Eric Kim's Matcha Latte Cookie But Vegan
#NYTCookieWeekButVegan2023
Hello, and welcome to all my new subscribers here at The World According To Tausch! I think many of you signed up because you’re as amped about vegan cookies as me, and that’s honestly thrilling!
ICYMI, this post is part of a series wherein I veganize all the cookies from the New York Times Cooking Cookie Week, arguably my favourite part of the holiday season. We kicked it off with an emotional introduction and some easy vegan butter and egg recipes right here.
Initially I was just going to update that post with all the cookies to make a mega cookie compendium. But upon consultation with a far savvier newsletter-er than I, I was convinced that a separate post per cookie will be less confusing. So that’s what this is! Cookie # 1!
I also had a minor breakdown about getting all the cookies done in one week when I have a day job and I’m working on a novel and I’m so tired and bad at doing dishes, when I realized: I don’t have to do them all in one week! I don’t work for the NYT! So it’s gonna be Cookie Weeks for this gal, but we’ll get them all done.
Regardless, for a bit there’ll be more emails from me than my longterm subscribers are used to. I promise I’ll go back to my typical slow as molasses pace come January! I thought I could make a better molasses in January joke, but that’ll have to be that.
Cookie 1: Matcha Latte Cookies by Eric Kim
—> The Actual Recipe (it’s a gift link, enjoy yourselves!)
—> TL;DR:
The cookie recipe works great as written using my homemade vegan butter and eggs; I think it would also work well with a good vegan block butter like Miyoko’s
EXCEPT my dough wasn’t moist enough when I added the flour; if this happens to you, add up to but no more than 2 tbsp of plantbased milk of choice, or water
If you underbake them, do this!
The ermine frosting came out great using homemade butter and oat milk
In general, ermine frosting is a great choice to veganize imo because the flour gives it structure at room temp
I added a dollop of yogurt to the frosting at the last minute, both for flavour and to mitigate a panic about colour. I think it was a nice addition, but I don’t think you need it.
Here we go! I’ve made some cookies! As I baked on Monday night, attempting to shoot a little video as I went, I realized I launched myself into this Cookie Week challenge with no clear idea what my “content goals” were for the project. I am a few weeks shy of 45 years old, am terrible at video, don’t have the right equipment — last night I balanced my tiny light on one coconut oil container, my phone on the other, and thought: good enough!
Reader, it wasn’t good enough. I simply may not be a video girl, it might be just me and words forever. I may try more video things as the week goes along, just know that I don’t think I’m good at visual media. I just like consuming it myself. While I love to read recipes, the culture’s obsession with video has benefited me immensely as I’ve tried to up my baking game over the past couple of years. Seeing the difference between proper creaming and mere combining, for example, has been revelatory.
Which brings us to Eric Kim, a true prince of the video form. Kim got his start in the ASMR world, and it shows. His way is so calming and charming, I could watch him for days. But he also really knows his shit. For three years running, now, his Cookie Week cookie is made by hand, and though he taught me the art of rubbing the butter and sugar together with a rubber spatula until light and fluffy back in the deep-pandemic Frosted Sugar Cookie days, I always welcome the chance to watch him do it again. During Cookie Week, I bake with my headphones on, pausing and rolling the tape as I go, comparing and contrasting my colours and textures with those of my NYT Cooking friends.
For the Matcha Latte cookie, it was initially dead easy to keep pace with Kim’s colours and textures, though my matcha was not quite as bright green. Also I was tired and impatient to get baking after dinner, so I didn’t let my butter soften enough, so I had to crush butter bits with a fork for a while before they were soft enough to cream the spatula way. Still, I got there! I’ve added a video of my butter pucks above so you can see what I mean about their slightly curdled appearance, and I’m here to say that it doesn’t matter for cookies! Once it’s all creamed together, there’s nary a curdle in site! Once my butter warmed up, the mixture came together into a gorgeous green fluffy paste. The psyllium egg (video added!), too, incorporated beautifully.
When I added the flour, though, I had problems. There just wasn’t enough liquid for all that flour. I subbed tahini for peanut butter because that’s what I had, and Kim said on Insta that would be okay. Probably my tahini had less moisture. Plus maybe my psyllium egg was a little shy of the typical 45 ml volume of a large egg? I used to be scared of baking because everyone said it was so scientific, so easy to fuck up, and that’s kind of true on both counts, but there’s also always so many variables, whether you’re veganizing or not, and when faced with a problem, my motto is “go with your gut.” My gut told me to add a tablespoon of soy milk, and then another. And then another little splash, which I confess I regret! But at last I had a beautiful dough.
