Go Shortbread, It's Your Birthday

Happy New Year, friends! What wishes and goals do you have for 2015? I have resolved to floss daily, and to continue baking/cooking/eating things that make me happy. One of these things will be easier than the other. First up to ease the pain: Maple Walnut Shortbread.

I love cookies in general, and the sweet, crumbly, buttery goodness of shortbread is a particularly simple yet classy form of this delicious dessert. In this recipe, the walnuts and maple syrup both add a deep, rich layer to the dough - a perfect match for hot tea on cold nights! I couldn't resist immediately sliding a tray of these into the oven, but you could also make the dough in advance, form it into a log, and freeze it for those nights when the sweet tooth strikes...as long you as remember to floss afterwards!

Maple Walnut Shortbread
veganized from Martha Stewart

Makes 3 dozen cookies

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt (sea salt is best here)
1 cup coarsely chopped toasted walnuts
1 cup Earth Balance at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup maple syrup

First, toast those nuts. Spread them out evenly on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven at 350 F for 6-10 minutes. Watch them like a hawk! As soon as they start to get a little golden, take them out - no one likes burnt nuts.

Once the nuts have cooled for about 10 minutes, grab your food processor. Dump in the flour, salt, and walnuts, and go to town. You want a pretty fine mixture without any large walnut chunks.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my food processor?

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream your butter until it's super soft. Add the sugar and keep mixing until it's a lemony color and very smooth. Now add the maple syrup and go at it again for another minute or so. Add the dry ingredients and mix one last time, stopping as soon as everything is evenly incorporated. You should have a slightly sticky dough that isn't crumbly or runny. Cover your bowl with a dish towel and pop it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, or up to 24 hours.

Heavenly.

Once your dough is nice and chilled, preheat the oven to 350 F and line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Carve out hunks of dough and form them into 1-inch balls. Once they're all neatly lined up on the baking sheet, use the bottom of a glass to flatten them out to about 1/2 inch thick. I had some leftover walnuts so also stuck little chunks on top of my shortbread to dress it up a bit! Throughout all this, you might need some extra flour to keep the dough from stick to your hands or the glass.

Pre-rolling!

Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until the edges of your shortbread start to turn a nice golden brown. If you'd like, you can dust them with powdered sugar once they cool, or just pop the warm nuggets straight into your mouth as they are. Enjoy!

Gingerbread Balls

Merry almost Christmas, friends! I know you've all probably inhaled an unreasonable amount of cookies already this holiday season, but on the off chance that you're still looking for a sweet fix, I present you with these delectable Gingerbread Balls.

My wonderful mama had these waiting for me when I arrived in California for the holidays and they were SO good. Crispy on the outside, impossibly fluffy on the inside, and radiating a spicy holiday smell. Now, you can absolutely make gingerbread people with these (non-heteronormative and non-binary gender, of course), or you can do what I did and go straight for the balls. They're quicker and softer that way! Lolz.

Click on over to the always magnificent Minimalist Baker blog for this awesome recipe. I added 1/4 teaspoon each of cloves and allspice for even more fragrant magic, and opted out of frosting in favor of a light dusting of powdered sugar, but you do you. I also used a store-bought gluten-free flour, but think these gingerbread balls would probably work out fine with regular flour - if you give it a shot, let me know!

Almond butter and five different spices - can't go wrong.  

Slower than molasses. 

Gluten-free goodness.  

Ready for baking! 

Summer Snickerdoodles

The title of this post is a little misleading - there's nothing particularly summery about these snickerdoodles, aside from the fact that it's summer right now and I'm currently finishing off the last cookie in this batch. You can totally be a rebel and make these in the winter, too!

Snickerdoodles are never the first cookie to pop into my mind when I'm trying to decide what to bake, but I'm never mad when I do end up cranking out a batch of them. I like to make these cookie fatty and fluffy rather than chewy, and of course to douse them with a healthy coating of sweet, crispy cinnamon sugar. The coconut oil in this recipe makes these little guys extra fragrant, too, so your kitchen will smell particularly delicious!

Snickerdoodles
Makes 18 small cookies

1¼ cup flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup Earth Balance
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon soy milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon

In a medium bowl, whisk together all your dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, and cinnamon. Separately, melt the Earth Balance and coconut oil, then pour in the maple syrup, soy milk, and vanilla, and stir everything up really well.

Me gusta la canela, me gustas tu. 

Slowly pour the wet ingredients into the dry and use a wooden spoon to form a soft, slightly sticky dough. It'll come together quickly and easily, so no need to bust out the electric mixer for this! Once all the ingredients are evenly incorporated, cover the bowl with a towel or some plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge. You want to get these nice and cold so that it's easier to make snickerdoodle snowballs.

Exhibit A. 

