cookie roll. Put pans in the center racks of your oven.

Bake the rugelach for 22-23 minutes, or until lightly golden brown.

Vegan Nutella Cake and Hazelnut Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

Published September 4, 2009 Cakes , Cookies , Hazelnut 12 Comments

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For Becca’s birthday I made her something that I knew she would love. I’ve been planning it for awhile, knowing that her birthday coincided with her first day of classes (she’s starting school to become an American Sign Language interpreter!). She wanted me to make her something that she could take with her, to celebrate her birthday with her new classmates. Since she has to commute, she needed something easy to pack and carry, so it was easy to decide to make sandwich cookies. But, you can’t have a birthday without a birthday cake, and I made her a cake to match her cookies. I know that Becca loves nuts, especially hazelnuts, so that had to be included in the recipes. The cake I made had three layers of Vanilla Sponge Cake, with a rich Hazelnut Creme in between each layer. Mmm. And then the whole cake was smothered in vegan Nutella Buttercream Frosting.

I sandwiched together the Hazelnut Shortbread Cookies with a dark vegan Nutella cream in the middle. Because she’s studying ASL, I made them in the shape of hands! Aren’t they cute? I put some of them around the outside of her cake for extra decoration, and to unify the two birthday desserts.

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I’ve had a request for the Nutella Cake recipe, so I’m going to do my best to post it here. Unfortunately, the vegan nutella itself was not homemade, so I can’t share a brilliant recipe for that with you. In Holland, they have vegan nutella (not the brand name variety) stocked in all grocery stores. When I went there this summer, I couldn’t resist bringing back a few jars with me. I’ve already nearly run out – I wish I could just go back and get some more but the fact that I just started graduate school means that I just don’t have the time (or the money, let’s be honest). If you don’t have the luck to have been in Holland recently, you can find a recipe for vegan nutella here, it looks delicious!

The cake itself was a vanilla Sponge Cake from Hannah Kaminsky‘s cookbook My Sweet Vegan.* She uses it as a base for her Green Tea Tiramisu. I just doubled the recipe for cake batter and baked it in three 9-inch round pans. It is a delicious recipe; a dense (but not heavy) golden cake that certainly holds it’s own - it’s sweet and bright flavor makes it easy to adapt since it pretty much supports any flavor you want it to. I’d say it actually brings out more complex flavors in whatever you combine it with. It would be great with a light fruit sauce or jam spread on it, but since this was going to be a birthday cake, I had to make it rich! I made a Hazelnut Creme to go in between the layers, and then made a more traditional vegan Buttercream that I then added the vegan nutella to. The recipes for the spreads are below. If you can’t find hazelnut butter in your grocery store, you can buy regular hazelnuts or filburts and roast them in your oven till they are lightly toasted. Grind them in a food processor until they reach a smooth peanut butter consistency.

*If you don’t have Hannah’s cookbook, you could use your favorite golden vanilla cake recipe and it would be just fine. And I stress just fine. Your cake will still be delicious and hazelnutty and totally satisfying! But, if you want a drop-dead-perfect birthday-celebratory cake, go out and buy Hannah’s cookbook because this cake is GREAT and so is the whole book! You’ll be finding excuses to bake her desserts all the time!

Hazelnut Creme Ingredients:
1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine
1 cup hazelnut butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
2 Tblsp. plain unsweetened almond milk (or a little more)

Cream Earth Balance with electric beaters in a medium sized bowl. Add the hazelnut butter and combine thoroughly. Slowly add the confectioner’s sugar, beating in between additions until fluffy. Add the almond milk very slowly while continuing to beat with electric beaters, until creme has reached a spreadable consistency.

Vegan Nutella Buttercream Frosting:
1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine
1/4 cup vegan shortening (I use Earth Balance brand)
3/4-1 cup vegan nutella/chocolate-hazelnut spread (to taste)
1 3/4 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 Tblsp. plain unsweetened almond milk

Cream Earth Balance and shortening with electric beaters in a medium sized bowl. Add the nutella and continue beating. Add the confectioner’s sugar and flour, and beat until fluffy. Add the almond milk and combine thoroughly. Spread on top of cooled stacked cakes.

