The Best Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies EVER!

This is, most definitely, the *best* vegan cookie recipe I've stumbled across so far, and I had my doubts, given that they were self-named the "Best Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies EVER!" It's hard not to be skeptical when a cookie is just so goddamn boastful.

Anyways, they are very simple to make. They are ooey gooey, rich, and scrumptious. And the raw dough is fricking addictive. Holy mother of god. It was like a tractor beam kept pulling me back to the mixing bowl. The only alteration I made to the recipe was to use soy milk instead of water--I figured it'd make them taste just a wee bit richer.

I highly recommend this recipe, especially if you want to make folks go, "Oh my god, these are *VEGAN*?!?!"

One Russian taste-tester said (squinting suspiciously at his second cookie before eating it):

"They don't look pretty, but they taste really good."

I thought they were kinda photogenic (see above pic) with a waif-like model-esque beauty akin to that of Kate Moss. But clearly that's just me.

RECIPE: HERE

VERDICT: A

Half-Assed Strawberry-Avocado Salad

I rarely blog about my lunches because quite frankly, they usually suck. But this was pretty good...

Ingredients:

• Balsamic vinaigrette dressing (just some oil and balsamic vinegar thrown in together)


• Diced up strawberries left to sit in the salad dressing overnight


• Chopped up spinach


• Walnuts


• One dreamy avocado, scooped out seductively with each bite

Throw it all together. Eat. Marvel at the wonder that is the avocado. And then blog a little letter to it later, telling it how you feel:

Avocado, you rock my world. You make me tingle. You are sexy and smooth and suave and a bit feisty. You are the Strokes of the fruit world. I wanna marry you and have your babies. We will make sweet sweet glorious love for all the world to see because they're naughty like that too. Avocado, I heart you.

Seriously though, eating avocado always makes me feel naughty (and the combination of juicy, dripping strawberries didn't help any). I swear to you, it is the only food that actually has an aphrodisiacal (is that a word?) effect on me--sooooooooooooooo not good in the workplace. But if you ever wanna woo me into the sack, all you've gotta do is spend $1 at the Westside Market and you've got yourself a good start.

Calling All Substitutions!

I've been digging on the whole notion of being able to bake (and cook) from scratch, especially now that I've got a lot of staples down. However, sometimes you run outta syrup, and you need to figure out how to substitute in some other sort of sweetener. Or you don't have Ener-G Egg Replacer, so you find yourself wondering what to use for eggs instead. And then you realize you need to pull a MacGuyver (using a toothpick, a paperclip, and some wire to create a fully functional blender), but how to do so? Wonder no more.

Egg replacers!

Eggs:

1 egg =
1 tsp. Ener-G Egg Replacer + 2 T warm water =
1/4 c. tofu =
2 T water + 1 T oil + 2 t baking powder =
1 T ground flax seed in 3 T water =
2 T water + 2 t baking powder

In baking of cakes and other sweets

1 egg =
1 banana =
1/4 c. applesauce

Egg Whites

1 egg white=
1 T plain agar powder in 1 T water... whip, chill, whip again

Sweeteners!

1 c. sugar =
1/2-1/3 c. maple syrup (reduce liquid in recipe by 1/4 c.) =
1/2 c. molasses =
1 3/4 c. packed powdered sugar =
1 c. brown sugar (slight difference in taste) =

Honey substitutions:

1 c. honey = 1 1/4 c. sugar + 1/4 c. more of liquid

Tamari!

2 t. of tamari = 1 T. of soy sauce

Make Your Own!

Make your own powdered sugar:

2 c. sugar, 1/2 c. cornstarch--food process the shit out of it

Make your own brown sugar:

1 c. light brown sugar = 1 c. granulated sugar + 1/2 T molasses
1 c. dark brown sugar = 1 c. granulated sugar + 1/4 c. molasses

Make your own vegan "buttermilk":

2 t. lemon juice or white vinegar per c. soymilk (*and* it's called "clabbering"--how cool is that?)

Other Fantastical Substitutions:

Ingredient Substitution Table from Joyofbaking.com
That's My Home Ingredient Substitute List
The Cooking Inn Substitutes
Fodd Recipe Substitution Links from About.com
The Vegan Wolf's Vegan Cooking Substitutions