I know, I should be done with the holiday baking. But we were invited for dinner at a friend’s house the other night, so I made a batch of cookies to bring along. I also made quick work of eating the extras we had lying around the house. These cookies are dangerous, I have no resistence to them. It’s great to have a go-to vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe. This one is authentic, tollhouse-style, and it’s also easy using standard pantry ingredients.

I made just a few adaptations to Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen blog. I doubled the recipe, and used a 15ml (1 Tablespoon) melon baller to scoop out the dough, which got me about 5 dozen 2-inch cookies. I did not flatten them, the oven took care of that nicely. I also baked at 360 degrees for nine minutes. If you read the PPK post you’ll see lots of comments with ideas for creative adaptation including adding cinnamon, pecans, dried cranberries. I’m sure that would be delicious too, but I’d rather not let anything get between me and a chocolate chip.

I don’t know if you’ve ever decided to make a yummy looking recipe and realized that it had “chocolate wafer cookies” as an ingredient. They are a tasty simple cookie, that I think used to be readily available in stores, but now are limited to gourmet shops (Gourmet shops don’t exist in Cordova). These little cookies can be used in cookie crusts or in sandwich cookie desserts or pies or tarts or anywhere a bit of chocolate crunchiness might be a welcome addition–i.e. crumbled on top of pudding or ice cream or used to decorate the sides of a cake or as one layer of a trifle. At any rate, I had typically avoided such recipes because I didn’t have a ready source for chocolate wafer cookies, and I also don’t like to use a lot of processed foods in my cooking because, I’m a little perverse that way.

This weekend, I needed to make a dessert for a progressive dinner and I was devoid of inspiration. I felt tarted and pied and caked out from all of the fall fruit I had baked and birthdays I had fêted over the last few weeks. So it was time for something new. Thumbing through my cookbooks, I got a little obsessed with cheesecake. I had never made a cheesecake with actual cream cheese–In my days as a vegan chef I’d made plenty of delicious “cheesecakes” with tofu. But we’re in using things up mode since we’re travelling over Christmas, and I had a bunch of organic neufchatel cream cheese in the fridge from a bulk order earlier in the fall (when Jay was big in a bagel eating jag). Selma said, “Make a graham cracker crust!” But that didn’t really appeal to me. I definitely wanted chocolate involved. On top of that, my spring form pan has gone missing, or more likely didn’t make the move because the movers left my house without taking any of my baking pans, and tho’ I rushed a box down to them at the warehouse, it wouldn’t surprise me if something got left out.

One thing led to another, and I only had about three hours left before the party, so I got to work making the batter for some mini chocolate cheesecake bites, in tiny mini muffin tins with no crust. While the cheesecakes were cooling, I improvised this recipe for chocolate wafer cookies which served as the base or “crust” for the cheesecakes after they had cooled.

Chocolate Wafer Cookies

1 1/4 c flour
1/4 c. cocoa powder
1 T baking powder
1/2 c. canola oil
1/4 c. blackstrap molasses (important for giving the cookies a nice dark color and rich flavor)
1/2 c. maple syrup
3 T - 1/4 c. water

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. In a small bowl, whisk together oil, molasses and maple syrup. (TIP: if you measure the oil first, then the molasses and syrup will slide right out of your measuring cup). Add wet to dry and stir to combine, kneading with your hands when the mixture is too thick to stir. If it seems to dry to hold together, add a Tablespoon of water at a time until the dough can form a ball. Use immediately, or chill until ready to use.

To make the cookies, roll the dough out between two pieces of parchment paper or waxed paper to a thickness of 1/8 - 1/4 inch. Cut with a small biscuit cutter or cookie cutter. Bake for 9-10 minutes in a 350 degree oven. It is very hard to tell if the cookies are done by sight, if you can smell them, they’ve probably been in there too long.

Makes approximately 2 dozen, depending on the size of your cookie cutter. This recipe is easily doubled.

I’ll post more about the cheesecakes soon.

Orange scones on Flickr - Photo Sharing!.

