Garbage Disposal Cookies

A few nights ago, my uterus was all, "Hey! Mom! We want cookies and salty snacks and chocolate and EVERYTHING."

Is it weird that my uterus calls me mom? I mean, my cats call me mom, but that's different.

Anyway.

Ask, little uterus, and you shall receive. Let's make some garbage disposal cookies.

I made mine with liquid stevia because I can't handle a lot of sugar. I figured the sugar in the molasses, chocolate chips, and marshmallows was plenty for me. I haven't tried the sugar version of the recipe because I don't want to freak out and feel like shit and have to nap for six hours. Please let me know if you try it, and if 2 teaspoons is too much or too little and I'll adjust the note.

Garbage Disposal Cookies (vegan, gluten-free option, low-sugar option)
Makes 6-8 small cookies. Recipe can easily be doubled.
printable recipe

1 tsp ground flax seed mixed with 1 Tbsp water

1/4 cup quick-cooking oats
1/4 cup flour of your choice (I used 2 Tbsp teff flour + 2 Tbsp sorghum flour)
1/2 Tbsp fresh, finely ground coffee (crappy coffee is fine in these, just NOT instant coffee)
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger, cardamom, allspice, more cinnamon, or any other spice you love

1 Tbsp melted Earth Balance (or oil of your choice)
3 Tbsp unsweetened almond milk (soy, rice, or coconut would work, too)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
25-30 drops liquid stevia (or 2 tsp sugar)
1 Tbsp molasses (optional, but DELICIOUS)

1 Tbsp mini chocolate chips
1 Tbsp toasted coconut (or nuts, raisins, potato chips, cereal, peanut butter chips, etc.)
2 Tbsp broken up mini pretzels (about 4 pretzels, use gf pretzels if you need to!)
2 Dandies marshmallows, chopped into small pieces

Preheat your oven to 350º. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, combine the flax and water. Set it aside.

Whisk your dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Set that aside.

Measure your fillers into a small bowl and set aside. I found it easier to cut up the marshmallows and add them to the dry ingredients so they didn't all just stick together in the bowl o' fillers.

Combine wet ingredients in a small bowl. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until it's nicely combined. Fold in your fillers (chocolate chips and all that). Scoop the batter on to your lined cookie sheet by heaping tablespoons. Flatten each cookie just a bit.

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes. Let these cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack, otherwise marshmallows will stick and it will be sad. Cookies will be fluffy and muffin-like and you'll probably eat them all in one sitting.

Shit. I just had an idea. I'm going to make banana "ice cream" and make ice cream sandwiches with these. Maybe with a little peanut butter mixed in there. THANKS, UTERUS.

Are you going to make these? What are you going to put in them? Can I come over if I promise to bring champagne?

Gluten-Free Vegan Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

These cookies came from a desire for fall flavors, mixed with some laziness.

I've made a few things from Betty Crocker's gluten-free cookie and cake mixes recently with great results, but I hadn't been brave enough to start adding or changing things beyond subbing in oil and a flax egg. I figured I could just make a few modifications to the chocolate chip cookie mix, hope for the best, and eat whatever pumpkin-flavored mess I pulled out of the oven.

I can't believe they turned out as delicious as they did.

Just to make sure it was really that easy to make something so yummy, I made them a second time and took them to work. Almost everyone who ate one asked for the recipe. It was a happy day for this little baker girl.

So, I made a video. Finally. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, but was never brave enough to put myself in front of the camera. These cookies are too good to not share, though.



I know. The lighting is terrible, and the video is really choppy, but I'll get better the more I do this. Which should be often, because it was a lot of fun!

I'm planning on more boxed mix tutorials, along with some other stuff. Carrot cupcakes. Mini stevia-sweetened 100 calorie pumpkin pies with whipped coconut cream. Mimosa cupcakes.

Vegan marshmallow fondant and how to turn it into little penis cupcake toppers.

I guess that kind of explains why my YouTube channel is called Blue Balls Bakery. Heh.

Oh, and here's the recipe in case you're a jerk and don't want to watch the video. Jerk.

Easy Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies
(vegan, gluten-free)

Makes 20-24 cookies

printable recipe

1 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 3 Tbsp water

1 box Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 cup canned pumpkin puree (NOT canned pumpkin pie mix)

1/4 cup oil (canola, coconut, melted Earth Balance, etc.)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350º. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine flax and water in a small bowl and set aside.

