I've gan coco-nutty for you

A couple of weeks ago, I became obsessed with the idea of vegan chocolate chip cookies. I'm not really sure what got me the idea. I wasn't even sure if vegan chocolate existed or how much I would have to pay for it. But I wasn't going to let the idea go without at least a little Googling.

In the Googling, I encountered a recipe titled "The BEST Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies" and I thought that might be a good place to start. As it turns out, Trader Joes chocolate chips are vegan, and vegan chocolate chip cookies are really not all that difficult.

With that knowledge in hand, and also the knowledge that I could get coconut oil and possibly almond milk at Trader Joe's, I went on a shopping trip.

The Baker Josef's flour was already in my cupboard. I have a serious Trader Joe's thing going, apparently.

I am not ashamed.

It starts like most cookies, by creaming together the sugar and the fat. In this case, however, the fat is coconut oil instead of butter.

Usually, when baking, this is a dangerous stage for me. Butter and sugar is delicious. So I naturally wanted to try the coconut oil and butter and see how it was and... well... delicious. A bit coconutty, and still pure fat and sugar. This recipe was off to a very good start.

The coconut oil was a lot harder to cream into the sugar than butter usually is, partly because I'd been keeping it in the fridge so it wasn't very soft.

However, it got there eventually. And I munched on a bit more. And it continued to be delicious.

About this point I realized that no raw eggs = edible cookie dough. This made me very excited.

Duly excited, I went on to add the rest of the ingredients. I dumped both full bags of chocolate chips into the cookies, even though that was something like 3 times what the recipe called for, because seriously... chocolate.

I mean, look at this. Does that look like too many chocolate chips? It is pretty darn crumbly. But its not the chocolate chips that make it crumbly...

However, lots of squishing and warming it up with my hands made it into reasonable balls of dough. Most of them, anyways...

And, then when I'd filled 3 pans with cookies, I ate the rest of the dough.

It was delicious, and it didn't carry a risk of salmonella!

I probably could have stood to flatten the balls out a bit, but who really cares what shape their cookies are as long as they taste good, right?

These cookies tasted great. I took a bunch to a party and didn't tell anyone they were vegan until about half had been eaten, and then when I spilled the beans, nobody believed me. Someone gave me a specific line that I was supposed to quote in here about how good they are, but it was almost 2 weeks ago and I don't remember anymore.

Not only were they just as good as non-vegan cookies, they also kept really well. I had one sit out on the counter for a week before I ate it, and it was maybe slightly stale, but not terribly so. Another bunch got mailed across a couple of states and... well, it sounds like they were well received. And as for me, well, I'm glad I made a double batch.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe found on Daily Rebecca, ingredients doubled, instructions rewritten to be my own.

Ingredients
1 cup coconut oil
2 cups brown sugar
½ cup almond milk
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 bags vegan chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Cream coconut oil and sugar together
3. Add almond milk and vanilla, mix thoroughly.
4. Add flour, then salt, then baking soda and baking powder. Mix periodically while adding.
5. Stir in the chocolate chips.
6. Form balls of dough, arrange on baking sheet.
7. Bake until done, around 10 minutes.

I bean wanting to dip into hummus

It's been surprisingly hot in Seattle lately. Hot enough that, for a couple days, turning on the stove or the oven to cook anything just seems irresponsible. Of course, I still need to eat, so the best plan I could think of was to make a bunch of something I could keep eating for a while, without needing to reheat. Hummus seemed like a good choice.

Somehow, I managed to get my heart set on roasted garlic hummus. Because, I don't know, taking a recipe that usually just involves blending things and adding an element of baking just seemed like the best idea in the heat.

And roasting garlic correctly, meh. I grabbed a couple cloves, doused them in olive oil, and stuck them in the toaster oven for a while. That thing still produced a surprising amount of heat.

One hummus recipe I found said that the best way to make the best hummus was to add the ingredients one at a time and then blend for about a minute in between. Since this one website said that was the best way, I figured I'd try it.

First, tahini. Tahini is surprisingly liquid, and surprisingly easy to spill all over the place. I was expecting it to be the consistency of peanut butter, but no.

After tahini was the lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt and some basil.

I found basil in the freezer that was bought and forgotten last time hummus was made at my house. Basil freezes surprisingly well... just saying.

The problem was, well, the volume of all these ingredients just wasn't enough for my blender.

Everything got sprayed up on the side of the blender and had to be scraped back down every 10 seconds or so in order to keep them blending. So I figured I'd just add the chickpeas.

The recipe also suggested skinning the chickpeas was helpful, though a bit of a waste of time. I just shook them and removed obvious skins from the strainer before adding them to the blender.

Unfortunately, adding the chickpeas didn't really help. The solid to liquid proportions were off, and the blender continued to choke. I added some more olive oil to help it along, but it kept making weird blooping noises (see video).

I eventually got enough olive oil in to make it blend smoothly, but that was a bit too much olive oil for the hummus. I had some issues with separation in the following days.

At first I wasn't a huge fan of the hummus, it was a bit too tart and grainy.

However, the next day, when I pulled the hummus out for lunch, it was amazing. The flavors all settled overnight and suddenly I had hummus better than any hummus I've ever bought.

Totally worth the effort. Would be worth even more if I doubled the recipe so I didn't have to scrape the darn blender walls constantly.

Hummus

Ingredients

1 can of chickpeas / garbanzo beans

1/4 cup of lemon juice, or one lemon's worth

1/4 cup of tahini

Some cloves of garlic - roasting optional

2+ tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

1. Dump all ingredients in blender
2. Blend until smooth
3. Eat, or refrigerate overnight for best flavory goodness