How about a recipe? I’m planning on slowly moving the recipes from my languishing food blog over here, since I see no reason to keep the two separate anymore. I developed this scone recipe for Selma’s seventh birthday–she had a tea party complete wtih little sandwiches, tiny cupcakes, and these scones which happen to be vegan as well as delicious.

Orange Scones

1 3/4 cups unbleached flour
1/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour (or whole wheat flour)
1/2 c. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1/3 c. Earth Balance margarine
zest of one organic orange
1/2 c. soy milk

Preheat oven to 350

Combine flours, sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk to combine. Cut in margarine with pastry cutter. Add orange zest and stir to incorporate.

Add milk, and stir with a fork until milk is worked in, then mix with your hands. Dough should be soft–add more milk a teaspoon at a time, if needed. Form a ball and press dough into a circle 1/2″ thick on a
floured cookie sheet.

With a floured knife, make 4 cuts most of the way through the dough creating 8 triangular pieces. Bake for 25 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Serve warm with margarine, jelly, soy whipped cream… enjoy!

p.s. If you’ve tried to leave a comment on the blog in the last week or so, and haven’t seen it appear, my apologies–the blog was attacked by spam comments–over a thousand of them, and I’ve just finished wading through and deleting the offenders, so things should be back to normal now!

This week I promised myself I’d get a jump on using the week’s veggies before they became less appealing in the fridge. I made chili earlier in the week with some of them, and today, I was craving stew–like a hearty thick stew someone might be making if they eat beef, which I don’t. I’m bringing the result to a potluck this afternoon (yes, they do have  a lot of potlucks around here!) and so I don’t forget what I did, I’ll share the recipe with you.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, diced
4 medium carrots, diced
1 small bunch of celery, diced including tops
1 medium sweet potato peeled and diced
3 golden beets, peeled and diced
(Here you could substitute any squashy or potato-y thing for the sweet potatoes and beets)
1 cup wild rice (I used a wild rice blend)
1 cup butler foods soy curls re-hydrated with 2 cups warm water (You could substitute 2 cups of seitan or a can of your favorite kind of beans)
3 T olive oil
1/2 cup flour
3 cubes bullion
1 cup red wine (I used a syrah)
2 t fresh thyme leaves (dry would work fine too)
2 qts water
Salt and Pepper to taste

Sauté onion in olive oil for 5 minutes. Add carrots, and celery, and thyme and continue cooking for another 10. Add sweet potatoes and beets. Add flour let the flour brown for 2-3 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the red wine. Add water and bullion. Add rice and simmer until rice is cooked. Add soy curls. Continue cooking until veggies are soft. Season to taste with salt, pepper and more wine as needed.

Wow–I just realized this is the FOURTH Halloween that I’ve been blogging, so I have a bit of goolish content on the blog that it might be nice to revisit.

In 2005, my first year with the blog, I made a crocheted Halloween Treat Bag for a class. You can get the bag on my Ravelry store, but this week only, I’ll e-mail it for free to anyone who leaves me a comment on this post requesting the pattern.

In 2006 we carved a “knit-witch” pumpkin:

Speaking of which–I’m hosting a pumpkin-carving party later this week, and we’re contemplating making our own apple cider I’ll take pictures and report here if we do.

Ghoulish Snacks: Make this easy Halloween snack that jay brought home from preschool last year:

Bake and decorate Halloween Gingerbread Cookies with my recipe from last fall:

And of course, there’s Selma’s Hermione Tie which I made just this weekend:

What are you making this year?

This afternoon, my book club met at my house. The book for this month was Joe Biden’s Promises to Keep. I don’t usually read autobiographies, but I enjoyed Biden’s and I liked learning more about someone who could eventually be vice-president. It was a cold and rainy Sunday, and I wanted to make a meal that was simple and warm, and used the vegetables I had from my weekly produce box. (Actually, at first I thought it might be fun to make book-themed food, but it turns out Joe Biden’s favorite meal is pasta, and his favorite dessert is oatmeal-raisin cookies, so that didn’t really fit with what I wanted to serve).

