Vegan MoFo Day 20: Peanut Butter Kisses

Peanut butter cookies with a Hershey's Kiss stuck in the middle are a holiday classic. Hershey's has come out with tons of different varieties of kisses in recent years, but unfortunately, none of them are vegan! This creates a bit of a conundrum. How can you have peanut butter kisses without the kisses?? I experimented with a bunch of different chocolates from pieces of dark chocolate bars to chocolate chips to round pieces of dark chocolate and it was a Goldilocks type problem -- this one was too hard, this one was too soft, this one was too small, that one just looked weird. Problem was solved with really cheap generic supermarket chocolate! In the candy isle, as well as in "candy they keep in produce near nuts" section of my grocery store ("Price Chopper") they have Dark Chocolate Nonpareils, what are basically gigantic Snow Caps chocolates. Not only are they accidentally vegan, they're also quite decorative as it looks like it snowed on your cookie! Sometimes they have seasonal varieties with little red white and green sprinkles for Christmas, or pastel colors for Easter. Regardless of color, they're the right size, right shape, and right thickness to make these cookies live again! Check out your local grocery store, you might be surprised! Cheap peanut butter is good in this recipe because it gives it the junky feel of the original recipe!

I made these for a party I had, hence the cute label

Peanut Butter "Kisses"
About 4 dozen Dark Chocolate Nonpareils
3/4 cup peanut butter (crunchy or creamy, your choice)
1/2 cup margarine, softened
1/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed
2 tbsp almond milk
1/4 cup nondairy yogurt, plain or vanilla flavored
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a mixing bowl, cream together the margarine, peanut butter, and sugar.

3. Add the milk, yogurt, and vanilla and mix until combined.

4. Stir in the dry ingredients.

5. Roll 1 inch balls of dough and place them on a cookie sheet.

6. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Jam a piece of chocolate into the center of each cookie immediately after removing from the oven. Allow to cool before removing from the cookie sheet so that the chocolate can set up again.

Florentine Lace Cookies

Florentine Lace were always one of my favorite cookies from the Italian bakeries. I never knew what they were made of, other than that they had chocolate in the middle, they were just this mystery cookie that one could never make at home.

Turns out they're oatmeal and sugar, basically. And really quite easy to make. I've seen a bunch of variations on this cookie including ones that include nuts and candied citrus, but I like the simple oats-suspended-in-sugar cookie. You can eat them as is, or sandwich two together with some melted chocolate in the middle. For these, I used half white and half semi sweet chocolate (not in the same cookie! Though that would be kind of cool). The white chocolate was from http://www.veganstore.com/ -- which, if you've not ordered from them before but you need some speciality items, I'd highly recommend them. They ship fast and they've got great customer service. One of my bags of white chips I'd ordered had done some sort of mail-splosion sprinkling little white bits among my other items, and they offered a refund, a store credit, or a replacement. Nice people. Definitely buy from them.

Florentine Lace Cookies

6 tbsp of margarine, melted

2 cups quick oats (must be quick!!)

1 cup white sugar

2/3 cup flour

1/4 cup corn syrup (probably could use any sort of sugar syrup here, but I've only tried with corn)

1/4 cup rice milk (soy milk, oat milk, whatever)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp of salt

2 cups chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, mix the oats, sugar, flour, and salt together. Make a well in the center and add the liquid ingredients. Fold together until everything is a big sticky mess.

3. Line your baking trays with aluminum foil or silpat sheets. Roll heaping 1 teaspoonfulls of dough into balls, then flatten into discs with damp fingers. These will spread a LOT! Leave at least 3 inches between cookies (I get 6 to a sheet).

4. Bake for 5-8 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool completely on the baking sheet, then carefully peel off.

5. Melt chocolate chips in the microwave or over a double boiler. Spread melted chocolate on the smooth side of the cookie, and stick another cookie (smooth side down) on top to make a sandwich. Squish them together a little so the chocolate oozes out the side and holes. Wait for them to set up, then eat!

