Cookies and Candids

Hi Loyal Readers and Bakers!

I have a confession to make…Because of various health concerns and life changes, after four years I am not vegan anymore! I still continue to bake mostly vegan desserts but I have been experimenting with dairy products and I’d like to share some of those recipes with you. I’ll take pictures and share the recipes for all the vegan and non-vegan delicious treats that I concoct, still on this blog. I’ve created a new category “vegan” which you can check if you want to exclusively look for vegan recipes.

I hope you enjoy my future posts, both vegan and not!

If you want to convert non-vegan recipes to make them vegan, here’s a helpful cheat-sheet:

cream cheese can always be replaced with Tofutti Cream Cheese (plain/original flavor)

butter can be replaced with Earth Balance margarine

eggs can be replaced with: 1/3 cup applesauce, EnerG Egg Replacer, half of a mashed banana, 1 tablespoon of cornstarch blended with 2 tablespoons of warm water, 1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds mixed with 3 tablespoons of warm water, or a variety of other binding agents depending on what consistency you want your baked good to have (or what properties you need your egg replacer to have (binding, rising, etc.)).

Edit: I’m going to be baking something delicious and generally fabulous for this bakesale! Any ideas for flavor combinations or wish-list items I could make?

I don’t usually post about anything except baking and pictures of my baking…But this event is just too “up my alley” to not let you know about! I just heard about this awesome Vegan Bakesale happening in Oakland this weekend! It supports a local school garden (at Laurel Elementary), and Bad Rap Pit Bull Rescue. I’m a huuuuge supporter of education and public schools (duh, I’m in a teaching credential/masters in education program!), and I happen to know some great things about the Laurel School – and I know that the students there are made up of a very diverse, involved community that can certainly benefit from whatever resources it can get! I have a friend who was a Farm & Garden Teacher in a public school, so I have first-hand experience and knowledge about elementary school gardens and know how beneficial they can be to students’ everyday learning and personal growth. And, because I am so supportive of this Vegan Bakesale, I want to put out there in the Blog World that I have a Pit Bull rescue dog that I absolutely adore. As both a dog-friend and general animal-positive-person, I feel that it is important for nice people to adopt nice doggies (and not just puppies, and it’s great if you can take care of a kind of dog that usually gets controversial reviews and give it a nice friendly safe environment…and that way, we can give Pits a better name!).

If you’re in the Bay Area, please come out and eat vegan treats and support environmental and healthy food education as well as all the animals!

Kids and Dogs! Vegan Treats! What could be better?

Saturday, January 9th, 2009
11am-4pm
@ Issues (20 Glen Avenue, off of Piedmont Avenue, in Oakland)

I’m going to see you there, right?

Cookies and Candids is not going anywhere – we’re still here (clearly, because you made it to the blog!) and certainly still baking and photographing and, of course, still eating! But, to celebrate over a year of blogging, and because I got a push-in-the-right direction from a friend*, I’ve created a new domain name and a new, simpler, easier-to-remember web address! So, you can update your bookmarks, blogrolls, rss feeds, links pages, etc. to: http://thatsonetoughcookie.com. Don’t worry though! The original address at wordpress will still work, and will redirect you to the new domain, if that is easier for you – so either way, you’ll still get here. Thanks for your continued reading and vegan baking!

*Thanks, Corey! What a lovely surprise Hanukah gift!