After their initial twelve minute bake, these guys were too moist and cakey in the middle, and I was lowkey distraught. I’d been thrilled that Eric Kim himself said he’d be following my baking journey, but what if the destination sucked? What if it proved to him and his followers that you simply can’t make a good thing without butter and eggs? That for all my bravado, these subtitutions yielded nothing but a mess?
I went to bed, bolted awake at 6am, ran to my cookies, confirmed that they remained far too squidgy, feverishly researched for ten minutes, and THREW THEM BACK IN THE OVEN AT 300 DEGREES FOR ANOTHER 13 MINUTES???? I did it! You know what? It worked! So well! These cookies are bomb! They have a lovely chewy texture, the matcha flavour really comes through, the taste is MUCH better than a Starbucks matcha latte with oat milk. I’d try with peanut butter sometime, but I think the slight bitterness of the tahini is really serving here in concert with the grassy tea. David said, “They’re really good, babe!”
I will try to test these again to come up with a more definitive “Here’s how you veganize them perfectly,” but I have a lot of cookies to get through! Definitely in the future I’d add a maximum of 2 tbsp extra liquid and will follow my usual golden baking rule which is:
Check the cookies at the time the recipe suggests, poke them a bunch, freak out that they’re underdone but what if you go too far and they’re dryyyy? Then put them in for another two minutes, always, it’s the only way.
The Frosting
If you know me personally, you may know that I had a MAJOR FROSTING CRISIS two separate times in 2023, both during prep for important birthday parties for which I was doing cupcakes that no one had asked me to do, and yet had become my full-time job. During crisis number two, I came upon ermine frosting via the formidable Erin McDowell, and it truly saved my cream cheese frosting that kept sliding off the cake entire life. So I was very amped to see that Eric Kim was kicking off cookie week with a frosting that had grown so near and dear to my vegan heart.
In short, because many vegan butters are coconut oil-based, including mine, they melt at room temp faster than butter-based frostings do. You need to add palm-oil-based shortening (often unsustainable) or a metric ton of icing sugar to get it to stay put. But ermine frosting uses a base of a sort of pudding, thickened with flour or cornstarch before the whipping stage. So even if the butter starts to weep a bit, that pudding base tends to maintain a little — to quote Eric Kim — pompadour of frosting for at least a couple of hours so you can enjoy the party you brought cupcakes too with less massive flop sweat stains.
I followed Kim’s recipe but subbed my homemade butter for the butter (again had to crush it a bit with a fork prior to mixing), and Oatly barista-grade oat milk for the milk. I was going to use soy milk initially, I am a soy milk girl FOR LIFE, but when I sampled matcha lattes from Starbucks in preparation for Cookie Week, I couldn’t deny the oat milk one tasted way better.
Because I use organic sugar (non-organic is often not vegan, maybe I’ll say more about that later) and oat milk is a bit more beige than cow’s, my frosting was looking rather tan in the pudding stage and I freaked out! I couldn’t have a brown pompadour on my green cookies! It didn't seem right! So I lobbed a little scoop (maybe 1.5 tablespoons for the whole batch?) of Silk almond yogurt into the pot just as things were thickening up and cooked that into the mixture as well. I had vaguely been considering doing that for flavour — I like a little lactic acid (the tangy taste in yogurt) in anything tbh — and in the end, I’m glad I did it. Though ermine frosting is not as sweet as buttercream — another reason I love it! — the yogurt cut the sweetness even more, and maybe made the final cookie more latte-like imho?
Anyway, these were GREAT. I smoked a well-deserved joint last night and ate one, and even though it had been in the fridge, its frosting hat hardened in the cold, the experience was blissful. Thank you Eric Kim for this fabulous recipe!
Also, I’ll try not to make these so long every time? Or maybe deranged length is the point? Still working this all out! Please, though, feel free to tell me what you need or want to know vegan cookie-wise in the comments? Should I start…a Chat?? Once again, I’m publishing before I’m ready, anti-perfectionism emerging as a theme; to quote Vaughn Vreeland, official MC of this year’s Cookie Week, “It’s a cookie! It’s the holidays, honey. Pour yourself a cocktail, take a load off.” #obsessed
Final thing: this is zero pressure, but should anyone wish to throw a tip my way via subscription, feel free! I’m keeping my book anniversary offer going: annual subs are 50% off, plus you get my first novel, while supplies last! Byeeee!
I could not love this more. I freaking adore that this is a series and I will be tuning the eff in for the rest. Also no rush on pacing! Life is life and cookies are appreciated anytime!!! <3
Really enjoyed that 👍👍👍