Before I get started on today’s post I just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone. I have received so much support and feedback in the last few days it has been truly incredible. Also, the people I have telling me about their challenge experiences has been awesome! If you started with me on Monday, today is your halfway mark, so keep going! Remember, modifications are perfectly fine and quality over everything else including quantity and time. Can’t wait to hear from you all at the end of the week on how it went.
So, onto today’s topic…baking! I love to bake, when I was living with my parents I would bake whenever I got the chance. Cookies, cupcakes, brownies; and my family didn’t mind at all, imagine that. Well, then I moved, quit eating sweets and started to live a bit “healthier.” All that led to me not baking as much and honestly I was afraid to try to make cookies not using the recipe I had perfected (which of course included eggs, dairy and all that fun stuff). A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to jump out of my comfort zone and go the vegan route while baking. I spent some quality time searching the internet and finally found a recipe I liked and got to work.
Being that I hadn’t baked in a while I needed to stock up on ingredients so I headed to Whole Foods.
Let me just say Whole Foods has been one of my favorite things about living in the city and one of the reasons that I would have a hard time going back to the thumb. (I know I’m getting spoiled here!)
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup coconut oil
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup almond milk (use more if desired; I’ll discuss later)
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup vegan chocolate chunks – A few points I would like to make 1) using the Enjoy Life Mega Chunks was a great idea, who doesn’t love bigger chunks of chocolate 2) instead of 1 cup I opted to use most of the bag (or whatever I didn’t eat out of the bag in the process of baking) because again, who doesn’t love more chocolate.
(And if you haven’t guess by now, I’m a huge fan of chocolate.)
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350º
- Thoroughly mix the coconut oil and brown sugar. Then add the vanilla and almond milk. If your mixture is a liquid texture don’t panic! So was mine, no worries.
- In a separate bowl, mix together your flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Also add the chocolate chunks and anything else you may wish to add. (This is where I got really worried..) My mixture was more of a crumbly texture than a cookie dough texture. But I kept moving along, this ended up being perfectly fine.
- Make the dough into small balls, place on an ungreased cookie sheet and flatten. I found it a bit difficult to get my dough to stick together so this is where I added a tad bit more almond milk. That’s all I needed to get the crumbly dough to cooperate.
- Bake for 7-10 minutes.
- And Ta-Da! You have just made some incredibly delicious vegan chocolate chip cookies!
I was pretty happy with how my first vegan baking experience turned out and I can’t wait until I have the chance to experiment some more.