Dark Chocolate Dipped Orange Cookies

I am a bad, bad blogger.

Here's the quick rundown from that last post to now -- the boy and I spent November jumping through all the hoops one has to jump through to buy a house, we closed on the house Dec 5, I had finals in until the 12th of December, I went to visit my parents on the 10th of December to help my mother out after some surgery (she's fine), then just got back this past Saturday and now we're stripping lots of wallpaper and trying to get the new house in order so we can move in January. On the positive side of things: I HAVE A HUGE KITCHEN! We're going to put in a big 6 burner gas stove so I can cook like crazy. I expect until I'm all settled, my posts will be few and far between, especially because I'm trying to cook all the food in the pantry so we have less to move. (My new pantry is also huge.) This results in a lot of random meals. BUT! We've been invited to a New Year's Party, and I've perfected my Dark Chocolate Dipped Orange Cookies and had to share.

These cookies are fantastic. They're sweet and tart and orangey, and the dark chocolate is a perfect compliment. You could, of course, just eat them without the chocolate... but why? The boy has declared these possibly his new favorite cookie, and that's high praise as he's a die hard peanut butter fan. And so, without further ado....


Dark Chocolate Dipped Orange Cookies
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup margarine
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp canola oil
1 tbsp orange juice concentrate
The zest of one orange
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup soy yogurt -- plain or vanilla
2 cups + 2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

8 oz dark chocolate
1 tsp canola oil

1. In a large bowl, mix together the sugars, margarine, oil, OJ concentrate, orange zest, vanilla and soy yogurt with an electric mixer.

2. Add the flour, powder and salt and stir/mix until combined.

3. Refrigerate the dough at least 2 hours or until you get back to it.

4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare baking sheets by lightly spraying with cooking spray (or use Silpats).

5. Scoop out heaping tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the ball with the bottom of a glass dusted with flour. Bake for 11-13 minutes or until the edges of the cookie are golden brown. Let them cool on the cookie sheets for about 10 minutes until they harden up a bit, then cool completely on a cooking rack.

6. Break or chop up the dark chocolate if it is in bar form or large pieces. Add the 1 tsp of canola oil and melt it in the microwave or over a double boiler. (If microwaving -- microwave for one minute, stir a bunch, if it isn't all melted then microwave for another 30 seconds, stir a bunch more. If it still isn't all melted, melt in 20 second intervals until it's smooth. Be sure to stir a lot in between each microwaving because the remaining solid pieces will melt a lot in the already hot melted chocolate and you don't want to overmicrowave)

7. Dip or spread half of the cookie in chocolate, top and bottom. Set on wax paper to harden. The fridge will expedite this process.

An earlier prototype -- The texture wasn't quite right, but aren't they festive?

Chocolate Peanut Butter Easter Eggs

I got the idea for these from Paula Dean, believe it or not. I saw one of her candy shows and she made these weird butterscotch, caramel, peanut, chocolate things and I thought "Hmm.. If I sub out a few things, this could be good." They could theoretically be made into any shape, or rolled into balls for simplicity, but since it's Easter time, I thought I'd make them into eggs.



Chocolate Peanut Butter Easter Eggs
3/4 Cup Peanut Butter (No stir kind) - Creamy or Crunchy
1/2 cup Ricemellow Creme
1/4 cup powdered soymilk
2 tbsp powdered sugar

~1 cup chocolate chip

1. Melt the peanut butter in a microwave safe bowl in the microwave. It should take between 30 seconds and a minute. (Alternately, melt it in a small saucepan over medium heat)

2. Stir in the powdered soymilk until well distributed.

4. Fold in the ricemellow creme and powdered sugar and just keep folding/kneading over and over until the mixture cools and becomes the consistency of play dough.

5. Take heaping tsps of dough and roll them into egg shapes. Sit them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and refrigerate for about an hour.

Naked Peanut Butter Eggs!

6. Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave or in a small saucepan on the stove. Roll the peanut butter eggs in the melted chocolate and sit them back onto the wax paper to set up (you can put them back in the fridge to speed this process).