This is another blogging duel between Andrea and me. If you want to read her (excellent) post go here
Christmas cookies have been a part of my family tradition since I was a child. The four of us kids would help (hinder) mom each year as she made countless cookies, plated them, and then took them around the neighborhood as gifts for those on our street. There wasn’t a visit during the holidays when a plate of cookies wasn’t brought along.
As an adult I started baking cookies on my own, I developed two “standard” recipes and then usually made a third that would change from year to year. These cookies were usually taken to work to give to friends, but there were many years that we loaded a wagon with plates of cookies (and my daughter Taylor) and went around the neighborhood spreading Christmas cheer.
Skip ahead to 2020. I’m in a new house, the world has gone to hell, and my coworkers all live out of state. However, I felt this year more than others I needed to maintain my tradition and make cookies for the friends I still see in my limited rounds.
…one of whom happens to be vegan
So the challenge this year was to make plant based cookies to go with my “normal” cookies (are plant based cookies part of this “new normal” I keep hearing about?). s
Some of the ingredients were easy substitutions
- Vegan butter for dairy butter, I’ve been using vegan butter for some time now. I actually like it better than dairy butter and it works and tastes more or less the same.
- Condensed coconut milk for condensed dairy milk, trickier substitution because it is much thicker than the original, so the cookie is a little bit more toffee like, but still workable
- Cashew sour cream for dairy sour cream, this one is a bit more of a stretch, and I don’t know if I would put it in a baked potato, but it seemed to work great in cookies
- Eggs…
Unlike the other substitutions, there are few simple substitutes for eggs. I spent some time looking in to what eggs do in a batter. Their chief role is as a binding and leavening agent. The frankly seldom add much taste to the batter at all. So a substitute is as much about chemical properties as it is about taste.
In my experience with vegan baking during the past year, I have discovered three egg substitutes.
- Flaxseed meal: combine 1T of flaxseed meal with 3T of water for each egg. Stir and let sit for a few minutes while it thickens into a brown paste.
- Justegg liquid egg replacement: easier to use than other methods, but very short expiration date, so a lot goes to waste.
- Egg replacement powder: similar to flaxseed meal, but a little closer to eggs chemical properties…plus it makes a grey paste.
I went with the third option this time, and I must say, the cookies are (at least to my untrained pallet) indistinguishable from their dairy originals.
Cooking vegan, is an interesting adventure, but like when I first learned to cook, there is an excitement of seeing how things work (and more importantly taste) together. I have no plans to go totally plant based in the foreseeable future, but it’s fun to make good things for those who do. It broadens the talent and opens the mind.
Be safe, be strong.