Tuesday 15 November 2011

Best Blog Recipes: Rachel's Vegan Christmas Cookies

I came home this evening and really wanted a biscuit with my cup of tea. Can you believe that we didn't even have an old digestive lurking somewhere at the back of the cupboard? I can! We don't buy biscuits generally in this household, and when we do have biscuits (acquired due to cravings, gifts or baking sprees), we don't have them for very long!

But, it's a Friday evening as I write this and it's been a very tough week at work. I wanted something to go with my cuppa, and I didn't want to have to go out in the cold for it. I scoured my cookbooks looking for something that tickled my fancy - plenty of things did, but we have no butter (or rather, not enough for baking and marmalade on toast tomorrow morning!), and so they were all ruled out.

And then I remembered the best cookie I have ever made!

It was Halloween last year, and we had six burly men coming to stay in our tiny two-bedroomed terrace. I baked up a batch of Rachel's vegan christmas cookies (because if Rachel can post about these cookies in October, then I can bake them in October!), using dates instead of chocolate. They went down an absolute storm, even tempting a friend who 'doesn't eat sweet stuff' with a second helping. The next day I made a second batch to share with my family. These were even more successful, and my folks were, possibly for the first time, sold that 'vegan' doesn't translate as 'a aw carrot and a few lentils'. I jotted the recipe down in my bible of cooking bits and bobs, and then never made them since!


Until today!

They don't look quite like the ones on Rachel's blog; I think my dough may not have been squishy enough! Still tasty though!

We never ever ever ever have enough chocolate at our disposal to use in choc chip cookies, and as this was an unplanned baking session I hadn't bought any in. So I improvised with dates (my equivalent of chocolate heaven!), walnuts, stem ginger and even some candied peel, for a bonfire-cum-Christmas themed cookie.

Daniel came back from his run and gasped dramatically when he saw the tray of freshly-baked cookies on the side. We munched two each with a cuppa, in silence but for the occasional comment on the delicious treat.


Ahh, there's nothing quite like spontenaiety, is there? And just think, if we'd bought some biscuits in I'd probably be munching through those right now instead. One thing better than spontenaiety is the pleasure of biting into a cookie fresh out the oven, created to meet your exact needs that very evening.

2 comments:

  1. Tasty looking biscuits! Presented so beautifully on that lovely plate!x

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  2. I feel honoured to be in your Best Blog Recipes series with my funny little cookies especially when I'm amongst such luminaries as Jenna from Eat Live Run :D Yay for the random cookie recipe - I love that you have it in your recipe book :)

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