Currently viewing the tag: "chocolate chip cookies"
Lieber’s, a Brooklyn-based Kosher food company, makes butterscotch chips for baking. Kosher marts are a great place to look for dairy-free items (or parve items, the Hebrew word for foods that are free of dairy and meat) as those who practice Jewish dietary law “answer to a higher authority.” Though egg and fish (and insect derivatives maybe?) may still be contained in parve food item, non-perishable pantry items usually do not contain these ingredients. Kashrut, Jewish dietary law, is directly linked to the Old Testament. It’s all very interesting to me. Anyway, Lieber’s makes a slew of products, many that can supplement a vegan pantry. Omni-staples, like gel(atin-like jello stuff), white chocolate chips, and… butterscotch chips.
An important distinction: Just because an item is vegan, does not mean it is uh, healthy. I feel like many still make this incorrect assumption. (And just because an item is vegan, doesn’t mean it is a quality food product.) Lieber’s butterscotch chips are vegan… and they’re also artificially colored, waxy and made of partially hydrogenated palm kern oil. Taste-wise, they smell better than they taste. Mostly because their waxy texture and after-feel taints a bite. They also don’t melt, making them stand out awkwardly like teenage pimples.
In a cookie made of the finest flours and sugars and deep, dark real chocolate, these butterscotch chips are out of place. All that being said, these are cookies. I extend flexibility to cookies because they are portion-controlled and meant to be sweet treats. I really can’t eat more than one at a time.
I do love the pretty contrast with the chocolate chunks. In my next batch, I’ll add some walnuts to up the heartiness.
And this has been in my head since I bought these chips.
On the way to the farm we stopped at a new all-vegan bakery in Verona, New Jersey: Cupcraze. As per usual, when visiting an out-of-state bakery, I have to get at least 2 cupcakes. I chose this one above, their delicious banana split cupcake, and I am glad that I did. The moise banana cupcake was sprinkled with chocolate chips, topped with a smooth vanilla buttercream, chocolate drizzle and a maraschino cherry.
I had to also taste their festive chocolate cupcake with the subtly green buttercream and a fondant ghost. I never had vegan fondant! This was a nice, sweet bite that energized me after the drive back down state, before evening festivities.
And of course, a chocolate chip cookie. I have to always try a bakery’s chocolate chip cookie. I am happy to report that these cookies were spot-on vegan replicas of Linden’s cookies, a favorite of mine growing up.
Requisite shot of the bakery display case. So pretty…
Cupcraze is just a few weeks old. Check them out if you’re in their area and give them your support. They have plenty of gluten-free options and a great selection of delicious cupcake favorites.
And after the farm we had to hit the amazing Garden Cafe on the Green, Woodstock, NY’s all-vegan cafe. I have been hitting this spot for years now and it is always impresses. They do their simple dishes well, with love, care and attention to detail. We sprung for the quesadillas. These are really elevated quesadillas: not oily and over-stuffed with wet veggies. The olive is all you need… and guacamole, salsa and a dab of sour cream [store-bought].
My entree: The Fall Vegetable–Wild & Brown Rice Saute with Brussels, crispy tempeh with red wine mushroom sauce, a heavenly butternut squash terrine with pistachio gravy and sauteed kale and cabbage. Perfect bite of autumn.
Here is a gorgeous shop of the trees of Harriman, New York. I love autumn in New York!
I have traveled many a-mile to eat vegan food. A tradition that began 15 years ago when I went vegan still living with mom and dad here on Long Island. I used to drive to East Setauket to go to Wild By Nature. Two hours round trip in my 1981 Chevy Citation that was prone to overheating. Food that I could enjoy was well-worth it. And the stocked mini-fridge in my bedroom kept my goodies safe and separate. Since my early vegan roots, I’ve branched out significantly, finding vegan eats all other this great country and beyond. So I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued learning of Sweet To Lick, a Long Island based vegan bakery stelling goodies right here where I grew up. Besides being easier to find, vegan eats, especially baked goodies, have come a long way. Since I don’t think I’ve griped about since 2008, I’m going to do it again right now… inspired by the deliciousness of Sweet To Lick, a Long Island born and bred vegan, just like me.
Sweet To Lick’s stand at the Lynbrook Farmers Market, every Thursday.
The most important element to a vegan baked good is texture. There I said it. Whipping up a super-sugary buttercream and piping it on a wet sponge or a dry brick, and it’s largely still edible. But it’s not delicious. Texture stands as the determinant of true deliciousness. It is important in any baked good, but in vegan baking, more so as it is seemingly more difficult to achieve as evident by the many dry/dense bites I’ve sampled. The way your teeth find each other through a bite as they press the treat to your tongue–that is the most important sensation. How enticed your taste buds are comes after this experience. And I’ve found that it is the latter experience, the taste, where a treat becomes “pretty good.” After all, it’s rather easy to overcompensate for bad texture with sweet; processed food actually has most accustom to this, actually! Though I am a bit critical, it is kinda rare when texture and taste unite in the cause of knocking socks off. But Sweet To Lick did so… both with their cookies and their crumbcake.