Hazelnut Shortbread

Gluten Free Agave-Sweetened Peanut Butter Cookies

Published August 27, 2009 Cookies , Gluten-Free , Peanut Butter , Refined Sugar-Free , Wheat-Free 10 Comments

A lot of people in my life have been trying to cut down on the amount of processed sugars, wheat, and/or gluten in their diets. I’m always excited and interested in baking experiments, and want everyone to be able to have a treat, so I decided to bake some cookies that my friends could eat. I knew that one of them specifically loves peanut butter cookies, and another loves peanut butter in any form, so I decided that more peanut butter baking was the way to go. Usually when I bake gluten-free desserts, I use a mix of rice flour and almond meal, but having neither on hand, I had to get creative. I made a mix of gluten-free flours that was very nutty, and was a little worried that the cookies would turn out too heavy and dense. I used coconut flour and quinoa flour (both protein packed!) and threw in some tapioca flour to lighten it up. In the end, I decided that the coconut flour really complimented the PB very well, so I’m glad I went with that. The cookies were not too heavy and they were chewy just the way a regular peanut butter cookie should be.

While coming up with the recipe, I realized that I’ve never actually baked using agave as my primary sweetener. I planned to use it this time, but when looking through my cupboards I happened to have some dried dates in the house, and had seen some recipes using date paste as a sweetener, so I decided to mix the two in this recipe. I think they gave the cookies a really nice natural flavor, yet they didn’t make them taste too “healthy”.

The cookies had a great reception (and they were even appreciated by friends who eat regular sugar- and wheat gluten-laden desserts! Some even said they couldn’t taste the difference).

Ingredients:
*This recipe makes 2 dozen cookies

Wet Mix:
1/2 cup plain unsweetened applesauce
2 Tblsp. coconut oil, melted
1 cup unsweetened, natural, peanut butter (try to use a kind where the oil doesn’t separate out)
3/4 cup dried pitted dates
1/2 cup medium agave
1 1/2 tsp. Ener-G egg replacer powder + 2 Tblsp. warm water, blended till frothy
1 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup plain unsweetened almond milk

Dry Mix:
1 1/3 cup coconut flour
1 cup tapioca flour
3/4 cup quinoa flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/3 tsp. salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line your cookie pan with a silpat baking sheet.
Place about 3/4 cup dates in a bowl of boiling water, and set aside for a few minutes.
In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Set aside.
Pour out the hot water from the bowl of dates, and place dates in a blender along with about 1/3 cup of new water. Blend on high until it forms a paste (add a little more water if needed).
In a medium bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Pour into the dry mix and stir with a large wooden spoon. You may have to work the dough with your hands in order to fully combine all ingredients.
Shape the dough into 1 1/2 inch balls and place the balls on your prepared pan 1-2 inches apart (these cookies will not spread).
Slightly flatten the dough with a fork in a cross-hatch pattern.
Bake 11-13 minutes. Let cookies sit on pan for 5 minutes to set, and then remove with a spatula and cool on wire racks.

Rustic Lemon Ice Cream Sandwiches

Published August 18, 2009 Cookies , Ice Cream , Lemon 3 Comments

I saw an amazing looking ice cream sandwich on the cover of this month’s Gourmet Magazine. The ice cream looks decadent and creamy, with a fruity blackberry sauce swirled into it; I was inspired. I wanted to create something different, but something that would still carry over into that creamy and sweet, yet mouth-puckering at the same time flavor combination. And with the added crunch of the cookie slabs on either side of the sandwich, I thought I would be in heaven! So many textures and tastes in each bite. Mmm!

First, I created a lovely lemon ice cream. It was not too sour, and I used almond milk as it’s cream base so it had a nice creamy texture. My dad and stepmom recently went on vacation to Alaska, and they brought me back a lovely gift of Raspberry Rhubarb Syrup. The jar says it is great on pancakes but I decided that it would be even greater as an addition to this lemon ice cream. I swirled it in after I took the ice cream out of the ice cream maker, gently stirring so that it didn’t get completely combined, and you could still taste all the elements individually. Divine.

Although this ice cream certainly didn’t need to get any more complex, and was perfect on it’s own, I baked the same cookies as I had seen in Gourmet Magazine. I made a few adaptations in order to make them vegan, and was very happy with the result. They were pleasantly sweet, yet not overpoweringly so – they were a little like a butter cookie, and allowed you to taste the complex ice cream easily. I baked the cookies a bit longer than the recipe called for, so my cookies came out crispier, but it was such a nice crunchy outside to enjoy with the lemon ice cream softly sandwiched between.

