At Least It's Cookie Week
A delightfully unhinged, ever-evolving compendium of vegan cookie tips! Hopefully!
Table of Contents
NYT-Cookie-Week-But-Vegan, 2023: Emotional Introduction
Replacing Butter
Replacing Eggs
Cookie 1: Eric Kim’s Matcha Latte Cookie
Cookie 2: Vaughn Vreeland’s Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookie
Cookie 3: Melissa Clark’s Gingerbread Blondies
Cookies 4, 5, & 6: The Vegan Shortbread Sessions
—> Yewande Komolafe’s Lemon Butter Curls
—> Sue Li’s Neapolitan Checkerboard Cookie
—> Samantha Seneviratne’s Technicolour Cookie
Cookie 7: Sohla El-Waylly’s Rainbow Rave Cookie
Emotional Introduction
I was going to open with something like “Wow, it’s been a minute since I wrote in here!” but I see now that I sent my book party post on October 23rd, not thaaaat much more than a month ago, which is close to my usual timeline I guess. But. The time between October 23rd and now has felt similar in length, slog, and general abrasiveness to reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom twice back-to-back and then having to go to a weeks-long cocktail party full of lecherous finance bros who only want to aggressively yell-talk about how perfect that book is and look at you in turn like a) you’re a piece of meat for them to tenderize with a mallet and b) like you’re nothing at all, a scrap of Kleenex on the heel of their Swedish-made brogue.
So that went somewhere I didn’t expect, but in short November was a shitty month for me. A solid percentage of my immediate family has been sick and sad, and one of the sick guys, our beloved cat Jephry Parker, died at the age of 15 and one quarter on November 21st. May he rest in power and peace. Maybe I’ll have the wherewithal and energy to write something about the sweet specifics and nuances of Jeph one day — as anyone who knows non-humans understands, there were plenty. But I’m pretty spent, so please just know he was a most excellent guy and we miss him so very much.
If you’ve been with me since last year, you know I am not exactly wild about “The Holidays.” But you know what I am wild about? The New York Times Cooking Cookie Week! I’m well aware that the NYT are being huge dicks these days, but in my mind I am cordoning off NYT Cooking as a queer, feminist, mostly non-white utopian enclave where Melissa Clark is zany, benevolent Mother and everything’s going great! And if that’s not true, well, aren’t weird lies and toxic positivity what Christmas is all about? Um. Cookie Week! It’s here! I’m leaning in, baby! I’m going to try to veganize every cookie in this year’s collection, tell you how I did it, maybe make some videos, maybe not, maybe sputter out in a poof of flour and just sit on the kitchen floor drinking a bucket of vegan coquito, we’ll fucking see okay? Okay!
To give myself a running start at turning my cookie mania into “service content,” I’m sending this before I actually make any of this year’s roster of cookies. Let’s kick it off with the basics — a small treatise on replacements for butter and eggs — and I’ll update this post as I go with the cookies as they come. UPDATE: I’m doing separate posts for each cookie instead, more streamlined! We’ll see how it goes! It’s gonna be fun! I’ll be less caustic as the week(s) go along! Maybe! Let’s go!
Vegan Cookie 101: Replacing Butter
There’s plenty of vegan butter available at the grocery store these days, and this is a welcome development in many ways. Personally, though, I almost never use it! Aside from Miyoko’s, I actually don’t think much of it tastes all that good. Whatever factory-fermented esters and aldehydes most manufacturers are adding for buttery flavour just don’t quite hit for me, and Miyoko’s which actually includes cultured cashews for a European butter twang, costs a lot and comes in an annoyingly small package.
For twenty bucks, I can get a 908 gram vat of refined coconut oil, plus a container of vegan yogurt for about six bucks. With those two ingredients, I can make 2.5 pounds / 10 sticks / 5 cups / 1130 grams of butter for my holiday baking needs plus have a bunch of yogurt left over. It checks out to approximately half the cost of Miyoko’s where I live, and works really well for cookie purposes. If the below instructions for making it make your eyes glaze over, though, I recommend Miyoko’s over the rest. Lots of people love Earth Balance, too, and I think it’s fine, but it has a bit of a weird taste to me, plus for some reason I’m skeptical of claims of sustainable white palm oil even though I generally accept claims of sustainable coconut oil? I’m a complex woman!
