Chocolate Chunk Walnut Cookies (Vegan, Duh)

All Ready to Be Dunked in Some Cold Almond Milk

Ola grasshoppers!

It's been a while. I've been cooking, just not posting. Let's just say that most of my cooking happens at the end of the work day, and my phone is out of battery, unwilling to take pictures, and I am too lazy to charge it in time. Yup, blogger fails.

Anyway, Yesterday I made my favorite cookie in the whole wide world. Chocolate chunk walnut cookies. I used to make a lot of chocolate chip eggless cookies before I went vegan, but I realized that this version is healthier (and delicious, promise) because we use flax seeds for eggs and olive-pomace oil instead of butter.The important thing here is to use brown sugar.That's what gives it a classic cookies taste, so don't go using regular sugar on me, k? You can get brown sugar on amazon, here you go. So let's get right to these beauties, shall we?

What You Need

2 cups flour
1/2 cup olive/blend or even sunflower will do
2 pinches sea salt
1.5 ts vanilla
3/4th cup almond milk (or soy milk)
1 cup brown sugar (please don't use regular)
1 large bar AMUL Dark Chocolate (this is the only Indian-vegan chocolate I know of, you can use imported vegan chocolate too)
3/4th cup walnuts (you can crush or keep them whole, up to you, puppy)
2 tb ground falx seeds
1 ts baking powder
1ts baking soda


How To Make

First things first. Take your 2 tb of flax seeds and put them in a  small blender so they become a powder.

In a bowl add your oil and almond/soy milk, whisk. Add your brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Mix it up. Slowly add you flour and keep mixing, add your baking powder and soda, and flax seeds. combine fully.

To the right, ground flax seeds, to the left, oil and almond milk. 

Now take out the cover of the chocolate and while it's still inside the foil wrap, crush it with a hammer or something heavy ( I used a pressure cooker, so I appeared to the average onlooker, completely insane). Let it basically become big chunks of chocolate, tear open the foil packet now and pour into the batter. Add your walnuts. It will stick out of your batter- that' fine. Mix it up good, make sure it's a proper dough. You can use more flour if it's too wet, or some splashes of almond/soy milk if it's too dry.

That's how it should look once you have everything in. You pop this into the freezer for 15. Isn't this fun?

Preheat oven to 180c. Put your dough in the freezer for 15 min. This helps it keep form. 15 min later, divide batter into medium balls and flatten onto a greased pan. You should be able to make 12-15 cookies. Bake for 15 min each. Let cool and enjoy. Super delish, I tell ya.

I am going to go check on my new vegan mayonnaise I made from scratch with coconut milk. You will just have to wait for the post, which I swear will be here soon.

Toodles!

Vegan Peanut Butter Brownies (Heck Yes)

Hello, Brownie

Wassup Kangaroos,

Sorry I've been off the radar for a couple of weeks. I can mostly owe it to being distracted by discussions on FB, debating, trolling, and reading about other people.  Anyway, we digress.
So, I know, I am getting repetitive, this is my second brownie recipe. But if you don't like brownies (and all possible variations of them), then you might need to reevaluate your priorities.


 Today we have a recipe that will delight them chocolate and p&b lovers. This creamy-chocolaty vegan heaven. So I've used a blended olive-pomace oil. (pomace is basically oil extracted from grape skins and olive skins and seeds). It's rather neutral so, it's not as strong as coconut oil. You can also use coconut oil if you want (but in m y opinion it will dilute the peanut butter taste), or you can also use regular vegetable or canola oil. Anyway let's get to it.


What You Need

1 cup almond milk (or soya)
3/4th cup pure cocoa powder (unsweetened)
1 cup olive-pomace oil (or vegetable/canola)
2 tb chia seeds (soaked in 6 tb water to get it gel-like)
1tb sea salt
1 cup brown sugar (or regular)
1ts Vanilla
1.5 ts baking powder
1.5 cups flour
1/2 cup peanut butter



How To Make

In one lovely bowl add your oil, almond milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla. Give it a stir. Now add your chia seeds (that should be gel-like after soaking them in the water for a couple of minutes). Now add your cocoa powder and stir till you have a nice chocolate paste.

Chocolate Paste, Lover

Done? Cool, now add your baking powder to your flour and mix. Go ahead and add your flour (slowly) to the chocolate mixture  and keep stirring. You will get a thick slightly wet dough.

Get your oven pre-heated to 180c

On a greased pan press your chocolate brownie dough to fit the pan, about 3/4th inch in thickness. Now pop your peanut butter in the microwave (or on a stove) and melt it for 30 seconds, you don't want it to be complete liquid, just to soften it up a bit.

How it looks once it's pressed into the pan (melted peanutbutter saying hi on the right) 

Dip into the soft peanut butter with a fork and graze the top of your brownie dough. Keep grazing all over till there are Peanut butter stripes all over. Now pop it into the oven for 20 minutes.

Once it's all grazed with peanutbutter. Pretty cool, eh?

You're done! Let it cool for a few. Cut into pieces and enjoy them blissful brownies. Go back into the world, rejuvenated. Share your brownies. Be kind. And tell the haters to go home.