Soft & Chewy Vegan Ginger Molasses Cookies

Christmas is just around the corner and I am getting into the mood early!  What better way to start the Christmas feel than by baking a fresh batch of Ginger molasses cookies.  This was the first time ever making such a flavour cookie.  Firstly, I'm not a fan of cinnamon, and secondly, I find ginger too spicy.  However, as time goes by, and I get older, my pallet has grown to acquired this spice combination and I now think it's pretty tasty.  I surprised myself on how tasty these turned out.  Soft and chewy inside and crispy outside!  

This recipe pretty much was adapted from the snickerdoodle recipe, but substituted a few minor ingredients to now a more classic ginger cookies ingredients.  This was when I used my culinary brain and the outcome was fantastic!  Proud of myself!

Ingredients:
Cookies dough:

• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1/4 cup of molasses
• 3 tbsp soy milk (or non- dairy milk of your choice)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp salt

Sugar Topping

• 2 tbsp sugar

Directions:


1. 
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In plate or a bowl, place 2 tbsp of sugar on the plate and set aside.
 2.
In a bowl, whisk together the oil, brown sugar, molasses, non-dairy milk, and vanilla extract.
3. 
In the same bowl, sift together the all purpose flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ground ginger and mix until the dough is combined.
4.
Roll the cookie dough into a ball about the size  of a golf ball and flatten it to a small hockey puck shape.  Dip one side of the cookie dough into the sugar topping mix and place the cookie "sugar side up" on the cookie sheet
5.
Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Vegan Cinnamon Chocolate Snickerdoodles

A mountain of COOOOKIES!!

  I saw a beautiful post of Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodle.  I didn't know what snickerdoodles were but the name was too cute and the cookies look wonderful! This recipe I've posted is an adaption of IraChandra's snickerdoodle recipe (Here) because I didn't have cayenne peppers, I just used cinnamon and chocolate and it turned out DELICIOUS.  This post is slightly picture heavy because I just love the way they look!

 

 

Yield:

24-30 Cookies- this depends how large you want you cookies.

Equipment:

Baking sheet
Parchment paper

Ingredients:
Cookies dough:

• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup of maple syrup
• 3 tbls soy milk (or non- dairy milk of your choice)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 2/3cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt

Sugar Topping:

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbls sugar

Directions:


1. 
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In plate or a bowl, combine the Sugar Topping mix.
 2.
In a bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, maple syrup, soy milk, and vanilla extract.
3. 
In the same bowl, sift together the all purpose flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and  cocoa powder and mix until the dough is combined.
4. 
Roll the cookie dough into a ball about the size  of a golf ball and flatten it to a small hockey puck shape.  Dip one side of the cookie dough into the sugar topping mix and place the cookie "sugar side up" on the cookie sheet
5. 
Bake for 10=15 minutes.

Enjoy with an ice cold glass of milk!

French Macarons- Coco Peanut Butter

Coco Macarons with Peanut butter

It's been a while, one year to be exact.  I moved back into my parent's house, and got a real job,(a career), which is why I haven't posted anything since.  Of course I feel bad because this is my diary of food!  I still cook and bake, however not quite as often as I used to.  When I started my blog, I was unemployed, lived in my beautiful condo, and had all the time in the world. 
I was quite proud on what I baked tonight and thought it was time that I updated my blog.  I seriously wondered how professional bloggers to this on a daily basis.  I'm used to my new routine, remember, I had to adjust to living with the parents again, cooking in their kitchen, and lastly adjust my working schedule to a 9-5. Anyways, enough ranting, I made coco macarons sandwiched with peanut butter filling.

I got this recipe from http://www.yoo-eatz.com/Earl-Grey-Macarons-Honey-Buttercream-Filling-Recipe-15579665

Here is a great Youtube video that showed me great step by step procedures on how to make them! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18PlAZS3Tc0&list=FLjiUOAftAAK8j2i_NrYkbmw&feature=mh_lolz

Ingredients:

• 2 egg whites, at room temperature
• 4 tbsp. granulated sugar
• 1/2 c. almond meal (finely crushed/grind almond)
• 1 c. confectioners sugar
• 2 tsp. coco powder

Step1.  Separate 2 eggs and whisk egg white until frothy.
Step2.  Gradually add the 4 tbsp of the granulated sugar while still whisking and whisk until STIFF PEEKS. 
Step 3. In a separate bowl, swift the powdered sugar, almond, and coco powdered
Step 4. Combined the dry ingredients and fold mixture until well mix. stop mixing as soon as the mixture does not create permanent ribbons as you mix
Step 5. Pip into desirable circles on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and let it rest for 30 minutes or until a hard crust is formed.
Step 6. Bake at 250 degrees for 20 minutes.
Step 7.  Let cookies cool, spread with peanut butter and SANDWICH!

