Gather round dear readers, because this is a post that is YEARS in the making. Yes, years.  You see, chocolate chip cookies are my all time favorite cookies ever. There is something so perfect about the simple combination of slightly sweet dough and decadent chocolate that just makes my tastebuds sing.

But you’ve got to be careful not to let the simplicity of the chocolate chip cookie fool you – making the perfect chocolate chip cookie can be quite challenging!

I’ve made dozens and dozens of batches over the years, and while, yes, I’ve enjoyed them all, they were not THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES IN THE VEGAN UNIVERSE. Some batches were too sweet, some didn’t have enough chocolate, some of the cookies were too flat, some were too bland, some too crispy, some not cakey and soft enough, and some were just plain boring. It was through sheer determination and a lot of trial and error that I finally achieved chocolate chip cookie nirvana.

These sweet chocolate filled discs of perfection are ever so slightly crisp on the outside, but instantly yield to a soft, cakey, chewy center of dough that is mellow and subtly sweet with lots of brown sugar flavor. The dark chocolate chunks stud each cookie evenly and melt slowly in your mouth, combining with the sweet dough to create a swirling mix of heaven. Really….make these cookies now!

Ingredients (makes a bit more than 2 dozen large cookies)

1/2 cup vegan butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 3 Tbsp water
2 tsp vanilla soy milk (yes, vanilla soy milk, NOT vanilla essence)
2 Tbsp applesauce
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup pastry flour
1 tsp salt
1 and 1/4 tsp baking soda
2 cups chopped dark chocolate or dark chocolate chips

- Pre-heat oven to 350F

- In the microwave at 15 second intervals melt the vegan butter until it is extremely soft. You don’t want it completely liquefied just very, very soft.

- Combine the softened butter with the shortening and combine completely, adding both sugars and agave nectar.

- Sift together the flours, salt, and baking soda

- Put the flax water mixture in the microwave for 20 seconds and then pour into the butter mixture, combining completely

- Add the soy milk and applesauce to the butter mixture

- Slowly pour the flour mixture into the butter mixture and stir completely, lastly folding in the chocolate chunks

- Roll the dough into balls with your hands (the dough should not be very sticky and it should be easy to roll into balls) and place on parchment paper lined baking sheets and put into the refrigerator for 15 minutes before baking.

- Bake for 10 – 11 minutes. The cookies will still be very soft to the touch when you pull them out of the oven, that is what you want. Leave them on the pans for 10 minutes to firm up and then cool on cooking racks.

*****

And an extra big congratulations to Mara from Vegan Gluten-free Cooking because she is the winner of my Grand Opening Giveaway #3 and has won 2 boxes of vegan, organic, fair-trade chocolate from Sweet Earth Chocolates. Congratulations!

But here in Saudi Arabia we have to wait a long time until we can enjoy anything resembling winter weather. Just this past week we finally got it! Now that we have cold weather at last (brrrr! it’s in the 50s!) I have been able to think of nothing but soup; steaming hot broth, subtly spiced and aromatic, served with mountains of crusty, toasted, and heavily vegan buttered french bread. That is my idea of the perfect cold weather comfort food.

And lately I’ve moved away from wanting heavy, blended soups, or even clear soups filled with lots of different morsels. No, what I can’t get off my mind is much simpler and far more delicious; French Onion Soup.

To me it just might be the most perfect soup in the world. The broth is always my favorite part of any soup and the broth in French onion soup is always the star: hearty and rich with so much savory punch it is definitely a meal in itself. But it only gets better from there! One of the great loves of my life, caramelized onions, plays a central role in this soup. Buttery and sweet they balance the bold broth and melt into it so completely that sometimes you can’t tell where the liquid ends and the onions begin.

When I was attending university in London I would often hop on the Eurostar, speed through the Chunnel, and spend the weekend getting lost in Paris, wandering from bistro to bistro, eating and drinking and imagining myself to be very chic. I was not vegan at the time and my meal of choice was always a huge, piping hot bowl of French onion soup. (I was still a drinker back then, and my drink of choice was often a double whiskey on the rocks!!!)

