Vegan Compost Cookies

7 / 2 / 19

Oh my goodness… Can we please just soak in the delicious ridiculousness that is these vegan compost cookies?! And while I’d love to say that they’re healthful, there’s really not much that’s healthful about them… They’re CRAZY delicious though! Filled with oats, pretzels, graham cracker crust, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, potato chips, and coffee grounds (everything you’d find in a compost?), they’re a crispy and chewy and salty and sweet all at once. I usually make them once a year {okay, maybe twice a year when Brad was at his last school}, but this year when we were brainstorming teacher gifts, Miss G decided that she’d like to do big jars of homemade compost cookies and I was totally on board. We paired the jars with a bag of locally roasted coffee beans and our completed ‘Thank you for being my teacher’ printable and that was that.

Since we now eat vegan at home, I also took the opportunity to recipe test a veganized version of the recipe we usually use, and I’m so happy to report that it turned out amazingly well! I also took a chance and swapped out some of the sugar for coconut sugar, so while these still have a ton of sugar in them, at least some of it is a little less refined.

Okay, just look at this…

And that’s not all… There were still potato chips to be added!

Now a quick word on the potato chips… While we usually buy a locally made kettle-chip style of chips to snack on {Hardbite}, these cookies are much better with a classic, cheap potato chip. You know the ones that are a little too greasy and a little too salty? Yup, oddly enough, those are the ones you want. The other ones are so thick that they’re almost too crunchy whereas these thinner ones add just the perfect amount of crunch!

Dough done! (I always double this recipe when making it.)

Okay, now here’s the one unfortunate thing about this recipe… The dough has to be refrigerated before baking the cookies off. Ugh – not the best news for a get-in-and-out-of-the-kitchen-as-quickly-as-possible person like me, but trust me on this one. I’ve made them plenty of times and skipped this step and they’re still delicious. BUT – if you want them to have that crispy outer coating and super thick, chewy inside, you need to refrigerate. I just roll the dough into big balls, pop them into a baking dish, and pop them into the fridge. Come back in an hour and they’ll be good to go.

The last thing… The butterscotch chips. Every type of butterscotch / caramel chip I could find in our little town contained milk products, so those were a no go for us, obviously. I did see that there are some available online for purchase, but I just opted to try making my own using this recipe. It didn’t turn out perfectly (I was left with some extra butter/oil floating around and the butterscotch was soft at room temperature), but I just kept the pan in the freezer, broke off some little chunks and pressed them into the flattened dough balls as I took them out of the refrigerator to bake and it worked out just fine!

Here’s what they look like straight out of the oven…

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Also, I can’t recommend getting one of these silicone baking liners enough… They work just like parchment paper does and are waste-free!

Here they are completely cooled and ready to be packaged…

We picked up some big glass jars with good seals at a local shop {these are very similar}, filled them up to the top with cookies, added a little homemade tag using baker’s twine, and that was it! Big jars of vegan compost cookies ready for gifting.

Here’s our recipe…

Vegan Compost Cookies (based on this recipe by table for two)

1 tablespoon of ground chia seeds
3 tablespoons of warm water

1/2 cup of graham cracker crumbs (double check the ingredients to ensure your graham crackers don’t have honey or milk products in them)
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of vegan butter
2 teaspoons of pure maple syrup

1 1/3 cups of bread flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt

1 cup of vegan butter
1 cup of coconut sugar
2/3 cup of packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon of agave syrup
1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla

graham cracker crust
3/4 cup of mini vegan chocolate chips
1/2 cup of vegan butterscotch chips*
1/3 cup of old-fashioned oats
3 teaspoons of ground coffee beans

2 cups of plain potato chips, crushed
1 cup of mini pretzels

Prepare your ‘chia egg’ by combining the ground chia seeds and warm water in a small bowl. Set it aside to thicken.

Prepare your graham cracker crust by working the vegan butter and maple syrup into the graham cracker crumbs with your fingers in a medium-sized bowl. Set this aside until needed too.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and sea salt until everything is evenly distributed.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the vegan butter, coconut sugar, brown sugar, and agave syrup on medium-high for two minutes. Scrape down the sides, add in the chia egg and vanilla, and mix for another few minutes until the mixture is light and fluffy.

On low speed, slowly add in the dry ingredients until just about combined – little flour pockets here and there are fine.

