Vegan Coconut Oatmeal Cookies and Where to Splurge on Ingredients

I hate scrolling through pictures over and over to refer back to a recipe on food blogs like this one, so I'll start with the instructions.  For more information and additional comments, continue reading.

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Coconut Oil (preferably unrefined)

1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

2 Tablespoons Light Agave

2 Tablespoons Maple Syrup

1 Cup Flower

1 Cup Whole Rolled Oats

1 Cup Unsweetened Flaked or Shredded Coconut

Pinch of salt

2 Tablespoons Boiling Water

1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

Instructions:

Melt the coconut oil in a saucepan on low or microwave on high until melted, stirring every 15 seconds. Coconut oil has a lower melting point than butter, so keep an eye on it.  

Combine the melted coconut oil with the brown sugar, agave nectar, and maple syrup.  Stir, then incorporate flower, oats, and flaked coconut.

Stop eating the dough!

In a small bowl, add the baking soda to the boiling water.  I boiled about a half a cup of water on the kettle and measured out two tablespoons of water.  The baking soda will fizz up a bit (science!), so make sure there's enough room in your bowl. 

Add the baking soda/water mixture to the dough.  It should resemble a crumb topping - not liquidy like a batter but not compact like dough - and form into a solid when pressed together.

Seriously stop eating the dough!

Form the dough into walnut-sized balls.  Each cookie should contain about two tablespoons of the dough.  Cover and refrigerate for at least three hours.  

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare baking sheets with cooking spray, parchment paper, or more coconut oil.  Place cookies onto baking sheets with ample room to spread out (they will end up about four inches in diameter). You want the cookies to be as cold as possible when they start baking, so minimize the time spent in between the fridge and the oven.  Bake on a center rack for 8-9 minutes. Remove from oven, but let them cool on the pan for an additional 5 minutes.  

Store at room temperature and enjoy!

Witty and Insightful Commentary:

That's right, I'm sharing my wealth of knowledge.  Do I sound like a real vegan yet?

One of the lessons I've learned in trying to cook and bake vegan is that the end result will only be as good as the ingredients you use.  The difference between fine dining and driving through often has less to do with who prepares it than it does with what goes in it.  If you don't believe me, google, "what are Mcnuggets made of.  I couldn't bring myself to add the picture to this blog.  Especially in vegan or healthy recipes, the freshness and quality of your ingredients is a big deal.  However, I know what it's like to be standing in Whole Foods between the unrefined-non-GMO-whole-raw-vanilla-beans and the unbleached-virgin-flour-that-has-most-likely-been-blessed-by-an-organic-priest wondering if you're going to need to sell everything you own in order to afford the food that won't give you cancer.  Keeping that in mind, there are some things that you should consider possibly spending more on.

I based this recipe on Averie Cooks' Chewy Oatmeal Coconut Brown Sugar Cookies, which were probably delicious but not vegan.  However, the only non-vegan ingredient in this recipe was butter, which is an easy fix.  Between Earth Balance, Canola Oil, and all the other plant-based oils out there, it can be hard to pick the right one.  Especially if you have only been a vegan for a month and you don't really know what you're doing...

Because this recipe already included coconut deliciousness, I used Cadia Brand unrefined Coconut Oil.  I just love this stuff. Smells good, tastes good, melts well, hardens well... I might just marry coconut oil when it becomes legal in California. Unrefined coconut oil is sweeter and has more coconut flavor, and refined is more neutral.  Either would be fine, but if you use refined, you might want to get sweetened coconut flakes.  I didn't see it in any smaller jars, but there are a zillion uses of coconut oil, so I thought it was worth it.  As I mentioned above, coconut oil has a lower melting point than butter, so keep that in mind.  This may be the reason my cookies come out much thinner than the original recipe, so if you really want thicker, chewier cookies, lower the temperature of the oven to 300 degrees.  I was okay with the thinner ones, though, so I didn't try it.

I ALREADY LIED TO YOU.  Worst food blogger ever. There was one other non-vegan ingredient: honey.  I always forget that it counts as non-vegan, but it does.  Also really easy to substitute, though!  Light agave nectar (I used Madhava brand) is basically the same thing.  From the very same plant that makes Tequila, it's a bit sweeter and more liquidy than honey but works very well as a substitute.  It's also quite widely available, and is getting cheaper as it gains popularity.

Okay... one more vegan thing.  It's tough to find truly vegan refined sugar.  For some reason, people decided to use animal bones in the process of whitening the sugar.  "Hey, let's use animal bones to make sugar whiter because white is always better!  It'll cost more and is pretty unnecessary, but people will like it more."  "Great idea, Stan."  You can call the vegan police and take away my vegan badge right now if you want, but I have to admit I used sugar that was considered by some, "non-vegan."  For a list of companies that produce refined sugars without any animal products, click here.   