Lemon Raspberry-Rhubarb Swirl Ice Cream Ingredients:
3 cups plain unsweetened almond milk, divided
2 Tblsp. arrowroot powder
1 cup sugar
1 Tblsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 Tblsp. lemon zest
1/2 cup Raspberry-Rhubarb Syrup (or other fruity syrup – you can even thin out a fruit jam or jelly by heating it over the stove and adding small amounts of water slowly and stirring well until you get a thin sauce-like consistency)

In a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup almond milk with arrowroot powder, and set aside.
Mix the remaining 2 3/4 cups of almond milk with the sugar in a saucepan and cook over low heat. Once this mixture begins to boil, remove from burner, and then immediately add the arrowroot cream – You want to make sure that the almond milk-sugar combination is not still boiling before adding the arrowroot, or this will make the arrowroot’s properties ineffective. It should cause the liquid to thicken noticeably.
At this point, add the vanilla extract.
Refridgerate mixture until chilled, approximately 2-3 hours, and then add your lemon juice and lemon zest. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. After being churned in your ice cream maker, pour the ice cream into a airtight container. At this point, place spoonfuls of the Raspberry-Rhubarb Sauce (or whatever type of fruity sauce you choose) on top of your lemon ice cream, and stir it gently in. You don’t want to fully combine it, just swirl it in. Close your container tightly, and place it in the freezer for a few hours until hardened. Eat it plain or make the Cookie Slabs (recipe below) and make into sandwiches!

Cookie Slab Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup Earth Balance margarine
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 Tblsp. ground flax seed, mixed well in a small bowl with 3 Tblsp. water, to form a jelly-like consistency
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12×17 inch cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a small bowl. In another bowl, beat together Earth Balance and brown sugar, until pale and fluffy. Beat in the flax mixture, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients in two batches, mixing until just combined.
Spread batter on your prepared pan, and into a thin, even layer with an offset spatula.

Bake until golden brown but still tender, 10-12 minutes. Cool completely on the pan, for about 30 minutes. The cookie will continue baking on the pan while cooling, so it will get slightly harder than when you took it out of the oven.
When completely cool, transfer cookies to a cutting board, and use a sharp knife to cut your cookie into even-sized pieces. I got 16 pieces out of mine.

Place a 1/2 cup-sized scoop of ice cream onto half of your cookie pieces, and top with the remaining cookies. Squish slightly to flatten ice cream scoops, but be careful not to snap your cookies in half! Wrap individually with saran wrap, and place in freezer to harden.

Lemon Ginger Sunshine Shortbread

Published July 26, 2009 Cookies , Lemon Leave a Comment

I had a young friend over at my house last night, and to keep him occupied, my mom and I baked some citrus cut-out cookies. Or, actually, it was to keep ourselves occupied, as Dylan was happy enough following the dog around the house and watering the flowers in the garden…In any case, there was lots of rolling and cookie-cutter-cutting to do, which was quite amusing to my 2 1/2 year old buddy. We made a huge mess (flour was “snowing” all over the counter, the floor, his hair, the dog…) but we had some amazing giggles and huge toothy smiles caught on camera so that was quite rewarding!

I believe that baking is inherited (see the “About Me” section of my blog for my own baking story), and since my grandmother measured things with “tea glasses” (who knows what size they were), when she bakes my mom therefore doesn’t measure things at all! So this recipe is a little approximated, since it is what I could piece together after the ingredients were all mixed together.

Ingredients:
6 oz. Earth Balance, cut into small pieces
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1/2 cup superfine sugar
1/2 medium sized lemon, juiced
1/4 tsp. dried ground ginger
1 2-inch long piece of fresh ginger, finely grated

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.
Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and rub in the Earth Balance with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs.
Stir in the superfine sugar, ground ginger, fresh ginger, and lemon juice, and bring the mixture together with your hands to make a smooth, firm dough.
On a lightly floured work counter, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/2 an inch. Stamp out sunflowers (or whatever shape you want) with a cookie cutter measuring about 1 1/2 inches across.
Arrange the cookie dough cut-outs on the prepared cookie sheet. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 10-13 minutes, until the cookies are a light golden color.
Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool. Top with Lemon Icing, or sandwich together.

Lemon Icing:
1/4 cup Earth Balance
1-1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/2 medium sized lemon, juiced

Cream together the Earth Balance with the confectioner’s sugar, and when combined well and fluffy, add the lemon juice. You can add more sugar to reach your desired consistency.

Blue Corn Chocolate Chip Cookies

Published July 8, 2009 Chocolate , Cookies , Wheat-Free 4 Comments

On my way home from my vacation in Holland, I stopped in New York to visit friends. Of course I had to bake while I was there! The funny thing was, and I didn’t think of this till now, was that everything I made was blue! That’s a fairly uncommon color for baked goods, but it just happened that way…The first thing I made, I baked with my friend (and old roommate!) Erin, and we made chocolate chip cookies with blue cornmeal in them. They were tender and chewy, and had a nice grainy crunchy texture because of the cornmeal. The dough was blueish-purple with tiny specks of blue, and when they baked they retained a similar color, although got nicely browned on the edges. The dough was particularly tasty, and though this recipe makes a small batch, Erin and I certainly consumed a lot of dough before the cookies even made it into the oven!