The famous Ginger Ale Crumb Cake
Let’s look again at this beautiful piece of… cake. You can just see how great its texture is.
Taste: check! Texture: check! And an added bonus: creativity! Michael Sabet, Sweet To Lick’s head honcho, has raised the bar even higher. Besides mastering the traditional bites, creating a mere perfect chocolate chip cookie, he’s also got some very unique and playful flavor combinations. I bought the Elvis cookie made with fried banana and peanut butter. He also had chocolate cookie chip cookies, chocolate cookies with pieces of Oreo-type cookie inside!
I mentioned the chocolate chip cookies–the true measure of deliciousness. Sweet To Lick makes an amazing cho-cho chip cookie. Soft, subtle salt, not too many chips… perfecto. 
Find Sweet To Lick’s stuff around the Island and help push Michael Sabet into a storefront!
One of the most important ingredients in a great chocolate chip cookie is salt. Sure, many know that real vanilla extract blows the artificial stuff out of the water, that a high quality oils, sweeteners, chocolate make for a better end product, yes. But many don’t give much thought to the salt that goes into almost every recipe. Sometimes, a salt is just not worth its salt.
In an ideal world, we would all pay a bit more for the things we put into our body… and a little bit less for what we put on the outside of our bodies. “You get what you pay for” is most definitely true when it comes to food and yet many find the deep sales of the processed food and fast food big wigs appealing. $3.99 for 6 pieces of chicken, side of fries and a soft drink and $100 for a pair of shoes? To me, that is very odd… I spend a lot of money on food.
So let’s talk about this salt. The 9 0z. jar costs $14.95. Gathered from salt marshes in France’s Île de Ré only 3 months out of the year, when the sun is at its peak strength, these little crystalline rocks are very intense. They have an ocean bite, like licking your lips after a day at the beach. Gorgeous in their pure, singular taste. I knew for sure I’d have to make chocolate chip cookies. And they were delectable.
But this time with 100% cacao from Ghirardelli. They’re all adult-like with bitter bits of black, deep dark chocolate.
The key is to take them out early and let them firm up on the rack to a perfect chewy texture.
I’ll admit I was generous with sweetener given the chocolate was unsweetened.
It’s going to be a long week back to work… I’m going to need these.
The Iced Whale ornament waited patiently for the Christmas tree, comforted by the whiff of the salty scent of the Atlantic that wafts to The Electrician‘s home. In protest to a premature holiday kick-off, he waited well-past Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber-Monday to adorn the tree.
Aaaah, a Poinsettia in front of a frosted window. The gorgeous red and green leaves illuminated by the morning light. More Christmas than I know what to do with.
My adorable nieces inside one of the best gifts I’ve ever given as an Aunt: Buddy Bumper Balls. These zany ladies sure can have fun.
Three batches of my favorite cookie recipe. Check! Winning the heart of palates more inclined to enjoy super-processed snack cake Little Debbie‘s: Not-so check. Oh well, I think it was Princess Leia who said, “Everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they couldn’t possibly all have good taste.”
A motherload of cupcakes for my class Holiday Bonanza.
I have a ton of vintage aprons but I much prefer using my pants. Here they are dusted with flour and cocoa. I think I just like making a mess so I can clean it up.
Hilarious card from one of my students. Luckily there is no onomatopoeia coming from that sleeping one next to the tree.
Christmas morning. We watched the Yule Log & listened to WQXR‘s gorgeous choral classics.
Onward to my parents’ house. Their Christmas tree was oozing ornaments: old and new. It looked like a display and served as a timeline.
With the week off, I found myself ricocheting from Long Island to Brooklyn, delivering all my gifts and goodies back to my apt, then thrifting and digging through my storage stowed years ago and delivering that back. Waiting for the parking restrictions to end, I hit Champs for lunch. Brief rant: I can barely breathe in there. There is zero ventilation and a grey, burnt-smelling cloud hovers in the dining area. Nothing is made to order and grows cold within minutes, as microwaved foods usually do. Why, Why, why, New York City?! Why can’t you get all-vegan right like so many other cities have?
After watching a Storage Wars marathon, I remembered I had some goodies in my sister’s storage locker. I paid it a visit and uncovered a slew of my old treasures. Plus I got to play real life Tetris with the space, leaving chaotic and haphazard organized neatly and efficiently. I found a bunch of my old indierock shirts, which I left to increase their value, and my gorgeous accordion… and my banana-seat bike is doing well.
Unsweetened coconut is like tomato paste. It should come in a smaller package. 
I think it’s been in my pantry since: this, a time when I had much more time to make cookies. Christmas cookies! So it’s about two years now. This time, I made gluten-free toasted coconut chocolate chip cookies. They’re hearty, made of almond flour and coconut. They are sweet, with brown sugar and maple syrup. And they ooze coconut. Coconut oil, that is.
The pantry is looking much better after this turnover. I need to use a ton of rice paper wraps though that may have to wait till Spring when produce aligns.
Shirley’s birthday dinner at Bhojan.
