I had so many cookie fails today. It was rather discouraging for my poor baking heart.
I made FOUR batches of cookies today. FOUR!!! And only one turned out. One out of four is a horrible average. Under ordinary circumstances it wouldn’t matter, because I’m usually just cooking/baking for me [and I rarely (slash never) show you guys my unsuccessful recipes]. However, as I mentioned before, these desserts have been specially requested for a work party. And since this is my one shot to win my coworkers over with delicious vegan treats, I can’t show up with your average so-so cookies. No. They have to be extraordinary.
And there’s nothing extraordinary about these. Yikes.
I followed Mama Pea’s recipe for soft-baked oatmeal raisin cookies, but I must have over-whipped the Earth Balance (and liquid ingreds) before adding in the dry portion because the cookies went from this…
To this…
What gives?
To be fair, it was also my first time using my Kitchen Aide stand-mixer. So there was that wild card at play as well.
Appearances aside, the dough tasted amazing. I’m serious. It was ridiculously delicious. So even though the cookies ended up as flat as pancakes after I baked them, I still couldn’t stop eating them.
I devoured seven for breakfast.
That’s the problem with eating flat cookies that break off in parts…they don’t feel like whole cookies because they aren’t whole, but then suddenly the entire tray is empty and you feel a little sick. :S
Don’t let the photo fool you. The cookies cracked the second the spatula hit them.
After my first fail, I set to work on a different recipe (this one adapted from a combo of Veganomicon and Babycakes recipes).
I kinda made it up as I went though…since I didn’t have all the ingredients on hand.
This was another one with hugely successful dough, but a flop of a final product.
Some worked out, but half of them opened up when they were in the oven. Like there wasn’t anything holding them together.
Gah. I guess I was so worried about over-whipping the butter with this batch that I didn’t mix them well enough. So the dough didn’t stick together enough and I ended up with some crumbly cookies.
And some decent ones.
I still wasn’t satisfied that these would be good enough to lure my fellow RNs over to the dark vegan side though.
So I went for another batch.
This time, the recipe was all my own.
I have more success when I stick to what I know anyway.
Coconut? Yes. Peanut butter? Yes.
And look how perfect they came out!
Gorgeous. And tasty. Crispy coconut on the outside and soft peanut-y flavor on the inside. 100% co-worker-win-over-able.
Peanut butter coconut macaroons (vegan)
Ingredients:
- 1/8 cup Earth Balance
- 1/3 cup peanut butter
- 2 cup shredded coconut
- 1/3 cup turbinado sugar
- 1/8 cup coconut sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup pastry flour
- 1/2 cup nondairy milk (I used soymilk creamer)
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
Directions:
Mix everything together, mold into balls, and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.
The dessert gods finally smiled on me. 🙂
Make me feel better, share a cooking/baking disaster!
Hehehe…i’m sorry for the frustrating-ness of failed baking, Eliese…but this also makes me feel much better about my own baking disaster, lol! 🙂 I bet those peanut butter macaroons will blow your co-workers socks off….with that ingredient list how can they not?! 😉 I love that you ate seven cookies for breakfast. easily done! i could eat seven nanas cookies, i think…haven’t tried though…it’d be rather pricey! 😛 xyx
my (most recent) baking disaster? exhibit a, below.
http://practisingwellness.com/2011/07/17/how-not-to-bake-tea-loaf/
Aww I feel for you, that’s always so frustrating because you feel bad about all the ingredients you have end up using! My sister was cooking the other day and she was cracking eggs into the mixture. First two fine, third one… completely black. Seriously eeeew! So of course, the whole batch was wasted!
Just be proud that the batch that came out well were your own recipe 🙂
(Btw check out my blog if you’re interested in writing a guest post, I’d love to have your contribution!)
Hey Elise! First things first- even your crumbliest, driest cookies surely taste better than the brownies that I’ve made using turmeric (two batches, why I ever did that twice I will never know). As much as I like healthy additions, leave the turmeric out of it and nobody will get hurt!
Second, wondering why you started using the KitchenAid mixer. I’ve debated getting one for a while, and as much as I might embrace the aesthetics of a light pink or yellow version standing on my counter, I’m not sure I’d really need it. Any thoughts?
They LOOK amazing!! I never really did the vegan baking thing because I kind of quit sugar and a lot of flour when all the cool books came out. I went straight to tons of dates and coconut oil raw desserts, which I am weaning myself off of as well……..
They all look great to me!
Even those flat as a pancake cookies look delicious!! But the ones that turned out look great too. I think I’m just in a cookie mood 😀
thanks caroline 🙂 i would say save the money. we got it as a wedding present, but i only used it because i knew i was going to be doing big batches. thats said, you can probably see the last batch (the one that turned out) was made by hand mixing. for future cookies ill go with what i know. maybe for non-cookie uses the stand mixer is great, but flour isnt that bad of an arm workout. when i start making mashed potatoes…then it may be a different conversation. hope that helps!
i saw that one, but it looked like it wasnt too bad…as long as it tasted good, right?
oh man. thats HORRIBLE. hahaha. but it cheered me up 😉
Peanut butter + coconut in the form of macaroons? All my wildest dreams have come true!! hehe And don’t feel too bad about your baking mishap, atleast you didn’t use a cup of salt instead of sugar in a batch of cookies :/ ooooops!
