I’ve been making good progress in my writing cave on book 2 in the Green St. Girls so I wanted to pop out to share a healthy (ish) and totally delicious vegan dessert recipe that’s perfect for a crowd or if you just need something tasty nearby to keep those creative juices flowing.
We had some overripe bananas, which I’m starting to think is a ploy on my husband’s part to get me to make banana bread or banana cookies or any of the other vegan recipes I’ve used bananas for. Sneaky, sneaky.
Luckily for him that I love him, and that cookies are the perfect low calorie vegan dessert, at least if you can manage to just one or two.
Today’s post is kind of a brag-post or rather, a way for me to gush about a really great vegan cookie recipe I came across recently.
Baking is not my strong suit in the kitchen, not really. I can mix and match flavors with the best of’em, but I need a base recipe to work from because I am very good at following a recipe.
So today I’m doing a little thank you and a little brag to the blog Loving It Vegan for this easy chocolate chunk cookie recipe.
This is a quick and easy vegan cookie recipe and chances are good that you have all he ingredients you need in your pantry.
I used chocolate chunks because I have yet to come across vegan chocolate chips here in Romania and I like having big chunks in some bites and tiny slivers in others.
I haven’t been this satisfied with a vegan cookie recipe since I veganized my favorite peanut butter cookie recipes, and that was one of the first dessert recipes I veganized back when I was a new vegan.
These cookies are crispy on the edges and super soft on the inside, reminding me of why I don’t make cookies all that often. They are, honestly, too good and I had to do a long, grueling workout today to make up for how many I tested out yesterday.
Thank you, PopSugar.
What’s your favorite cookie recipe? I don’t eat them often, but I make them a lot because my partner and my in-laws seem to love’em.
I don’t know about you but whenever I have a few overripe bananas, which I do often because my partner buys them and pretends that he will eat them so they get overripe and I have no choice but to use them, the first thing I think of is banana bread. Of course.
Even though I’m a vegan who isn’t a huge fan of bananas, I can admit to a deep love of banana bread, with or without blueberries, walnuts, pecans, cranberries or any other add-in. But thanks to the above mentioned surplus of overripe bananas lately, a woman like me is forced to be creative.
So I dug deep in my well of vegan cookie knowledge and came up with something new, at least to me.
Vegan banana oat cookies.
This is an easy vegan cookie recipe that you can halve or double from the original 24 cookies.
I’m not much for sweets but my partner has quite the sweet tooth which feeds my need to bake when autumn and winter roll around and pumpkin & squash are EVERYWHERE!
I really love to grab a big ol’ pumpkin, roast it up and use pretty much the whole damn thing. I’ll soak & roast the seeds, make a soup, cookies, pies, cakes, breads, sauces & creams and whatever else strikes my fancy. It’s just how I roll.
Last week, he jokingly asked if it was possible to have peanut butter pumpkin cookies and I was like…why not?
And here we are.
If you’re looking for a vegan holiday cookie recipe that’s easy and delicious, this one might be the perfect fit for you. If you’re more of a cupcake lover, check out my Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes.
I find it easier to measure in grams when baking because I find that it yields a better final result, but if you’re in the US or you just love imperial measurements, this recipe was adapted from The Natural Nurturer.
Preheat the oven to 175C/350F and put down parchment paper on your baking sheets. The original recipe said this would yield about 18 cookies but somehow I got 37. I might bee because I ran out of whole wheat flour so half of this recipe is soy flour I had on hand, but I can’t say for sure until I try again.
Let me tell you how easy this recipe is: combine everything into one large bowl (except chocolate chips if you decide to add them, which I did not) and mix well until just blended.
Scoop out onto your baking sheets and bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Let cool for 10 to 15 minutes and gobble, gobble.
Yeah, these vegan cookies are just that simple. If you have time and all the ingredients on hand, kick your fall up a notch with these tasty pumpkin cookies.
The best part about these cookies? They are very calorie friendly as long as you don’t eat a full dozen in one sitting!
The key to any good vegan pumpkin desserts or sauces or…whatever, is the right pumpkin cooked the right way. Cut the pumpkin in half (like the photo below) and rub the flesh with oil. I used coconut oil because I planned sweet applications for the whole thing and roast it flesh side down. It should take about 40-50 minutes if it’s on the large side, but check it every 10 minutes after the 40 minute mark to make sure it doesn’t burn.