My biggest problem ingredient in this recipe is the maple syrup, because it's often not maple at all, but a filthy impostor.  Look at the ingredients of the Costco-sized bottle of syrup in your pantry.  For one thing, it becomes clear that "Syrup" is not preceded by "Maple," but, "High Fructose Corn." Different. It's hard to avoid GMO's, particularly in this form, so it makes me a little angry.  But the other thing is that of the ingredients listed, none of them come from trees.  If you're from Vermont or Canada, you know that Corn Syrup and water are a poor disguise for the much deeper, more interesting flavor of the real thing.  You can find real Maple Syrup in some grocery stores - you just have to read the label.  And if you're already mid-recipe and you don't want to go out and buy the real thing, you can skip it and add extra Agave.

The rest of the ingredients are pretty straight-forward.  There are thousands of variations of flower, and though I used regular All Purpose Flour, I'm sure there are possible alternatives.  If I really wanted to take the next step with my health, I would probably cut down on the processed gluten.  So if you have knowledge about that, please share!  On a separate note, I want to emphasize the importance of the pinch of salt.  Though it might be unnecessary for the non-vegan alternative to this recipe, it is important to the flavor of these cookies.  The coconut oil will add extra sweetness that needs to be "cut" by the salt.  Other than that, choose better quality ingredients where you can, be patient, don't eat all the dough before it gets in the oven, and your cookies will be wonderful.  

Thanks for reading!

A Very Vegan Christmas

Happy holidays, everyone.

I'm hoping to get this blog posted before it is officially Christmas Eve, but it's not looking so good at the moment.  But it has been far too long since I've written anything, and there are so many exciting things to cover!  Before I go any further, let us all take a moment to appreciate the wonder, majesty, and beauty that is my mother's new kitchen:

When I went away for the most recent semester, my kitchen was a black hole of cement and drywall, so this is quite an improvement.  It is indeed a work of art that was hopefully worth the months of cooking on a camping stove on the back patio.  I knew that coming home would be both a huge opportunity and an equally huge challenge for my fooding adventures.  I was not wrong.  Though my resources seem boundless in comparison to those of my dorm room, I also have the (well-intended) adversity of my family members.  I've prepared myself for this in three major ways:

1. I got my facts straight.  One of the best things about my ADD-type personality is that when I do find something I'm willing to focus on, I focus on it a lot.  And when I do focus on something, it becomes really important to me to become as knowledgeable as possible on the subject.  It leads to some pretty useless information about the ocean and ballet and stuff.  In this case, I did hours of internet research about the ethical, nutritional, and environmental benefits and downfalls of a vegan diet.  I also read The Starch Solution by John A. McDougall, MD, and Mary McDougall.  It was really helpful because it provided me with information in support of a vegan diet from all the aforementioned categories.  I was able to stump my older brother with some information about Egyptians and Heart Disease from this book, which was pretty cool.  I know that my family only questions what I'm doing because they don't want me to die, so having information to support my decisions is extremely important.  
2. I collected an arsenal of vegan cookie recipes.
   
    I had to find a way to combat my Christmas cravings.  As I've mentioned before, my mom is a very, very good non-vegan cook.  I knew I would have to have some substitutes for myself in order to avoid caving in and eating the  New Zealand Holly Cookies.  My dessert board on Pinterest  is overflowing with vegan and raw vegan desserts to make. So far, I've made vegan versions of Giada De Laurentiis' Chocolate and Coconut Lace Cookies and Averie Cooks' Chewy Oatmeal Coconut Brown Sugar Cookies.  I'll be posting the veganized recipes, as well as the recipe for my Roasted Vegetable Quinoa Slaw, shortly. 
3.  I scavenged for vegan ingredients.  The little town of Vista, California may not be Brooklyn, but it's also not Kansas (I actually know nothing about Kansas there may be a surplus of hipster vegans there):  there are some hip stores with the ingredients I need here.  I bought a ton of vegetables, fruits, and starches to start off, of course.  Then I found some vegan butter and virgin coconut oil for butter replacements, Agave nectar to replace honey, and so on.  Though vegan shopping may require a little research ahead of time, it really isn't that difficult to find what you're looking for in this day and age.

With these three tactics the foundation of my technique, I ventured to the turbulent battle lines of my kitchen.  My mother greeted my at the airport with a vegan-friendly granola bar and my brother had been looking up vegan cookies for me - they are supportive my fooding and that made me very happy.  However, they also have no problem challenging me to explain my motivation for going vegan, over and over again, and they're not used to the level of health I'm trying to achieve.  Though I've been eating more fat than I had been at school, it has helped me expand my knowledge and skill in this fooding experiment.  

Thanks for reading and happy holidays again!  Stay tuned for my Vegan Lace Cookies, Vegan Oatmeal Coconut Brown Sugar Cookies, and my Roasted Vegetable Quinoa Slaw.