Oh, Elise, it totally happens to the best of us! I made a lovely dinner for me and the boyfriend last night, replete with homemade vegan vanilla corn ice cream. I added 1 tsp each of xanthan gum and guar gum to thicken the ice cream and it turned out so so gummy! Huge bummer. The flavor is awesome, but the texture…not so much. I don’t want to throw it away as the flavor is so good. Lesson learned: don’t over-gum!
My first ever baking venture when I was little, I burned two whole TRAYS of cookies. Who knew it was a bad idea to put them all in the oven at once and not pay attention? More recently (like this past Christmas) I was making ginger snaps to show off my major baking skills. I added about 3x the called for amount of molasses. It was…weird.
The macaroons look yummy! PB and coconut?? Yes, please!
I’m SO impressed with your cookie-baking perseverance! And with your final product. They look out of this world. Usually this story happens backwards for me–I try to experiment with my own crazy recipe idea, and after a couple failed attempts, I turn to a professional to show me how it’s done haha. So at least you have good skillz!! 🙂
If you’re looking for a vegan cookie recipe you need to make Super Charge Me cookies from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. The recipe comes up if you Google them…best things EVER.
I am a pretty awful baker, and my food always LOOKS horrible. I can’t think of anything of my own in particular, but once my mom was making oatmeal cookies and forgot to add the oatmeal! Complete doofus.
What about making good old Supercharge Mes? They are SO easy and everyone loves them!
Now that’s dedication and perseverance! Can’t wait to make these 🙂
attempt #1 would probably bake better if you just chill the dough a couple of hours. I bake tons of very unhealthy cookies for friends for holidays and the trick is to let the dough chill for at least 1 hour to avoid it spreading out. Looks yummy – I’ll have to practice myself!
I posted about dough and temperature here
http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2011/08/flourless-chocolate-peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies.html
Colder dough will prevent some of that splooge effect you have going on with Mama Pea’s cookies. See the example pics in my post of cold dough vs warm dough and ultimate finished product. Dramatic.
The Vcon/Babycakes..probably a lack of proper binder, i.e. eggs, and if using flax eggs, you’d then also have to increase either the fat and/or flour as a binder. Hard to tell but that’s my hunch.
Baking disasters? One a week. That i usually salvage 🙂
thank you!!!! ill try that next time. i bet thats the trick.
im confused. that post doesnt show the cold dough vs warm dough. was it a different post than the one you linked? your posts are so crazy long averie, haha!
Even the flat cookies look delicious!
I once tried to make some kind of avocado, cocoa, stevia, freezer cookie. I WAY overestimated the stevia and they were SO bitter. However, because avocado and stevia are outrageously expensive here [I almost fell over when I found stevia in Madrid!] I refused to throw them away. I froze them anyway… and to this day they are still in my tiny freezer. My thought was “one day I will throw one in a smoothie and it they will not be an entire waste.” Hasn’t happened yet. 🙂
No, that’s the post
The chocolate PB cookies are cold dough, i.e they are real puffy
The other ones, the plain PB, were warm dough, i.e. they are flat
I mentioned it halfway thru…sorry, just trying to help you troubleshoot!
Tootally…don’t judge a book by its cover and al that! 😛 The texture was a little bit (okay, a lot) off on this one, just because of the way i cooked it. Grilled tea loaf is not really the best, lol! Very crunchy and then rubbery on the inside. Oops. But i learnt my baking lesson and haven’t made the same mistake twice! 🙂 xyx
I love those too, they’re amazing! 😀 xyx
I hate baking flops! They’re so disappointing. The first time I ever made vegan cookies, they turned out like weird muffin tops — not bad if you wanted muffin tops, but not exactly the chocolate chip cookies I was expecting. The worst baking disaster I had, though, involved flour that was full of moth larvae. Ick! That’s why all of my flour and sugar live in the freezer now. I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.
And for a random piece of advice: I’ve had great success with all the cookies I’ve made from “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar” and “The Joy of Vegan Baking.”
How about the times I tried to make coconut flour pancakes and ended up with failed pancakes AND inedible (actually nasty tasting) dough. Wah. Your blueberry scones were the success I needed, thanks!
http://minnooo-ontherun.blogspot.com/2011/08/minnooo-vs-coconut-flour.html
ah, got it. thanks for the clarification averie 🙂
Your creation sounds tasty! 🙂 My worst baking disaster was on Valentine’s Day this year. I attempted to make molten chocolate cakes for the manfriend. Lets just say they ended up looking like hockey pucks. We went out for fro yo instead. lol.
I would have taken the splat flat cookies off your hands. I love cookies like that! And now I want a cookie.
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thanks for the rec! added to me birthday wish list 🙂
YES! those were the ones i set out to make and then i forget what they were called. i want ED&BV so badly, but for now ill steal the recipe off the internet 🙂
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I tried these peanut-butter macaroons with oat flour instead of the pastry flour for a gluten-free version. They came out fantastic! I warm a couple in the microwave for just a few seconds and they taste just like they’re out of the oven again. My new favorite treat!
yum! like warm macaroons 🙂