I Was A Teenage Vegan CookBlog

An old bandmate of mine would fly into a towering fit of rage whenever he heard the song that today’s title alludes to. It was, he would argue, loudly, so atrociously bad that it shouldn’t even be considered music. Personally, being a decidedly post-Cage-ian listener, I don’t think that the distinction between music and noise is particularly helpful. Which isn’t to imply that I would willingly listen to that sort of execrable pop music (although I do think it has a certain appeal when blasted far beyond the point of distortion on tinny automobile speakers) - as I was trying to explain recently, I have very discerning taste. I wouldn’t say that it’s good taste, really, but rather that I can tell almost immediately what I like and what I don’t, and thus I can say with some fair degree of certainty that I am not, in fact, no “holla back girl” (but wouldn’t it be sweet if I was).

I think I mentioned earlier in this blog that my friend Russell is very anti-banana. He claims that it “is a jerk” because its flavor is strong enough to cover up virtually anything else it’s combined with (I’m really on a sentence-ending preposition roll today, aren’t I). I had purchased a small container of dried banana chunks (which my friend Chris introduced me to, and which are delicious (not to be confused with banana chips, which are disgusting) on my way home from work recently and decided that it was time to put this theory to the test. The result is yet another modification of your basic oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe with a little bit of chopped dried banana, walnuts, and toffee thrown in. Russell was pretty satisfied, but he did say that he preferred the bites of cookie that didn’t have banana in them to those that did. I guess there simply is no accounting for taste.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 measures egg replacer
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 cup dried banana, chopped
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup toffee bits (optional)

Equipment: mixing bowl, hand mixer or mixing spoon, baking sheets, oven.

Music: The BA-NA-NAs (I don’t know if they have an album, or anything - they’re just some local(?) band I saw play the other night who were kind of good, but whom I mostly liked because of their attitude of playful disdain toward the audience. Alternately, simply listen to the Raffi song “Bananaphone” until you go, well, bananas).

Instructions: Make like chocolate chip cookies (it’s not that hard, people).

Ahem:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Blend margarine and sugars together. Mix in egg replacer and vanilla.
3. Add flour, oatmeal, baking soda/powder, salt, and cinnamon and mix.
4. Stir in dried banana, walnuts, chocolate chips, and toffee bits.
5. Scoop tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto cookie sheets.
6. Bake for 10 minutes.

In other news, I’m working on my latest batch of vegan croissants as we speak. I will post an update on my inevitable success just as soon as it occurs.

It’s been something of a hectic week for me, what with moving from the Baltimore to the Boston area, and all, but I’ve still managed to find a little time to do some home cooking in my new (and newly-renovated) kitchen. For our inaugural project, Russell and I settled on the first recipe in my first cookbook: chocolate chip cherry almond cookies. We happen to live near an independent organic grocery that sells dried cherries, which can be hard to find in East coast chain stores. You can substitute some other dried fruit for them if you need to, just as long as you promise not to even consider those cherry-flavored cranberry abominations. Our entire batch of cookies disappeared within a couple days leaving just this last, lonely one. Won’t you make him some delicious new friends?

Ingredients:

• 1 cup margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 measures egg replacer
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups oatmeal
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 14 oz. chocolate chips
• 1 cup dried cherries
• 1/2 cup chopped almonds

Equipment: Mixing bowls, cutting board, cookie sheet, oven.

Music: Ex Models - Other Mathematics

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Combine margarine and sugars in a large mixing bowl and blend until creamy. Beat in egg replacer, vanilla, and almond extract.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir this into the wet mixture one cup at a time.
4. Mix in the chocolate chips, almonds, and cherries and work the dough with your hands.
5. Place the dough by the tablespoon onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for ten minutes.
6. Allow cookies to cool. Serve fresh or store in a cookie jar, tupperware, or wrapped up in the refrigerator.

Other cooking highlights from this past week include me slicing open my fingertip cutting garlic with my new chef’s knife and me brandishing my new (and unfortunately Emeril-branded) cast iron frying pan in as menacing a fashion as its unwieldly weight and bulk would allow. At least if I ever have occasion to hit someone over the head with it in sitcom fashion I already have my sound-effect noise ready to go. B(l)am!

Most people who say these sorts of things will say that while cooking is an art baking is a science. Nonsense. Baking is mad science. Mad, I say! Hahahahaha. . . Ahem. My point is that while most recipes for baked goods are presented as a set of complex equations that must be followed exactly, with the slightest substitution, miscalculation, or deviation being potentially catastrophic, this type of scientific consistency is not important unless your kitchen is some sort of Henry Ford-esque assembly line, complete with silent film herky jerky doublequick- and rag-time, in which case allow me to be your Snidely Whiplash, baby. The reality is that only by varying the amounts of various ingredients, steps in the mixing process, and cooking temperatures and times will you discover for yourself what part these things play in the recipe’s outcome, and thus become better prepared to make up recipes of your own. In each resultant lumbering, inedible monstrosity (a batch of fruit juice-sweetened, peanut butter cinnamon dried apple carob chip cookies comes to mind) lies the potential for something grander than the humdrum pablum that those culinary industrialists would have you consume, and only occasionally will you find yourself faced with a god-fearing mob of dessert fork-wielding dinner guests, waving their tea candle torches menacingly and threatening to storm your kitchen laboratory. The fools - you’ll show them all!

A recent experiment of mine has been veganizing the cookie recipe below that I found in a some magazine article. This recipe is perhaps the ultimate expression of my general theory of desserts, which states that no dessert is complete without chocolate (and its corollaries a) any dessert may be improved by the addition of chocolate, and b) the more chocolate a dessert contains the better). While most cookie recipes contain a number of non-chocolate ingredients (like flour and what have you), this one really cuts to the chase. The problem I’ve encountered is that in the absence of actual eggs there seems to be little keeping the individual cookies from devolving into one gooey, indifferentiated, half-baked mass. Some solutions I’ve considered include increasing the amount of flour slightly, raising the baking temperature to 375 or 400 and cutting the baking time to 10 minutes, and giving up entirely and turning it into a brownie recipe instead, but I’m open to other suggestions. The last batch of these I attempted resulted in only one cookie that I would consider presentable. It was worth it.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 lb. bitter/semi-sweet chocolate
• 1/4 cup unsalted margarine
• 1 3/4 cups light brown sugar
• 4 measures egg replacer
• 1 tbsp. vanilla
• 4 tbsp. instant coffee (optional)
• 7 oz. chocolate/toffee chunks*
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped

Equipment: Mixing bowls, melting pots, baking sheets, lightning rods, maniacal laughter.

Music: n0 things - trees

Instructions:

1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Melt chocolate and margarine together in a sauce pan over low heat and stir thoroughly. Remove the pan from heat and allow the mixture to cool to lukewarm.
3. Beat brown sugar and egg replacer together in a large mixing bowl until smooth. Stir in vanilla and instant coffee (if desired).
4. Stir in chocolate and flour mixtures. Add toffee and walnuts and place in the refrigerator for a few hours to chill.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with waxed paper (if you have it) and scoop out large (1/4 cuppish) chunks of the cookie dough from the bowl, placing them relatively far apart on the sheets.
6. Bake the cookies for 15 minutes until dry and cracked on top but soft in the middle.

* I’ll post my vegan toffee recipe eventually. For now, either make one up or just use chocolate chips instead.

Experiment with this recipe yourself and let me know how it turns out. Remember: Baking: it’s alive. Alive!