Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

I think oatmeal cookies get a bad wrap. Especially the vegan variety. Granted there are some pretty bad oatmeal cookies out there, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact one of my favorite cookies of all time was the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies my aunt used to make. I have yet to perfect a vegan version of those though. They were unbelievably good. It just goes to show you, it’s not just the recipe, but the technique.

I was particularly drawn to this recipe because it replaced those pesky raisins with cranberries, which is obviously WAY better, not to mention much more holiday appropriate. They’re soft in the center and just ever so slightly cakey. Not to mention insanely yummy. I think you should just make them and let the cookies speak for themselves.

Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

adapted from Martha Stewart, found here

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 Tbsp arrowroot powder
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 3 Tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup Earth Balance
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3 cups old fashioned oats
• 1 cup dried cranberries

Whisk together the dry ingredients: flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda. Beat together the Earth Balance and sugars in an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment. Beat until fluffy. Lower the speed on your mixer and slowly add the liquid ingredients, continuing to beat until well combined. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat until a dough forms. Take the bowl out of the mixer and then stir in the cranberries and oatmeal by hand. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350° and prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper. Using your hands, shape 2 tablespoons of the dough into disks and place an inch apart on your baking sheets.

Bake for 16 – 18 minutes, rotating half way through. They should be browned on the edges but still soft. Let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes and then let cool completely on a wire rack.

Shoes!

Dear friends, I know I promised you cookies, but I’m having a major shoe crisis. I need your help.

I can’t decide on shoes for our wedding. I’ve already gone horribly astray. I am really quite a bad shopper, especially when it comes to shoes.

It all started when I bought the grey shoes above. I really like them. I thought I’d add a little lace or something. But, these lovelies were politely vetoed for the heels were too high. It’s true, for a girl who rarely wears heels, it’s not the best idea for me to be prancing about in such things (although I love the shoes, and will save them for another occasion since they were inexpensive).

Then I found these beautiful olsenHaus wedge mary janes and fell in love. They of course are much more than I want to spend. I’m also not sure why I am obsessed with grey shoes. I’m pretty sure they don’t go with my dress. Gosh they’re so pretty though.

Next I took a trip to Humanitaire to see what they had left in stock (they’re closing their doors and selling everything at a major discount so I suggest you check out what they have post haste). Again I was plagued with the problem of the too high heel. I loved these black Neuaura Sparrow platforms. Is it appropriate to wear black shoes under a wedding dress?

Then, in a moment of desperation, I bought these horrendous things. I thought I’d take off the bow and replace it with some extra lace from my dress. They’re so darn ugly though and hideously bright white. Back to the store they go.

What I’d really like is something like these. Something old-timey. I can’t find anything suitable though. I really don’t want the ones with lace windows that keep popping up in my various searches. I keep finding ones that would work, but they’re always black. Something seems odd about wearing black shoes under my off-white dress.

So friends, shoe enthusiasts, I’m asking for your help. I’m taking suggestions and recommendations. I have only three requirements.

1. They can’t have a super high heel. Approximately 2 – 3 inches is probably about right.
2. They must be vegan friendly. Fabric is great or there are always synthetics.
3. They should in some way match these fabrics (since there isn’t a completed dress to show you).

If you find something for me I will do something really nice for you. I promise.

Lemon Icebox Cookies

Next on our cookie agenda are these lovely lemon ice box cookies. These tiny little cookies are the perfect bite-sized snack or after dinner treat. They would be great gathered in a pretty bag and given as a gift. They’re sweet and crunchy with just the right amount of lemon.

You start with the lemon zest. There is something that always excites me about putting lemon zest in a recipe. Perhaps it’s because I know it’s going to be delicious. I can’t wait till we have a home where I can have a lemon tree. I hate buying lemons, as I never seem to use them quickly enough, so I often don’t buy them and then I don’t have them when I need them…but I digress.

For this recipe we’re going to use a food processor. Make sure you have a big enough bowl (a mini food processor won’t do) or you’re better off just working by hand with a dough mixer. It is rather pleasing to watch your flour and Earth Balance mixture turn to dough, just like that, but don’t get carried away and over mix. Remember to pulse!

This makes a fairly large batch, probably double what I was expecting, but the tiny cookies will most likely “magically” disappear once made. Plus you can keep the dough frozen for a few weeks and bake a few whenever you like.