Let the pumpkin cool completely before you scoop out the insides. Refrigerate the insides for up to a week or you can freeze what you don’t use right away and it’ll hold for much longer.
Some of you have reached out to me and asked why, oh why, do I so rarely post any #vegan desserts on this blog and the answer is two-fold really.
The first answer is simple: calories & sugar. Back in 2017 I made the decision to go vegan for my health, which meant I needed to get rid of old eating habits and replace them with healthier, cruelty free options that would help me lose weight and get back in shape.
Second, shortly after going vegan we moved from Germany to Romania and the stove we had until recently was total crap. Complete and total crap.
So there you have it, my short-ish explanation for why this blog has been seriously lacking in vegan dessert recipes. Today, we’re going to see if we can change that with some quick vegan peanut butter cookies.
Just in case you’re wondering, I have not yet reached my weight goal so these are not celebratory vegan cookies, they’re more like ‘celebrating my new stove’ cookies.
And since I’ve been looking for ways to make calorie friendly dessert recipes, I decided to fiddle with the recipe a little bit, so here we go!
Ingredients:
Peanut butter
Brown sugar (light or dark, unless you have access to truly vegan cane sugar)
Almond milk (or your preferred plant milk)
Flour
Coconut oil
Vanilla extract (I use Dr. Oetker’s Madagascar vanilla and I love it, but use what you have)
Mix remaining ingredients until you have a yummy vegan peanut butter cookie dough
Use a cookie scoop or a spoon to measure 1 tablespoon of dough and then roll & flatten like the photo below, using a regular kitchen fork
Line the cookies on parchment (or silicon if you have it, drop recommendations in the comments below, please!) paper and pop into a preheated oven at 350°F/180°C.
My new stove! Don’t you love the reflection of my slippers?
Bake for 10 to 13 minutes, shorter for soft cookies and longer for crispier ones.
See how easy these vegan cookies were to bake? All you need is one bowl, a good mixing arm and some good quality peanut butter and you’re good to go.
The first dozen or so times I tried to veganize a dessert recipe the results were disastrous. My cakes were too dense thanks to the applesauce, my cookies were flat and heavy and my pies were not flaky. I came pretty close to resigning myself to a life without my favorite homemade desserts, which surprised me because I’m a very occasional consumer of sweets.
My husband however has a certified sweet tooth and he was nowhere near ready to resign himself to a life without homemade baked goods. So I did my homework and thanks to other amazing vegan bloggers & vloggers, plus all the advancements in vegan food, things began to improve. Non-dairy milk, flax & chia seeds, applesauce and plenty of other dairy substitutes were tried, rated and discarded or kept in my pocket for use at a later date.
Now, thanks to plant butter and amazing egg substitutes, you won’t be able to tell the difference between my baked goodies and those with butter, milk and eggs in’em. And that’s a promise!
Which is my (very) long-winded intro into a day of peanut butter cookies, which happen to be my hubs’ favorite thing. He asked me for more than a week to make them and I finally relented. And thanks to poor planning, I had a leftover bag of vegan chocolate chips to use for a few of the cookies!
I have a super easy vegan peanut butter cookie recipe that you will LOVE! All you need is peanut butter (1 cup), butter (1 cup) and brown sugar (1.5 cups), which you will cream together. Add in 2 vegan eggs and vanilla extract (I used a splash of Disaronno instead, but do you) and then set aside. Add flour (2.5 cups), salt (1/2 tsp), baking soda (1.5 tsp) and powder (1 tsp) in a bowl and then mix into wet ingredients until blended. Chill for ten minutes and bake 10 to 12 minutes. (Makes 4 dozen-ish)
It’s very easy and the results are worth the effort. If you want softer chewy cookies, cook at the low end of the time and if you want them crispier, cook longer. But let’s not forget that your stove will help determine an exact cooking time to pay attention to the progress.
Just in case you need a reason to have vegan cookies for breakfast!
You can use this recipe to make peanut butter sandwich cookies or even XL cookies half-dipped in chocolate. Change the recipe as you see fit.
Here are a few ways I’ve changed up my peanut butter cookie recipe over the years:
1 tsp. Cinnamon
1 tsp. Nutmeg
Rum or Bitter Almond extract
Orange zest
1 pinch of Cardamom
Add pretzel pieces and vegan candy and smoosh into muffin pan
Comment below and tell me how you like your peanut butter cookies!
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