Still on low speed, pour in the graham cracker crust, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips (if using them), old-fashioned oats, and ground coffee beans. Allow it to mix for about 30 seconds and then add in the potato chips and pretzels and mix just enough to distribute them throughout the dough.

Using a medium sized cookie scoop, portion the dough out into generously sized cookie dough balls, place them in a container, and pop them into the fridge to chill for one hour (this step is important – I highly recommend not skipping it).

Preheat the oven to 365 degrees and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.

After an hour, retrieve just enough dough balls to cover your baking sheet and gently flatten them down. If you’re using the homemade butterscotch ‘chips’ like we did, break off a few little chips and gently press them into the dough near the centre of the cookie.

Bake for 13 – 14 minutes in a fully preheated oven. When removed, the cookies will still be very soft to the touch and will look darker than most due to the coconut sugar. Allow them to cool for at least ten minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. The goal is for the outsides to be golden and crispy and the insides to be soft and chewy.

Once completely cooled, pop the cookies into jars for gifting or into a container at room temperature to enjoy / store for up to a week.

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The Very Best Healthy Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

8 / 5 / 188 / 5 / 18

The very first thing you do when gifted several pounds of zucchini? You make healthy chocolate zucchini muffins of course! The *very best* healthy chocolate zucchini muffins that are also vegan, naturally sweetened, and made with whole grains, that is. {WINNING.}

Just check these beauties out, will you? I don’t know if this photo does their size any justice, but they’re huuuuuuuge.

And begging to be turned into these insanely good chocolate zuchinni muffins by Relishing It. For real, they taste more like cake than any other muffin I’ve eaten before. Insanely good. We’re talking by far the very best healthy muffin I’ve ever tasted… To the point where I regularly pass them off as chocolate birthday cupcakes {and even our pickiest little guests gobble up TWO}.

Now here’s my public service announcement… If you’re just a regular person wanting a regular healthy muffin recipe, pop over to Laurie’s post and make them exactly as she tells you to. They’re absolutely perfect as is – no need to change anything.

Now if you’re like me and are attempting to minimize the amount of animal products your family consumes, try our version below. They’re every bit as delicious, but they don’t contain the egg or honey, which makes them healthy, whole grained, naturally sweetened, and VEGAN.

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Here’s our line up of ingredients… First up, whole wheat pastry flour. Every bit worth the effort it takes to find, in my opinion. In Kuwait we used this one by Bob’s Red Mill and in Canada we use one from Nature’s Fare. Whole Foods stocks whole wheat pastry flour too and my guess is that it is decent. Next, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, sea salt, and dark chocolate chips that are optional, but delicious. The wet ingredients include coconut oil, flax ‘eggs’ {which is just ground flax seeds and water}, and vanilla, and of course you’ll need the zucchini too.

The most important part of any baking session though? Little helpers. Little helpers who undoubtedly make the process longer and messier and way more fun.

Here’s how this recipe goes down… First, measure out the dry ingredients and whisk them together well.

Then in a separate bowl {we use a big glass measuring cup}, measure out the wet ingredients and give them a good whisk before adding them to the dry mixture.

Lastly, add in loads of finely grated zucchini that will pretty much just disappear during the baking process and leave you with the cake-iest, most delicious muffins ever.

Gently stir it in…

And then enlist your little ones’ help to prep the muffin tin {silicone muffin liners like these are the BEST} and divide the batter evenly between the 12 cups.

Patiently wait as they bake….

Let them cool for a couple of minutes…

And dive in!

SOOOO good. {Find Sam’s construction spoon here.}

So good that we almost always make a double batch – otherwise they disappear too quickly.

The Very Best Healthy Vegan Chocolate Zucchini Muffins (adapted from this recipe on Relishing It)

2 tablespoons of ground flax seed
6 tablespoons of warm water

1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup of cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt

1/2 cup of coconut oil {in its liquid state}
1/2 cup of pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon of good vanilla

1 1/2 cups of finely grated zucchini, deseeded if necessary
1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a small bowl, measure out the ground flax seed and warm water. Stir to combine and set aside to thicken. {This mixture is two flax ‘eggs’.}

In a large bowl, add the flour cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and sea salt. Whisk until thoroughly combined and sprinkle the dark chocolate chips on top.

In a separate smaller bowl, whisk together the liquid coconut oil, pure maple syrup, and vanilla.