When you're ready to bake some cookies, preheat the oven to 375 F and cover a large cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Now grab that extra sugar and cinnamon, pour it into a shallow bowl, and mix it up really well. Scoop the dough up into little golf ball-sized nuggets and roll them around in the cinnamon sugary goodness to completely coat them.

Like little donut holes!

You can flatten the balls out a little bit with your fingers or the bottom of a drinking glass once you put them on the cookie sheet, but you don't have to - they're small enough that they'll bake quickly and evenly either way. Pop them in the oven for 10-12 minutes, until the tops are firm and the bottoms are getting a tiny bit golden brown, then let them cool slightly before enjoying with some afternoon coffee or tea!

Too Much Thyme

You know how when you buy herbs at the grocery store, they usually come in just ridiculously immense bushels? Like, when I am ever going to need a 3 pounds of mint or cilantro? The solution here is undoubtedly for me to start an herb garden so that I can just pick up a couple springs of rosemary or green onions when I need them, but in the meantime I have several fistfuls of thyme sitting on my counter so we're making Dark Chocolate Thyme Cookies.

Not that I'm mad, mind you! There's something deliciously sophisticated about these little gems. Maybe it's the rich dark chocolate, or the savory-sweet combo, or the delicate crumbly texture - regardless, making these will make you feel like a real adult. Or it'll make you annoy your girlfriend with lots of stupid thyme/time puns while you bake...it's a toss up.

These cookies are super quick and easy to make. You probably have all the ingredients in your pantry already, aside from the thyme (unless you're my mom and you have a beautiful garden full of herbs...hi Mom!), so there's really no excuse - grab your mixer and get to baking!

Dark Chocolate Thyme Cookies
Veganized from The View From Great Island

Makes 30 cookies

¾ cup Earth Balance
½ cup powdered sugar
½ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons fresh thyme, finely chopped
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

In a medium bowl, cream the Earth Balance, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder until they're super smooth, then add the vanilla and stir a couple more thymes (hee). This will all look a little liquidy, which is fine!

Butter, sugar, and chocolate - i.e. everything good and holy

Add the flour and mix just until it's nicely blended into the dough. Pour in the thyme and chocolate, stir to combine, and stick the whole bowl into your fridge for about an hour so the dough has a chance to firm up a little bit.

This is where the magic happens

Preheat the oven to 375 F and line a couple of cookies sheets with aluminum foil. Grab your dough and make little cookie balls - they should be more or less the size of a walnut. Space them out evenly on the cookie sheet and pop them in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until they're firm on the outside and have lost their squishy texture.

Thyme to bake these suckers

Once you take the cookies out of the oven, let them set on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before you transfer them to a wire rack/your mouth. Eat with pinkies up!

Tahini Bikini

Don't worry, this post doesn't include any weird "food as body paint" situations. What it does include, though, is a recipe for unbelievably delicious cookies that I may or may not have made three times in the past two weeks: Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies.

I love tahini (a paste made of ground sesame seeds) and have used it in various savory dishes, but had never thought to put it sweets until I came across this recipe on Hell Yeah It's Vegan. It was a rainy afternoon and I figured I would experiment a bit with my own concoction, particularly as I wanted to send some treats out to my family. Well...the second I took a bite of one of the warm cookies, I knew there was no way that batch was leaving my kitchen. The next morning I bundled myself up, trekked out for another jar of tahini, and made another couple dozen cookies, some of which did actually make it to California.

The tahini flavor is super intense in the raw dough (which I personally really loved), but it really mellows out when you bake the cookies. The end result is a nutty and rich but not overly sweet, especially if you use dark chocolate. And just think how damn classy you're gonna feel when you bring fancy tahini cookies to your next office party! No one needs to know how simple they really are - it'll be our little secret.

Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies

Makes 2 dozen cookies

½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
⅔ cup tahini
¼ cup Earth Balance
¼ cup soy milk (or any other non-dairy milk)
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate, but you do you!)

Preheat your oven to 375 F and lined a couple baking sheets with aluminum foil. In a large bowl, mix together the sugars, tahini, and Earth Balance until you have a really smooth, thick batter. Add the soy milk and vanilla and mix again for another minute or so.

Super smooth.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt, then dump that into the batter and mix until everything is nicely blended together. Add your chocolate chips and stir one last time. You could also shredded coconut or chopped walnuts here if you'd like - just stir them in along with the chocolate!

Chocolate chips are mandatory, though.

Grab an ice cream scoop or a big spoons or your two hands and make little dough balls - mine were about the size of a golf ball, but you could make giant cookies if you prefer. Just be sure to flatten them out a bit once you put them on the baking sheet, because they're not going to spread too much by themselves.

Seriously just pop one of these in your mouth. You won't regret it. 

Pop those suckers in the oven and bake for 12 minutes, until they start to turn golden brown. Once you take your cookies out of the oven, let them sit for a couple of minutes before taste testing, because they're going to be a little gooey while they're still hot. Warning: the smell of these baking is going to brings all the bois to the yard, so brace yourself!