Leftover 3 Brothers pizza, weekday, Electrician‘s.
Chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips: “sweet treat” fix, weekend, Electrician’s
Pancake’s vegan birthday cakes, Pancake’s 9th Birthday Party, Merrick
I get sweet cravings on a daily basis. I need to balance my taste buds–two savory bite begets a need for one sweet bite. So as to not badger or settle for a less-than wholesome sweet fix, I whipped up a double-batch of chocolate chip cookies.
This recipe is simple and the best. In light of my white flour ban, I used all whole wheat flour. And finally used the semi-sweet baker’s chocolate square that’s been loitering for months. The results were spectacular.
Crinkled, sweet and salted, buttery chocolate chunk cookies. This ought to last me the week.. or at least a few days. I’m going to need some more soy milk.
Doubling the recipe gave me a slew of cookies. Here is the plentiful bunch which excluded the couple I sampled and the 7 or 8 The Electrician had straight out of the oven.
Wanting to use up my potatoes, I tried something like this. I mashed up the boiled Yukon gold beauties with some veggie stock, soy milk, nutritional yeast and assorted spices. Bam! That’s the bowl on the left. I steamed up some spinach and Brussels sprouts for some added texture. Pictured is the deep green of slightly over-steamed spinach.
Sausage (Tofurky) and some Vidalia onion saute in the pan. Vidalia onion is my favorite onion. That’s the protein… and more vegetables to add into the starch and greens. Do you want to know what I love about Tofurky sausage? I can eat it raw as I chop it in discs; I can eat it raw and not worry about tofurky worms.
Brussels. They’re probably my dessert-island vegetable. Oh my darling baby cabbage heads! I couldn’t find much on the interweb about ancient gods that worship their leafy bulb… so I will be the first. I want to say that I am highly suspicious of those who do not like Brussels sprouts but I wouldn’t want to insult my mom.
Here’s the finished dish, an easy transportable lunch for the week. With the above ingredients I mixed a wedge of vegan cheddar, Follow Your Heart, and broiled it for 7 minutes. Looks good, huh?
This week’s sweet treat is VCIYCJ‘s Call Me Blondies, which are like one huge moist delicious chocolate chip cookie. This recipe has been Post-it-ed since I got the cookbook. I think I never made ‘em because there was no picture next to the recipe to motivate me. I was foolish. I’ll admit it.
My 8×8 batch sunk a bit in the middle because I eagerly took them out of the oven and it was a bit too soon… maybe because I had been in the kitchen hours already… maybe because patience is something I struggle with… maybe I ought to use Blondies to analyze my personality.
Here they are. Prettier than most women but maybe not Blondie in her hey-day. And not cooler than one of my favorite film characters:
With the day off, the list of to-do’s was long and scroll-like, starting with two classes at the gym. I did the pilates stretch and alignment class. Given the early morning hour and Park avenue address, it was me and a studio filled with lively blossomed senior ladies. The instructor played Sinatra and lead us into the Rockette-style formation as we tipped our pilates rings like top hats. It was the best class I’ve ever been to! After, a b-line to Best Buy on 23rd street who had my beloved SLR for the past week for a preventative maintenance tune-up, to Trader Joe’s for lunch fixings for the week and back to Brooklyn, picking up my laundry and finally whipping up breakfast. I made use of the stale ciabatta rolls I picked up over the weekend, dredging them in VwaV‘s Fronch Toast mixture. In the enthusiasm of finally having my camera, as well as daylight in the kitchen, here is the step-by-step.
My kitty Frankenstein relished my daytime presence, reclining in my lap whilst I finally downloaded Easybeats’s Friday On My Mind on my iTunes. This is the half-way point: a breather. There’s much more Monday to do.
Ok, lunch time. Time to help the 2011 January Pantry Turnover. Time to get rid of the bizarre can of vegetarian duck from the Asian grocery store. Packed with a ton of sodium, I went easy on the salt with a heavily spiced curry. Minced ginger, garlic and onion set the stage for teaspoons galore of cumin, cayenne, garam masala and curry powder.
What do you do with a scoop of Millers Bran? You sneak it into chocolate chip cookies, that’s what! I cut the 2 cups of flour like this: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 3/4 whole wheat flour, 1/4 bran; and I cut the sugar like this: 1/2 granulated sugar and 1/2 cup raw cane sugar. Also, before measuring out thick, flowing molasses in your little teaspoon, coat it in canola oil. That’s a tip.
As mentioned previously, this is what’s left of my books, color-coded to the best of my ability. Ain’t it pretty?
I’m on a quest to make vegan butterscotch cookies. This quest begins on the back of vegan attempts before me. First try is Have Cake, Will Travel‘s recipe for butterscotch pecan cookies. The beautiful blog’s posting makes claims of them achieving a caramel-like taste.
After trying out the recipe I must report that they’re scrumptious, yes, but butterscotch– no. They are chocolate chip cookies, a bit richer and darker given the sucanat, but I achieve no caramel-like taste. Let’s admire how pretty they are and go back to the blog board.
Vegan Reporting By Location
