The first several times I made the chocolate chip cookies from Isa’s Vegan With a Vengeance I was thoroughly perplexed. Despite the fact that I followed the recipe precisely–er, at least after that first disaster of guesswork & overconfidence–the dough was maddeningly crumbly! So crumbly, in fact, that I had to Hulk Smash it between my palms to get it to hold any kind of shape–and even then it was tentative at best.
My solution was to add some soymilk as a binder. But it was no solution! It sort of helped with the shaping issue…but the cookies came out so flat & chewy that they were only suitable for cookie sandwiches. (Mmmm… cookie smammiches). I got online to see what other VWAV readers had tried–and sure enough, many of them complained about the mysteriously crumbly dough. Even a friend in my vegan co-op dinner rotation, Suzanne, mentioned that she’d attempted the repair the weird recipe by adding soymilk.
Most recently I skipped the soymilk and, fingers crossed!, gingerly placed the misshapen lumps onto the cookie sheet. Guess what? They came out perfectly:
Here’s the deal. I, apparently among many, am an amateur cookie (& food science) enthusiast–and so I totally missed the fact that the VERY HIGH PROPORTION of fat (in the form of a quarter of a container of softened Earth Balance) would actually melt & meld the cookies together in the baking process, giving them a lovely shape & texture after ten minutes. Instead of exercising patience, I felt I had to “fix” the crumbly dough by adding soymilk. Don’t make the same mistake! Just Hulk SMASH your cookies & wait for the magic!
Thanks & credit go to “el-grimlock” at deviantart.com for the awesome base Hulk image.
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After a week or so of mild temperatures, Richmond is once again covered in a thin blanket of snow. Looking through some old pictures today I happened upon a few from this time 2009–and a day, in particular, when I introduced my northeastern-Pennsylvania-housemate and my upstate-New-York-bred-boyfriend to a recipe direct from some of my fondest childhood memories: snowcreme. A cotton-candy-sweet mixture of fresh snow, (soy)milk, a little sugar, and a pinch of vanilla extract, all whipped up in a stainless steel bowl, snowcreme is the finest confection old man winter can offer. Behold!:
I emphasize my friends’ places-of-origin because I was so baffled by their lack of awareness of something I, a Southerner with extremely limited snow experience, so delightfully cherished. For truly, my familiarity with the stuff only extended so far as the infamous Blizzard of 1993 (which has its own wikipedia page) and fewer than a handful of other pathetic dustings. My ever-clever momma taught me about snowcreme when the blizzard hit, seeking, as she might have been, a way to distract the six restless nine-year-old girls who’d just been snowed in at my birthday party. (Yeah, the biggest meteorological event of the decade happened a day after my ninth birthday.) How could two people who grew up with seasons of snow year after year never think to whip it up in a big bowl with some cold milk, sugar, and vanilla? Heavens to betsy! I exclaimed, in my mom’s accent, I’ve got to teach these boys something!
Ever the inappropriately under-dressed, over-confident belle, I trotted out to the back porch in one of my more laughable get-ups: thin pink nightgown over pumpkin-print pajama pants, protected by a red WECI hoodie. I harvested the primo first layer of fluffy snowdust from the back-porch railing, even as new snow continued to come down. (Protip: There’s a narrow window between when the snow falls and when it gets soggy, hardened, and yucchy–so time your collection well.) Befuddled onlookers snapped shots of my work from behind the screen door:
harvesting snow
at work
As you can see in the picture, I did some of the work with the snowcreme on the back porch, feverishly whisking the snow into a sweet soymilk and vanilla base. By the time I got back in the house it was ready to be served.
I can’t quite remember how my housemate & boyfriend described their first experience, but I’m pretty sure the words “transcedent” “miraculous” “glorious” and others from their heavenly ilk flowed like honey in the kitchen conversation that day. And it didn’t hurt that I’d just made some of Isa’s pumpkin oatmeal cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance, either…
Zoomie (my housemate) delighting in cookies
…or that I decided to make a chocolate-mint version of snowcreme with Vitasoy’s Chocolate Peppermint holiday soymilk:
Lucky housemates. The feast:
Snowcreme recipe, veganized:
- Whisk some soymilk (vanilla, chocolate, or peppermint!) in the bottom of a large stainless steel bowl with a little organic vegan sugar and a dash of vanilla extract
- Go get some snow. Preferably light, fluffy, and fresh. Scrape it off into the bowl. Whisk til the mixture thickens. Grab a stainless steel spoon and start to do more stirring, less whisking. Add a bit more milk as necessary. Eat!!
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