Last night, I set some dough for No Knead Bread, using a combination of white and white-whole-wheat flour. This afternoon, I took half of the dough out of the refrigerator, formed it in my baguette pans and let it re-rise. I used a bit too much dough and the baguettes overflowed their chambers a little, but they came out quite tasty.  I I found a sweet potato soup in Robin Robertson’s Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, and I had nearly all of the ingredients from my box; I only had to buy fresh ginger. I made a salad with greens, olive oil, salt and pepper and some sliced oranges and their juice. For dessert, I used some plums that I had sliced and frozen right before our trip to Hawaii, and I made a cobbler. The cobbler turned out especially well, so I thought I’d share the recipe. The topping was adapted from a recipe for Pear, Cranberry and Vanilla Crumble from Regan Daley’s In The Sweet Kitchen: The Definitive Baker’s Companion.

Plum Cobbler

Filling

5-6 cups sliced ripe plums

1/4 c. flour

1 orange supremed and chopped

Zest of 1 orange

Topping

3/4 c. flour

3/4 c. sugar

3/4 c. margarine

3/4 c. rolled oats.

Combine filling ingredients in an 8×8 glass dish. In a medium bowl, mix flour and sugar and cut in margarine. Add oats and combine. Sprinkle topping over the filling. Bake at 350 until topping is brown and crisp.

Selma loves soup, and I find it a great way to sneak in healthy things that kids aren’t always excited about eating like beans and greens. We get a wonderful box of produce each week from a CSA farm in Washington State. The box is heavy on the fruit, which is great, I don’t have to work hard to get the kids to eat everything up. This week, Selma requested beets in the box, and they came with big beautiful greens attached. (So did the carrots, actually, but after a little research, I decided they weren’t worth cooking–anyone feel otherwise?). I didn’t want to waste the beet greens, so I made a bisque to make use of them and to warm us up in what continues to be a very rainy September.

The soup turned out to be a big hit (except with Jay–I haven’t convinced him to like soup yet), so I thought I’d share the recipe.

Beans and Greens Bisque

Beet greens, when raw, have a bit of a bitter flavor, but in this soup they seem to add depth and a piquant edge to what would otherwise be a pretty standard bean soup.

2 T olive oil
1 med onion, diced
2 c carrots, sliced
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 T thyme
1 t oregano
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cube veg bullion
4 c water
2 cans white beans, drained
1 big bunch beet greens
1 T brown rice vinegar
salt
pepper

Sauté onion in olive oil until translucent. Add carrots and garlic. Add mushrooms, thyme and oregano. When mushrooms are soft, add bullion and water. Bring to a simmer. Add beet greens and white beans. When the carrots and greens are tender, purée the soup. (I use an immersion blender to avoid pouring hot soup into a food processor). Add vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste.

A few nights ago, I came up with this recipe after seeing one for a Mexican polenta casserole. With the move coming up, I’ve been looking for easy recipes that we can make with things in our pantry both to use up what we have, and to develop a collection of recipes to rely on in Alaska when daily trips to the grocery are not an option. Selma loves polenta (or grits), so I had a feeling this would be an instant favorite, and it was!

Ingredients

• 1 tube of already prepared polenta (or, you can make your own with 1 cup of dry polenta and 2 cups water or broth)
• 1/2 lb of firm tofu, drained
• 1 8 oz can of organic tomato sauce
• cheezy topping of your choice (I like this sesame “parmesan,” or this tahini sauce, or you could use organic mozzarella cheese, like that from Organic Valley.)
• olive oil
• 1 t dried oregano

Preheat the oven to 325 Fahrenheit. Open the package of polenta and mash into the bottom of an 8×8″ glass baking dish using a potato masher.

Pour half of the can of tomato sauce over top of the polenta and spread evenly with the back of a spoon.

Sprinkle the tomato sauce with 1/2 of the dried oregano.

Slice the tofu into 1/8-1/4″ slices and lay them on top of the tomato sauce.

Spread the remaining tomato sauce on top of the tofu. Sprinkle the 2nd half of the oregano on top of the tomato sauce, and drizzle the olive oil over the top.

Top with cheezy topping of your choice.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until everything is heated through.

Enjoy with a salad or carrot sticks or a steamed vegetable.

This made great leftovers when reheated the next day, too, so when I make it again, I might double the recipe and do it in a 9×13″ pan.