not disgusting vegan cookies

In spite of my obsession with eating high quality, non-processed foods, I really do not have any desire to ever be vegan. I have done it in the past and I was miserable. I thoroughly enjoy things made with eggs and dairy and can't see myself giving them up unless prompted to do so by circumstances beyond my control. The thought that I'd never have real cheese or yogurt again is too much for me to properly contemplate.

So anyway I know someone that works hard to be a good vegan and so I decided to bake some cookies for her. In the past I've had vegan cookies and they run the gamut from totally inedible to pretty damn delicious. The best vegan cookies that I've had were peanut butter cookies so I thought I'd go with a recipe for those since they have a reasonably high chance of turning out great.

And so I set out to find a good recipe - as it turns out 101 Cookbooks has a decent selection of vegan options so I went with the peanut butter cookie recipe that I found there.

The dough is pretty loose so I did refrigerate it as recommended in the recipe notes. I also experimented with using a variety of cookie cutters both large and small. I found that peanut butter cookies are pretty rich so it's best to keep the cookies on the small side.

I sprinkled some with sanding sugar before they went in the oven and that gave the finished cookies a nice crunch. The texture of the cookies is soft and dense but not at all crumbly or chewy. I froze half of the dough right away and am looking forward to spontaneously baking up a pan full to cure some future late night cookie jonesing.

O is for orange (chocolate chip yogurt loaf)

I made this delicious snack bread or whatever you wanna call it last night. It's based on the smitten kitchen recipe for lemon yogurt anything loaf. and. holy. crap. it's. good.

The smitten kitchen lady made hers with lemon/blueberries but one of her suggested mods was orange/chocolate chip. So that's what I did. Plus I threw in some chopped walnuts to take it even further. I was going to do lemon/blackberry but the only blackberries we have are frozen from last year's harvest (thanks to the crazy bush in my inlaws' backyard) and I wanted to bake it last night so that J would have it as a surprise breakfast treat today.
Anyway my combo resulted in a very rad cake/bread/loaf thingie that I will most certainly make again. And I suppose that I can eat like 3 slices in one sitting because it is made with yogurt so that obviously means that it's healthy or whatever. Yeah.

So go make yourself one but change it up and use a different citrus/fruit/flavoring combo.