But my favorite memory of France was when I was 18 years old and my family joined a few other Aramcon families for a week of skiing in the French Alps. We all rented a rustic, homey chalet and spent the entire week feasting on ridiculously rich and hearty food, and skiing the beautiful mountains.

Well, that is not entirely true. I didn’t actually do any skiing. You might remember from this previous post that I just don’t have it in me to be a skier. So, instead, I spent the entire weak camped out in the various cozy restaurants throughout the little ski town, reading wonderful books, listening to music, and ordering bowl after bowl of my favorite soup.

As you can see, I’m the only one not in ski clothes!

But, have no fear, I did do something pretty exciting that week:

Parachuting off of the French Alps! Yes, that is me up there in those pictures! What a crazy experience. We spent at least an hour in a rickety old car racing up the mountains on tiny, half hidden roads, squealing around hair pin turns. Once we got to the top several gruff and slightly drunk French men shoved us into our harnesses, attached their harnesses to ours, and without any safety instructions or explanations shoved us hard on our backs and started screaming at us to RUN! RUN! So, run I did! I ran as fast as I could, trying not to trip or fall over and we ran ran ran till we got to the edge of the cliff and before I could even have time to get scared that the parachute wouldn’t open behind us…..we were flying! Soaring, lifted straight off the side of the cliff, and wheeling through the air.

What an absolutely magical experience….only slightly marred by the creepy, drunk French dude strapped to my back who wouldn’t stop babbling and grunting. And after what seemed like hours, floating above the storybook little skiing village, we finally landed…and with a hard crunch, I twisted my ankle….which led to more screaming from the French man who told me I had ruined his equipment. Le sigh.

*****

Yesterday, here in Saudi Arabia, the weather was very blustery with frigid winds and temperatures well below my cut-off line of reasonable: 60F. I had no clue what to do, it has been years since I’ve had to seriously deal with cold weather. What do I wear to walk the dogs? How can I walk to the car in my flip flops? How do you appropriately layer ratty old t-shirts and horse drool covered tank tops? Oh the struggle!

So, as the chilly day drew to a close with an even colder evening, I hurried to my stove to make the biggest pot of soup I could imagine. We definitely don’t have any packaged vegan beef broth here in Saudi Arabia, and we can never really find any vegetable broths or stocks either, and definitely not any that are not made up of pure sodium and chemicals, so I knew I would have to make my own.

I started with a basic vegetable broth and then jazzed it up to give it a robust, beefy flavor. Then I got to work transforming onions into the buttery soft caramelized ribbons that I so cherish. Everything came together magically! The broth is complex and beefy, rich and powerful, the perfect background for the buttery sweetness of the onions.

Dimming the lights, curling up in my cozy chair, and savoring this soup brought back so many memories of chilly nights under the lights of the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, sneaking into a show in a ritzy member’s only club, and talking and arguing until the early hours of the morning in smoky garret rooms about politics, economics, religion, and, of course, the favorite topic among disillusioned and very self-important college kids; Marx.

My life has changed a lot in the 10 years since then. Sure, I still love to argue about politics, economics, religion, and the occasional revolutionary thinker, but I prefer to do it in a smoke free environment, with water replacing the whiskey and vegan soup standing in for the beef based soup, surrounded by my dogs instead of alternately hostile or amorous French boys, and I definitely, definitely need to be in bed by a decent hour!

I hope that you make this wonderful soup and create some memories of your own! Enjoy!

Vegan Beef Broth

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 celery ribs, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

2 leeks, chopped

4 garlic cloves, diced

2 tsp dried thyme

½ tsp paprika

2 tsp oregano

2 bay leaves

1 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper

3 liters of water

¼ cup soy sauce

3 tsp hickory liquid smoke

1 tsp vegan Worcestershire sauce

-         In a large soup pot, in a drizzle of olive oil, sauté the onions for 5 minutes, then add the celery, carrots, leeks, and garlic. Saute for another 10 minutes.

-         Add the spices, water, parsley, and salt and pepper.