We were baking also for a friend who is wheat-free, so we used a white spelt flour that they had on hand. My experience with spelt flour is that it works very similarly to regular all-purpose wheat flour, sometimes coming out a little heavier once baked. This white spelt though was no problem, and worked just how I think AP flour would have baked too. Feel free to substitute AP flour in yours if you don’t have spelt on hand though, the conversion should be the same.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup plain soy yogurt
1/2 cup Earth Balance (room temperature)
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup blue cornmeal
3/4 cup white spelt flour
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped mixed nuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Use an ungreased cookie sheet, set aside.
Cream Earth Balance and sugar together, then add vanilla and yogurt. Now add the blue cornmeal, flour, and baking powder; mix well, fold in chocolate chips and nuts.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. Makes 1 dozen cookies, plus a little batter for eating raw (the benefits of being vegan!).

Candy Bars

Published July 5, 2009 Caramel , Chocolate , Cookies , Dessert Bars 3 Comments

Vegan candy bars are often hard to find. Tara and I really wanted to make something that would fulfill our sweet/salty/chocolate/chewy/crunchy needs, so we thought a lot about how to create those flavors all in one candy confection. Though small, these candy bars packed a punch, and definitely were worth all the work we went through to put them together! Next time, I will try to find a mold in the shape of a rectangular chocolate bar, so that our finished product looks more smooth and precise. However, the handmade shapes we created were fun and original, even if somewhat gloopy.

We made two types of candy bars. We had gone through all combinations of flavors, and drawn out diagrams of how each candy bar would be built. Some were simple, others were incredibly complex with layers and layers of wafery-thin cookies and balls of peanut butter and some sort of vegan nougat that we never quite figured out how to make. Eventually we abandoned these complex plans and decided to fulfill our intense Snickers needs…One of our candy bars started this way, and so it had a home-made shortbread cookie bottom with gooey caramel and salty peanut filling layered on top. We covered the whole thing in dark chocolate. After the chocolate set and hardened, it had a great crispy outside shell and the caramel was nicely stringy and chewy. The salty-caramel combination was devine!

Our second type of bar was also delicious. We sandwiched layers of almond marzipan, dried cranberries, and pistachios between two thin shortbread cookies, and covered the entire sandwich with rice-milk based white chocolate. Drizzled with dark chocolate and sprinkled with pistachio pieces, this was a sweet confection that blew my taste buds, and was very pretty! Each bite made me want more.

White Chocolate Chunk, Double Chocolate Cookies

Published June 17, 2009 Chocolate , Cookies 1 Comment

Tara and I have been baking up a storm, and to show you the first delectable treat we made, here are chewy gooey double chocolate cookies! They were thick and almost brownie-like in texture. We used the basic recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen (I’ve used it many times before and it always comes out great!), and we threw in some white chocolate chunks to satisfy Jesse’s sweet tooth. Mmm.

Here’s a picture of the cookie dough balls, waiting to be baked:

And here they are, cooling:

Pistachio, Cherry, and Chocolate Chunk Cookies (Plus M&M Cookies!)

Published June 12, 2009 Chocolate , Cookies 3 Comments

I made these lovely pistachio, cherry, and chocolate chunk cookies with the same cookie dough recipe that I have used many times before, and before…I love the combination of chewy and crispy textures that this dough gets when baked. I like throwing in different nuts or dried fruits and chocolates and it seems like all mixes work and are delicious. The pistachios and cherries made a great color palate, and a nice sweet, tart, and salty flavor combination.

It was the last day of the school year today, and one of the 7 year old boys that I work with melted me to pieces with his big puppy eyes and suckered me into making M&M Cookies (which aren’t vegan because M&Ms aren’t vegan…The first non-vegan dessert I’ve made in a long time!) so I just threw some of the M&Ms into the vegan dough I was making and they worked great, and were a big hit with the kids at school. They were very colorful and fun. The teachers liked them too, although they certainly enjoyed their “adult” cookies with the chocolate, nuts, and cherries as well!

Black Sesame Seed Peanut Butter Cookies, round 2

Published June 11, 2009 Cookies , Gluten-Free , Peanut Butter , Wheat-Free 4 Comments

This was the second time I’ve made these cookies, and again, they were cute and delicious. This time I made them a little larger, but kept the recipe the same. Even with the increase in size, they still had those lovely crinkles on top after baking, which is maybe my favorite part (but really, there’s so much to love in this one little round cookie!). As a super-peanut butter-fan, I couldn’t stop eating the dough, and then the baked cookies. I also heard that some non-peanut butter-fans couldn’t stop eating them either. So that just proves that they are GOOD, and besides that they are easy and gluten-free and pretty looking, and all of that makes them extremely hard to resist. Yum.

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