Enjoy!

Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups Cookies

mmmmm.. Check out those mini peanut butter cups!!

I love Crunchy Cookies.  I enjoy the chewy ones now and then, but I personally love crispy crunchy ones!  I have been experimenting with baking cookies lately, and I finally succeeded! This all actually happened while I was browsing random videos on Youtube, and I encountered an Alton Brown’s Cookie episode “Good Eats S3E6P1: Three Chips For Sister Marsha”. I have been watching his show since I was a little girl. He is one of my favourite celebrity chef! 

The following recipe was inspired by Alton, and I highly recommend watching that episode. It’s really entertaining and educational!  He makes three types of cookies- crunchy, cakey, and chewy.  I kind of deviated from the three recipes, just to experiment and add my personal touch. 

Yield: 36

Equipments:

Parchment paper
Baking sheets
Electric mixer

Ingredients:

2 Sticks of unsalted butter –room temperature

2 ¼ cups of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ cup of sugar

1 ¼ cup of brown sugar

1 egg

2 tablespoon milk

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups of mini peanut butter cup 

Directions:

1.       Preheat oven to 375 F

2.       Put butter sugar and brown sugar into mixer, whip at high speed (Cream together) 1 min-ish

3.       Back to low speed, add egg, milk & vanilla until all is combined

4.       Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda

5.       Slow speed again, slowly add the sifted ingredients

6.       Change back to high speed until all incorporated

** it is important to change/start the speed of the mixer on low because the high speed will rebound anything you add back onto your face and all over your counter, creating a MESS!

7.       Add peanut butter cup chips

8.       With your hands, roll into balls

9.   6 per baking sheet

10.       Bake for 10 mins

11.       EAT!

Bake, bake bake..!

Tip: You don’t have to bake all the cookies at once, what I do is bake one batch (which is 6 cookies) and put the rest in the fridge.  I take the dough, put it in plastic wrap, seal it up, and put it in the fridge.  So whenever I want warm, fresh cookies, just take the dough out, and bake it!!

Note: It doesn't have to be mini peanut butter cups, you can use chocolate chips!

Next time I will attempt Alton’s The Chewy! Looking forward to that!!

Mint Chocolate Meringue Cookies

Mint Chocolate Meringue Sandwich Cookies

Christmas is just around the corner.  LITERALLY! And pot-lucks are generally pretty popular for gatherings.  Originally I wanted to make Macaron cookies, the colourful one, the ones that you see floating around the internet lately..                                                                 

How hard could they be! I was wrong…. They aren’t very hard but it requires almonds which I don’t have.  By-the-way, It was 9pm and I wasn’t going to go out in the snowy night to buy almonds.  Yes I could purchase it the next day, but I had the craving to bake THEN and THERE!!!  I originally thought they were Meringues filled with icing then sandwiched together, they are more complicated than that, so I decided to stick to my original thought and do this instead.=)

 

TA-DA!

 Super Easy Mint-Chocolate Meringue Cookies

Yield 24

Utensils:

Piping bag and tip (if you don't want to spend money on this, just use a spoon and spoon it onto the baking pan)

Parchment paper

Baking Pan

Ingredients:

Meringue cookies

3 egg whites

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup of sugar

¼ cup of powdered sugar

1 teaspoon Corn starch

Icing filling:

3 tablespoon store bought icing

½ teaspoon mint extract

Directions:

Meringue

1.       Pre-head oven 250 degrees

2.       With an electric mixer, or you can do it manually with a whisk and a bowl, whisk egg whites and cream of tartar

3.       Whip eggs on high speed

4.       Add vanilla extract

5.       Slowly add sugar while whisking, one table spoon at a time

6.       Stop when egg whites reached stiff peaks

7.       Add corn starch and powder sugar into mixture and fold to combine

8.       Fill piping bad with meringue and pipe onto a baking pan lined parchment paper

**you can pipe the meringue fairly closely together, approximately an inch apart from each other, they don’t expand very much.  Unlike cake.

9.       Bake meringue for 1h-1/2 hours

10.   Cool for 30 min

Frosting Filling

1.       Mix chocolate frosting and mint extract ~ easy!

Assembly

1.       Spread chocolate frosting and sandwich together!

Tip: if you like, you can add food colouring to the meringue.  I added red food colouring but I don’t think I added enough as seen in my picture above.  =(