Mexican Commitment Ceremony Cakes

They're just like Mexican Wedding Cakes, but for morally corrupt crusaders against family values like yours truly! Apparently these cookies are also called Russian Tea Cakes, but let's not even go there.

Alright, all snark aside, you guys are going to love these teeny sugar-coated cookies - they're ridiculously delicious and so easy to make! This sweet treat is super rich and buttery, with a great nutty crunch and a melt-in-your-mouth powdered sugar coating. 

These cookies only require 5 ingredients and approximately 20 minutes, so if you're in the market for a last-minute contribution to a potluck or afternoon tea then these little guys are perfect. Plus they're tiny, so you can totally eat 7 of them in one sitting without feeling guilty. That's how it works, right? 

Mexican Wedding Cakes

(adapted from Hell Yeah It's Vegan!)

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

1 cup Earth Balance

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or a nutty liqueur like amaretto, because YOLO)

2 cups flour

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

1 cup walnuts

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Chop up the walnuts, spread them on a cookie sheet, and pop them in the oven while it heats up. Keep a close eye on them - the line between "toasted" and "completely charred" is pretty fine. You'll want your walnuts to be fragrant and just a teeny bit golden brown. 

Chop chop!

In the meantime, grab a medium bowl and mix the Earth Balance and vanilla until creamy. Add the flour and 6 tablespoons of the powdered sugar and go to town - you're going to need to mix for a couple of minutes before the dough comes together. 

Keep mixing!

Quick quick, take out the walnuts before they burn! Once they've cooled a little, mix them into the cookie dough. If you're the kind of person who liberally taste-tests raw cookie dough before it goes into the oven (who isn't?), you're going to worry that I've ripped you off because this concoction is admittedly a little bland and uninspiring. But have faith, it's gonna be okay!

Also, check out the sweet apron my mom got me. 

Dig into the dough and make cookie balls that are a little bit smaller than a ping pong ball. Don't worry about flattening them or spacing them out or anything like that. Once you fill up a cookie sheet, just stick it in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, until the cookies are a very little brown on the bottom. Wait a couple of minutes, then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Enlist your friends for help!

Once the cookies are sort of cool but still warm (I gave them about 10 minutes), you're ready for the final step. Pour the rest of your powdered sugar into a flat dish and roll the cookies around like little snowballs. If the powdered sugar immediately melts on contact, wait a couple more minutes for the cookies to cool. That's it! Your cookies are ready to devour - just watch out for powdered sugar spillage!

Guest Post: Kiran's Spiced Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have such a special treat for you all today - my friend Kiran graciously agreed to contribute a guest post to this little blog!

There are several reasons why this should make you super excited. First, Kiran is an excellent chef. Her partner, Hannah, is gluten intolerant, so Kiran has mastered the art of gluten-free cooking in a way that I can only dream of. Plus, Kiran and and Hannah's apartment is impossibly adorable and they are some of the best hostesses I've had the pleasure of visiting, so I knew this recipe was guaranteed to be beautiful and cozy and wonderful, and of course I was right.

So without further ado, Kiran's amazing Mestizaje Cookies!

Greetings to everyone! It is an honor to be a guest on Justyna’s slice of the interwebs. Justyna and I met because of our mutual friend, Steph (Justyna’s roomie) and her discovery that the two of us were destined to be soul sisters. From our common interests in running, international education, pickling, baking, cooking, crafting, yoga, House of Cards, and of course more foodie related activities, we have endless topics to discuss and bond over. Lucky for me, Justyna and Steph recently moved in a couple blocks from Hannah and my apartment so we got to try her magic brownies first hand.

I’m not quite sure I can compare to this woman’s baking magic, but these cookies have been very healing to the long icy winter we’ve had in D.C. They are a beautiful mestizaje of a classic chocolate chip cookie, mulling spices, and the simmer pot they have going at Williams Sonoma.

Orange Spiced Chocolate Chip Cookies (gluten-free and vegan)

2 ½ cups of almond flour

1 cup gluten-free oats

¼ tsp sea salt

¼ tsp baking soda

10 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp vanilla extract

½ cup agave

1 cup of Enjoy Life vegan chocolate chunks (finely chopped)

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp ground cloves

¼ tsp nutmeg

orange zest (one full orange)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

2. Combine all the dry ingredients (flour, oats, salt, baking soda, chocolate chunks, and spices) in a large bowl.
3. Stir together wet ingredient (coconut oil, vanilla, and agave) and mix into dry ingredients.
4. Form balls and flatten onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Feel free to sprinkle some extra sea salt on top if you truly fancy the sweet/salty combo. 
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
6. Cool for 5-10 minutes as they may break easily.
7. Enjoy with a glass of almond milk, a warm blanket, and some Netflix episodes!