Combine cookie mix and spices in a large bowl and set aside.

Combine pumpkin, oil, vanilla, and flax mixture. Give it a good stir, then add it to the dry ingredients. Mix until it's nicely combined. Dough will be sticky. Scoop dough onto your baking sheet by heaping tablespoons, leaving an inch between cookies. Flatten each one with the back of the spoon.

Bake cookies 11-15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into a cookie comes out clean. Let the cookies cool completely before storing in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Leftovers can be frozen, but you won't have any leftovers.

Socca is Delicious

I was lurking on Pinterest a few weeks ago (surprise, surprise), and saw a picture of chickpea pancakes. Chickpeas? Pancakes? Together? Whaaaaaa? I had never heard of such a thing, but I immediately started daydreaming about them. "Yeah," I told the cats, "we're making chickpea pancakes."

The recipe from Pinterest sounded... okay. But by then it was too late. I needed chickpea pancakes. NEEDED them. The wheat-allergic boyfriend was also pretty excited about the idea. So I went to google. 

This post by David Lebovitz talks about socca, a savory pancake that is a popular street food in Nice. FRENCH chickpea pancakes?! Holy shit. His recipe sounded so simple and delicious, but I knew I wanted a lot of flavor and some veggies in my pancakes, so I looked around a bit more and ended up combining parts of David's recipe with a few others I found online. I also added ground flax seeds and nutritional yeast because I'm obsessed with both at the moment.

Oh, and if you're wondering where to find chickpea flour, Whole Foods sells the Bob's Red Mill version, and most Indian and Arabic grocery stores sell it under the name besan.

So, I made some. I was curious to taste the difference between pan-fried and baked socca, so I split the prepared batter up and tried it both ways. Pan-fried was the definite winner. I blame the less-than-stellar baked batch on the crappy dollar store pizza pan I used. One day I'll have a giant cast iron pan. One day. *sigh*

Socca (Chickpea Pancakes)

Vegan, Gluten-Free, Soy-Free, Egg-Free, Dairy-Free

Makes 6-8 8" pancakes if pan fried, 2-3 large pancakes if baked

1 1/2 cups chickpea flour

1 cup water

1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

2 tablespoons nooch (nutritional yeast)

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 - 1 teaspoon ground cumin (start with less unless you really like cumin)

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for your pan

2 chopped green onions (both white and green sections)

1/2 cup frozen peas (optional, but yummy)

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Cover the bowl and let the batter sit for an  hour or two. Or use it immediately. INSTANT GRATIFICATION.

To Pan Fry: 

Stir batter. Drizzle a nonstick pan (I used an 8" pan) with a little olive oil (1/2 teaspoon-ish) and heat on medium until hot. 

Pour in 1/4 cup batter and use the measuring cup to spread to fill the bottom of the pan. Cook until the entire pancake is firm and starting to brown on the bottom, then flip and cook a few more minutes, until the other side starts to brown. 

Transfer onto a plate or wrap pancakes in foil to keep them warm. Sprinkle with sea salt and pepper before serving.

To Bake:

Preheat oven to 400. Drizzle a pizza pan, baking sheet, or cast iron pan with 2-3 teaspoons olive oil (which is more than I used, and my socca stuck to my shitty pizza pan SO BAD). Stick the pan in the oven to preheat.

Once the oven is done warming up, take the HOT pan out of the oven and pour a semi-thin layer of batter onto the entire pan, smoothing with a spoon if you need to. It's okay if your batter looks pretty thin. Thin socca is delicious and browns faster.

Bake your socca until the edges start to brown, which is anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes, depending on your oven, pan, etc. Let the edges brown. Please. It's so good that way.

When it's done, remove your giant pancake from the oven, cut into pieces, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. We only sprinkled ours with salt because we're ghetto and didn't have pepper. 

Ghetto socca. Still delicious.

So, are you going to make socca, or what? You should. For breakfast, or lunch, or a snack. They kind of taste like a much milder falafel. They're yummy and filling and high in protein and fiber. Yeah, you should make these. Your colon will thank you (unless you're like me, but that's a whole 'nother blog post). 

GO MAKE SOCCA.