Add the liquid mixture and the flax eggs into the dry mixture and gently mix until almost combined. Add the finely grated zucchini and give the mixture a few more gentle stirs. {A word on the zucchini… If you pre-grate your zucchini like we usually do, by the time you go to use it, there will most likely be some liquid that has drained off. No need to include this. Simply pick up the zucchini by the handful, allow it to drip over the bowl for a few seconds, and then add it to your mixture, tossing out any liquid that’s left in the bowl afterwards. Do not squeeze your grated zucchini dry before adding it… The moisture from the zucchini is what makes these muffins so dang good.}

Line your muffin tin with silicone muffin liners and distribute the batter evenly amongst the cups. Bake for approximately 20 – 25 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean.

Remove the muffins from the oven and allow them to sit for several minutes before removing them from the pan and placing them on a cooling rack.

These will last for several days in an air-tight container on the counter, but because of there high veggie content, I pop them in the fridge if they’re going to be around longer than a few days.

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Nutrient-Packed Cookie Dough Boys

6 / 27 / 137 / 8 / 13

The other night, I had the absolute pleasure of joining several other Vancouver mom bloggers at Whole Foods for evening with Aspen Clean, a local eco-friendly cleaner and cleaning company. While there, Whole Foods totally spoiled us with delicious green smoothies, all kinds of yummy nutrient-packed salads, and the yummiest ever {vegan, gluten-free} cookie dough balls. Our healthy eating specialist, Sarah, made them while we watched, and not only were they quick and easy to whip up, but the giant bowl full disappeared in a matter of minutes – a sure sign of their deliciousness. As soon as I tasted {my first} one, I knew that Grae would just love them. So today, we got our ingredients and whipped up a batch. My suspicions were right – Grae did love them.

Here’s our lineup of ingredients…. Pecans, dates {soaked in water}, coconut, raisins, sea salt, cinnamon, coconut oil, and vanilla. Now, I have to say that the original recipe includes coconut manna (also known as coconut butter) and not coconut oil… In fact, our healthy eating specialist explained that coconut oil is just the fat squeezed out of the coconut meat, while coconut manna is the coconut meat and fat combined, making it much more nutrient-rich. The trouble is, our local grocery store doesn’t carry coconut manna, so we had to improvise. While maybe not as healthy, the recipe still turned out great!

Anyways, onto actually making the cookie dough boys! First up, we drained {almost all of} the water our dates had been soaking in and blended them in our food processor. (Word to the wise, be sure your dates don’t still have the pits in them before blending. Oy.)

We processed them until nearly smooth, but not perfectly pureed. Because it was such a small batch, it did take several rounds of stopping the machine, scraping down the sides, and then doing it again, but that just meant more jobs for my little helper, which she of course loved.

With the date paste saved in a separate bowl for later, Miss G added our coconut and pecans to the food processor. Call us lazy, but we didn’t even wash out the processor bowl in between as it seemed like sort of an unnecessary step.

Then we pureed the coconut and pecans until they were meal-like.

Next up, Grae dumped all of the other ingredients (save the raisins) into the food processor with the coconut/pecan mixture.

Then we processed it all until it started to come together in a mass.

Here’s what it looked like when done.

The last step was to mix the raisins in by hand.

With our dough complete, we rolled it into balls using about a tablespoon of the mixture at a time.

And because Miss G is no longer a huge fan of raisins, before mixing them in, we set aside a part of the mixture. To set Grae’s balls apart from the other, she rolled them in coconut, which was a lovely addition.

The verdict? Delicious! They’re sweet and satisfying just like a good dessert, but come sans all of the sugar and fat regular desserts have. A definite success!

{Nutrient-packed} Cookie Dough Boys

(*this is a Health Starts Here recipe from Whole Foods)

1/4 cup of date paste (we used 5 large majool dates)

2 cups of pecans
1 cup of unsweetened coconut flakes

1 tablespoon of coconut manna (or as we used, 1/2 tablespoon of coconut oil)
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
dash of sea salt

1/2 cup of raisins

Soak the dates in room temperature water for an hour (you can cut down soaking time by using hot water), drain off almost all of the water, and purée the fruit until fairly smooth. Set aside.

Blend pecans and coconut flakes in a food processor until meal-like. Add all other ingredients, save the raisins. Process until the mixture starts coming together in a large mass.

Dump dough into a large bowl and incorporate raisins by hand. Taking 1 tablespoon scoops, roll the dough to create balls. Roll in coconut or crushed nuts if desired.

Eat, refrigerate, or freeze.

Enjoy!

♥

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