-         Simmer for 30 minutes then add the soy sauce, liquid smoke, and Worcestershire sauce and simmer for another hour. (If you don’t add these ingredients and just continue cooking you will have vegetable broth.)

-         Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly before straining out the liquid, making sure to remove all the vegetables and spices. You want clear broth!

Vegan French Onion Soup

4 onions, chopped in half and then sliced thinly

3 cloves garlic, diced fine

2 Tbsp vegan butter

Lots of salt and fresh cracked pepper

-         In a large soup pot in a drizzle of olive oil sauté the onions on medium low heat with lots of salt and pepper, you want to caramelize them very slowly. After about 20 minutes add the garlic and continue to cook for at least another 20 minutes. The longer you spend caramelizing the onions the better!

-         After 40 minutes or more of cooking, add the vegan butter and more salt and pepper.

-         Add the batch of beef broth, bring to a simmer and allow to cook for 15 minutes. Serve piping hot with crusty bread. You might want to top the bread with melty vegan cheese, that is also fantastic.

Now, I’ve told you many times before why I think Aramco really is the best place to live, but this example should hopefully drive that point home: once a year everyone with dogs meets up to go on a 2.5 mile walk/run and let all the dogs meet each other. That is my idea of heaven!

There was a huge turnout with tons of people and at least 50 dogs of all shapes and sizes. I was shocked that there was not one fight! All of the dogs sniffed and romped and played and ran but I didn’t hear even one growl. It was the best kind of chaos.

And at the end there was even a raffle where we won 2 awesome dog toys. It can be hard to find quality dog toys around here so I was pleased to see these were from the US. Awesome!

Jack says: Give me my toys!

The doggie dawdle was a huge success! We all got a bit of excercise, made some new friends, sniffed some butts (the dogs did, anyway) and had a great day.

Then it was home for food! You know, one of my favorite things about eating a lot of raw is that it is basically a good reason for me to eat dips everyday. Guacamole, nut pates, seed cheeses, they are all delicious and so good for me, I just can’t get enough. My latest obsession is one of my own creations: Smoky Almond Cheddar Cheese Pate.

It is thick and creamy and definitely has the smoky richness of dairy cheddar cheese. I served it with some guacamole, crackers and veggies.

Smoky Almond Cheddar Cheese

2 cups raw almonds, soaked in water for one hour

The juice of 1 lemon

½ Tbsp white miso paste

2 Tbsp mustard

¼ cup nutritional yeast

2 tsp cumin

½ tsp liquid smoke

2 cloves garlic

½ cup olive oil

¾ cup water

Pinch of salt and pepper

Pinch of turmeric

- Blend all of the ingredients together in a food processor until combined into a thick, creamy texture.  Couldn’t be easier!

After a quick lunch I got to work making a birthday cake for a friend’s party. Remember this beauty? That is what I made! It was a huge hit.

We all spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing…

…until it was time to go to the party.

When you are an activist/writer/baker, and you work from home in yoga pants and a tank-top every day, this is dressed up:

*****

]]> http://thevoraciousvegan.com/2010/01/26/a-doggie-dawdle-kind-of-life-with-a-side-of-raw-vegan-cheddar/feed/ 0 http://thevoraciousvegan.com/2009/12/21/sticky-fingers-gingerbread/ http://thevoraciousvegan.com/2009/12/21/sticky-fingers-gingerbread/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:35:53 +0000 Tasha http://thevoraciousvegan.com/?p=352

Gingerbread is one of my very favorite desserts, and this is definitely the best batch I’ve ever made. It is decadently moist and rich, luscious and spicy, with just enough sweetness to keep you going back into the kitchen for slice after slice. The flavors are incredibly dark and complex, the kind of dessert that has you closing your eyes after every bite just so you can figure out all the intense layers of spices and texture that are dancing on your tongue.

I called it Sticky Fingers Gingerbread because it is so overflowing with moisture that your fingers really are sticky after eating it.

This is the recipe that inspired me to make my own gingerbread. As you can see, I veganized it, changed it up, and transformed it to suit my taste.