Some Hippie Shit

I've been back from the Vida Vegan Blogger Conference for a couple days (which was too overwhelming and amazing and magical to even start to blog about), and I'm working on getting back to eating healthy foods and reasonable portions of them. We're flying to Seattle tonight and I wanted a little something to take on the plane with me so I'm not starving and tempted to eat something naughty as soon as we land. Granola bars sounded like a good idea, mostly because I'm secretly a damn hippie, but also because they’re portable and a whole lot better for me than most airport and post-airport-omg-I’m-starving options. Or so I thought.

The hunt for a recipe began. I googled "healthy granola bar recipe" and the results were crap. Apparently it's cool for people to label something as being healthy even though it contains 225 calories and 15+ grams of sugar per serving. Brown rice syrup AND maple syrup AND a shitload of oil AND tons of chocolate chips? Yeah, no thanks. How is this any different from a candy bar?

I went to twitter and asked my genius friends for advice. I wanted lower-calorie, low-sugar, nutrition-packed bars. What should I use to sweeten them? What should I use as a binder? Nicole at Epicurvegan suggested dates for both. Perfect! I decided to use ground flax seed as well, since I only had four dates on hand and had no plans to change out of my pajamas and go to the store. I gathered whatever other random ingredients sounded good and this is what I came up with:

Healthy-ish Granola Bars

4 dates

1/4 c raisins

2 1/2 c just boiled water

1/2 c ground flax seed

2 tbsp vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance), melted

2 c rolled oats

1/2 c raw cashews

1/2 c slivered almonds

1/4 c pepitas

1/2 c shredded unsweetened coconut

1/2 c unsweetened applesauce

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp instant coffee granules (This is the amount I used, but I would suggest adding more.)

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Put the water in a sauce pan over high heat. Combine the dates (make sure there are no pits!) and raisins in a small bowl and set aside. Measure the flax seeds out into a separate medium-sized bowl and set aside.

3. Layer foil in a 9x13 baking dish and spray the inside with olive oil spray, but only if you want to. I suppose this would work just as well without the oil since the final result wasn’t sticky at all.

4. Combine the oats, nuts, seeds and coconut in a large bowl and transfer the mix to the baking dish.

5. Toast in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove. Stir. Toast for another 10 minutes.

6. When your water starts to boil, remove it from the heat and pour over the date and raisin combination, just enough to cover the fruit. Place a lid over the bowl. Let this soak while you perform the next two steps.

7. Pour 2/3 cup of the hot water over the flax seeds, stir to combine and set aside.

8. Melt the margarine in a small bowl in the microwave, heating it for 15 seconds at a time until almost melted. Stir it to melt the rest of the way. Add to your food processor along with the vanilla extract, salt and coffee granules.

9. Drain the water from the date/raisin mixture and add the fruit to the food processor. Add applesauce and pulse until no large chunks of dates remain.

10. Add flax mixture to the food processor and mix until everything is combined.

11. Your dry mix should be toasted by now. Carefully transfer the toasted mix into the large mixing bowl.

12. Pour the liquid mixture into the mixing bowl and stir until all ingredients combined.

13. Pour the entire mixture into your lined baking dish. Smash it down with a spatula. Spray the spatula with a little bit of olive oil if the mixture is too sticky.

14. Bake at 325 degrees for 35 minutes.

15. Let the granola cool for five minutes before cutting it into 16 bars. Once cut, let them cool for 45-60 minutes before you try to remove them from the pan. Store them, covered, in the fridge to keep them yummy and chewy and firm.

Nutrition (per bar): 165 calories, 94 calories from fat, 10.4g total fat, 3.0 saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 93mg sodium, 15.2g carbohydrates, 3.5g fiber, 3.7g sugar, 4.4g protein.

These came out pretty tasty. They’re very un-sweet, which I like. They’re not bad on the calories and sugar, and the fiber and protein are decent. They’re a little high in fat, but most of that comes from the nuts and I consider that good fat.

I think I’ll use more dates and less flax the next time I make these. Also, MORE COFFEE. I’ll probably double that, if not more. I’ll update the recipe to reflect my changes once I get them figured out. Let me know if you try these. If you like things a little sweeter, you could always add 1/4 c of chocolate chips to the mixture (chopped in a food processor if you want smaller pieces), or just melt some chocolate and drizzle it over the top as the bars cooling and refrigerate until it's firm. I hope you like these as much as I do!