I used to use this recipe to make my own vegan butter, and I really like it, but unless you’re participating in the patisserie olympics or whatever, I don’t think you need to go quite so hard. I have
to thank for that revelation — it was her “vegan baking fat” recipe that got me doing things differently, and I’m forever grateful. Kennedy mixes an 80/20 ratio of coconut oil and coconut milk to make her fat, preferring to rely on flavours other than “buttery” to make her baked goods sing. The 80/20 ratio mimics the fat and moisture content of real butter, and thereby makes a terrific functional swap.I used this fat to great success a few times last year, then switched out coconut milk for vinegar-curdled soy milk one day when I was out of the former. That turned out great, too, and had a bit more of a buttery flavour I enjoyed thanks to the science of proteins and acid falling in love. Building on that love, I tried vegan yogurt, and I like that best, as it brings a hint of the true lactofermented flavour you find in cultured butter. I’ve used both coconut yogurt and almond yogurt, and I’m sure soy would be great. Just be sure to use one that’s unsweetened, actually bacterially cultured, and mostly made of coconut, nut, or soy milk. A bit of starch or whatever else they’ve thrown in isn’t going to hurt your cookies imo. If you love to go the distance, you can make your own yogurt, too, but you don’t have to!
I won’t say the bit of yogurt makes this taste like actual butter in baked goods, but maybe more importantly to me it doesn’t bring a fake butter flavour to the party — just slightly tangy, functional fat. Lol.
For reference, throughout this year’s Cookie Week, I’m using Omega coconut oil (there’s a cheaper vat available where I live) and Silk Almond Yogurt, which should be widely available.
Easy Vegan Butter Recipe
You will need a twelve-well muffin tin (or two six-well), a blender (immersion is fine), a freezer, preferably a scale.
The amounts below make 1.5 pounds / 6 sticks / 3 cups / 678 grams of butter. This amount is easy to make in one twelve-cup muffin pan, which is how I do it. But you can scale it up or down depending on your tools and how much you want to make!
Ingredients:
540 grams refined coconut oil
138 grams unsweetened vegan yogurt (I use Silk Almond Yogurt)
Method:
Melt the coconut oil in the microwave or in a pot on the stove until completely liquid and warm to the touch if not already.
Combine the liquid oil and yogurt in a blender or tall container that fits an immersion blender and blend on high until reasonably emulsified. It might look a bit curdled and like it’s not coming together, but honestly, it’s fine! Just make sure you stir well between measurements in the next step.
Measure out a 56 gram / 1/4 cup portion of the mixture into each well of the muffin tin, stirring between scoops so the yogurt and oil remain pretty well combined. Again, it may look messy here, not like a smooth butter, but don’t worry. For cookies, it works!
Pop the muffin tin in the freezer and freeze until solid, at least 1 hour. Pop the disks of butter out (they should come out easily if you stick a sharp knife down one side of the well) and put in a zipper lock bag to store. Store in the freezer, or the fridge if you’re using soon.
Each disk is a half-stick / quarter cup / 56 grams butter, which makes your life easy when it’s time to bake!
Below is a video showing the disks straight out of the freezer and also how they look like a curdled mess on one side when the yogurt sinks down. Just so you know that if yours look like that, they’ll still work well!
Vegan Cookie 102: Replacing Eggs
Basically, I have always used flax eggs for cookies. I think they work great and I like how they’re such an old school classic of vegan cookery. Feels cozy to me. I rode for them in my Cookie Week video last year, even.
But! I will say though I’ve never had any complaints from omni cookie tasters, I do detect a teeny hint of off flavour from flax sometimes, that very lightly bums me out. At some point this year, I read Richard Makin’s chocolate chip cookie recipe on his fabulous blog, Schoolnight Vegan, and was intrigued by his enthusiasm for psyllium husks as a neutral-tasting egg replacer. Curiously, he has since removed the husks from the recipe in question, but I nonetheless decided to try that substitution this year. I tested it in a batch of Vaughn Vreeland’s Gingerbread Latte Cookie — featured in the vid above, my favourite from last year’s Cookie Week — and it worked a treat. The cookies were soft and chewy, no off flavours, I’m sold!
Vegan Egg Recipe
Ingredients per egg:
1 tsp psyllium husks (I used the husks, not powdered, I think you’d need less of the powdered type)
2.5 tbsp water
Method:
Mix the psyllium husks and water well in a little bowl with a fork or mini-whisk. Let stand for five to ten minutes till a gloopy gel forms. Use in place of eggs in your recipe!
Below is a video of how the gel should look before use. Yeah, it might look a bit gross, but…so do eggs?
Okay, that’s it for now, sending before the day’s caffeine wears off, some cookies and I will see you soon! ❤️🍪
Looking forward to trying some of the results
I am fascinated by your butter making method. Very interesting. I don't mind the flavor of earth balance personally, but this seems like an intriguing alternative. Looking forward to the cookies!