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Week Five: (Mostly) Vegan Peanut Butter Bombs

February 2, 2009 in Cookies | 2 comments

(This recipe came from a now out-of-print book called “The Damn Tasty! Vegan Baking Guide” by Kris Holechek.)

This week I decided to try a recipe at which my friend Jennifer Prochilo seems to excel. She continuously posts photos of these chocolate-y cookies called Peanut Butter Bombs that I really wanted to try.

I am not the biggest fan of the chocolate/peanut butter combo. I like Reese’s Pieces but find that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are better in moderation (and frozen! They absolutely must be frozen!). But I know most people enjoy that combo, especially my grandmother, so I decided to make a batch and take some to her for her 82nd birthday this week.

They’re mostly vegan because I’m not sure if the chocolate chips I bought were vegan or not. As it wasn’t important for them to be entirely vegan, I didn’t really try that hard to find chips that I was sure were vegan.

The recipe started with a chocolate dough that consisted of flour, baking soda, cocoa powder, soy milk, margarine, white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla:
Chocolate dough

Next was a peanut butter dough made with peanut butter, powdered sugar and the chocolate chips:
Peanut butter dough

The chocolate dough was rolled into a ball and then flattened out into a disc. The peanut butter dough was then rolled into a slightly smaller ball and put in the middle of the chocolate dough, which was then folded over the peanut butter:
Peanut butter innards

This is the point where I started having problems. Jennifer’s Peanut Butter Bombs are always pure chocolate on the outside. The peanut butter is completely hidden and a surprise for the eater. The peanut butter in my cookies kept leaking out the seams. I could not get the peanut butter completely encased in the chocolate:
Peanut Butter Bombs

My cookies were not sophisticated enough to be called “bombs”. So I’m renaming this recipe Peanut Butter IEDs (no disrespect to all you military folks out there, of course).

They tasted all right though:
Peanut Butter Bomb

And I think my grandma enjoyed her gift:
Gift-wrapped Peanut Butter Bombs

Tune in next week for Vegan Vanilla and Chocolate Cupcakes! Week Seven will turn back on the animal-product highway after my little detour down Vegan Boulevard, but I’m sure I’ll be making a few more pit stops in the next year.

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Week Four: Vegan Chai Latte Cupcakes

January 25, 2009 in "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World", Cupcakes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

I really want to try a lot of vegan recipes with this project, because I find that there are a LOT more vegans in my life than I thought, and everyone should be able to enjoy a cupcake or a cookie without completely going against everything they stand for.

This weekend is Rob’s birthday, so I thought it would be a good chance for me to try out a vegan recipe. This one comes from “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World” by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

This recipe was fairly easy to make, and didn’t require a trip to Whole Foods for some bizarre ingredient like agave nectar. It really only required me to buy soy milk, soy yogurt, cloves and cardamom. I already had everything else on hand.

Cinnamon, ginger, cloves and pepper
You’ll notice that the cardamom isn’t there. That’s because a jar the size of that pepper container was $11.50. That tiny little jar of cloves was nearly $7! I wasn’t ready to part with almost $20 for two spices, so I skipped the cardamom. I’m sure it would have enhanced the cupcakes that much more, but yikes, with the economy this bad, who can spend that much on spices?

Step one in this recipe was to heat the soy milk and then add black tea bags and let them steep for ten minutes. Once that was over, I ended up with this:
Tea-infused soy milk

That was added to the yogurt, as well as oil and sugar and whisked until the yogurt lumps were gone. Then I mixed in the dry ingredients, which included what amounted to an entire spice rack. Cinnamon, cloves, ginger and even pepper went into the mix! Once everything was combined, the batter (which was incredibly thin) went into the cupcake tins:
Filled tins

The recipe instructed me to fill the tins completely up. Once they baked for 20 minutes, I ended up with this:
Vegan Chai Latte Cupcakes
I hate it when cupcakes have that little ridge around the edges, where they puff out and over the tops of the tins. My advice for this recipe would be to not fill them up all the way, but almost. The batter made eight cupcakes, but I really should have divided it out better and made nine. I think they would have come out without that little ridge if I had.

The recipe advised a simple powdered sugar/cinnamon/nutmeg/cocoa powder dusting, but I gave Rob the option of that or the vegan buttercream frosting. He went with the powdered sugar concoction, which I think was probably the best decision. I think a buttercream would have overpowered the spiciness of the cupcakes.
Powdered sugar layer down

I decided to get a little fancy with the decoration, seeing as how these were part of Rob’s birthday present! So I made a little stencil out of tin foil for the cocoa powder/cinnamon/nutmeg part of the equation:
The heart stencil

I think they came out pretty cute!
Decorating cupcakes

Cupcake Hearts

The cupcakes tasted really good, although they had almost more of a muffin consistency than that of a cupcake. I don’t mind. I like muffins, too!

I can’t believe I’ve already baked a month’s worth of stuff! I kind of threw off the schedule by baking something on Saturday instead of Wednesday. I plan to bake again on Saturday for my next two projects. Next week will be Peanut Butter Bombs, a favorite of a friend of mine who is a vegan chef. The week after that will be Vegan Vanilla and Chocolate Cupcakes, which will serve a dual purpose. But more on that in two weeks.

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