Sticky Fingers Gingerbread

1 cup vegan margarine

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup molasses

1 cup agave nectar

1 cup Sucanat (evaporated cane juice) or brown sugar

3 cups AP flour

1 and 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 and 1/2 tsp ground ginger

2 and 1/2 tsp cinnamon

pinch of cloves and nutmeg

7 Tbsp of water combined with 3 Tbsp ground flax seed

1/2 cup soy milk (room temperature)

1 Tbsp fresh ginger, grated

- Preheat your oven to 325F and line your loaf pan with parchment paper that sticks up and out of the pan by a few inches so you can remove the loaf easily when you are done baking it.

- Combine the butter, water, molasses, agave nectar, vanilla, and sucanat in a pan over low heat. Stir frequently until everything has melted together. Set aside and allow to cool a bit, but don’t let it get too cold – you want it slightly warm.

- Sift together the flour, baking soda, and dried spices

- Microwave the flax and water mixture for about 45 seconds till the mixture reaches an egg like consistency

- Into the slightly warm molasses mixture beat in the flax eggs slowly, add the room temperature soy milk, and fold in the dry ingredients and fresh ginger. Combine until smooth.

- Pour into lined loaf pan and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. (I would suggest checking it at about an hour and proceed from there. You definitely don’t want your gingerbread over cooked! My oven took 70 minutes, just be careful with yours!)

***

Don’t forget to enter my Zukay Live Raw Salad Dressing Giveaway for your chance to win an entire case of Zukay Live Salad Dressing!

I don’t care that it is still 115 degrees outside – I want soup! It’s September, that is close enough to Winter for me!

This soup was extra delicious and very spicy. Filled with tasty veggies and with a creamy rich texture it was the perfect tasty end to a very busy day. I love how cheezy the nutritional yeast is, and how it blends perfectly with the taste of the black beans. It was a little fiesta in my mouth!

I ate my bowl of soup with a big baked potato topped with tofutti vegan sour cream and bacos. Isn’t the fact that bacos are vegan the most wonderful thing ever? I love them.

Ingredients

1 yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, diced
2 large zucchini, chopped
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, drained
1 can enchilada sauce
2/3 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
6 cups water
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp thyme

- In a large soup pot saute the onion in olive oil for ten minutes

- Add the zucchini, garlic, cumin, and paprika and saute for 15 minutes

- Add the 6 cups of water and the thyme, along with a generous pinch of salt and pepper and simmer for 20 – 30 minutes, until the zucchini are tender enough to be blended

- Let the soup cool a bit and then blend with a hand blender until creamy and thick

- Place back on heat and add the beans, corn, nutritional yeast, enchilada sauce and cilantro. Heat through and serve.

Cheezy, tender, rich, creamy – all words to describe this most amazing side dish. I originally was treated to this simple and quick dish by my friend Peter and it has been one of my favorites ever since. It goes perfectly with just about any main course, although I have to warn you: be careful because there is a good chance it might outshine everything else!

Ingredients

2 heads of cauliflower – chopped into small, bite sized florets
3 cloves of garlic, diced fine
4 Tbsp vegan butter
3 Tbsp AP flour
2 and 1/4 cup plain soymilk
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
3 tofutti mozzarella slices (either flavor will work, I just had mozz on hand)
pinch of salt and pepper

- Set your oven at 375 F and place the chopped cauliflower into a large baking dish, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake in the oven for 20 minutes

- While the cauliflower is baking, melt the butter in a large frying pan on medium heat, add the garlic and cook for one minute.

- Slowly add the flour, stirring continually till you form a thick paste.

- Slowly, slowly, slowly drizzle in the soy milk, stirring continually and making sure each addition of milk is fully incorporated before you add anymore.

- Once you have a creamy sauce, add the salt, pepper, nutritional yeast and tofutti cheese slices. Allow the slices to melt.

- Add the cheeze mixture to the cauliflower that has been already baking for 20 minutes and put the now cheezified cauliflower dish back into the oven for another 15 minutes. Enjoy!