Now I have a little confession with this recipe. As I mentioned before, one of the most difficult parts of taking a standard cookie recipe and making it vegan is replacing the eggs. Eggs play many different rolls in baked goods and different substitutes serve different purposes. Since this recipe used only egg yolks, I wanted to add a little bit of moisture back into the cookies. The obvious answer here is water. So I plopped in 3 tablespoons of water, before I had mixed the dough, and right before I remembered that there were only egg yolks, not full eggs (think less volume). Immediately the dough was overly wet and impossible to handle. I had to add back about a 1/4 cup of flour to bring it to a better consistency.

That being said, you might be fine just leaving out the water all together and only using 2 cups of flour, but I’ll give you the recipe as I made it since I’m sure it still comes out tasting fantastic.

Lemon Icebox Cookies

from Martha Stewart, originally found here

• 2 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp lemon zest (about 4 small lemons)
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup Earth Balance
• 3 Tbsp water
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar for rolling

Put the flour, sugar, salt and lemon zest in your food processor and pulse until combined. The lemon zest will basically disappear.

Add the Earth Balance into the bowl and pulse until it combined into a granulated mixture. Add water and lemon juice until a dough is formed.

Separate the dough into 3 sections and shape into 1 – 2 inch rolls. Wrap in plastic and freeze for at least two hours.

Preheat the oven to 300º and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. On another piece of parchment, sprinkle the remaining sugar and roll your logs to coat the outside. Slice into 1/4 inch rounds and lay about an inch apart on your baking sheets. Cook for 16 to 18 minutes, rotating the sheets half way through. Let cookies cool on a wire rack and enjoy.

Espresso-Bean Shortbread

Dear readers, in the next few weeks, Cute and Delicious will be filled with cookies. You don’t mind, right? I was searching for inspiration for some holiday cookies and kept coming back to a bunch of Martha Stewart recipes. I felt it was most necessary that these be veganized, so I’ll be doing just that, and sharing my experience and recipes with all of you.

I started with a very simple and appealing recipe for Espresso-Bean Shortbreads. This appeared to be not only one of the most enticing flavors, but also the easiest to make a vegan version. The only non-vegan ingredient is butter, which I personally don’t even think about for a second, as Earth Balance is such a superb replacement. It’s really a no-brainer. With cookies, it starts getting tricky with replacing eggs.

Now there are a few things you need to know about Martha Stewart cookies.

1. They use a lot of butter. This recipe uses 1 1/2 cups. Mostly they average about one cup. Consider yourself warned. Like I said, Earth Balance works great as a substitute.
2. They involve a bit of advanced preparation. There is nearly always a fair amount of chilling time, so make sure you read through each recipe in advance. Don’t think you’ll just be popping these out of the oven in 1/2 an hour.

The little espresso guys are easy to make and easier to eat. They’re dense, slightly crunchy and not too sweet. Moreover, they definitely pack a caffeine kick. Not cookies you want to eat right before bed time, trust me. I didn’t have a single complaint with the recipe, except that it took quite awhile with multiple chilling and freezing periods. I would recommend making them sort of flat, and not to make sure they are cooked all the way through.

So here are the humble but delicious beginnings of my cookie marathon. I personally think cookies make a great gift, and the ones here are sure to impress, but also travel well. Even though I’ve just begun, I can already see how easy it will be to get lost in a black hole of holiday cookies…but off we go anyway.

Espresso-Bean Shortbread

from Martha Stewart, originally found here

• 1 1/2 cup Earth Balance
• 3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp instant espresso powder
• 2 Tbsp warm water
• 2 Tbsp finely ground espresso beans
• 3 cups plus 2 Tbsp all purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp salt

Cream together Earth Balance and sugar in a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, beat until slightly fluffy.

Combine the espresso powder and warm water in a small bowl and stir until combined. Beat the espresso mixture and beans into the EB and sugar.

Whisk together flour and salt and gradually add to butter mixture, beating until combined. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a tablespoon or cookie scoop, and your hands, create small ovals bean shaped cookies. Place each cookie on the baking sheet 1 – 2 inches apart. To create the split in the coffee bean press a chopstick over the top of each cookie. Place each tray in the freezer to firm for 10 – 20 minutes

Bake for 16 to 18 minutes rotating sheets half way through. The bottoms should be browned, with the tops, just barely browning when you remove them.  Let cool completely on a wire rack before eating.

Weekend plans

Oh goodness it’s almost the weekend and I’m awfully excited. This weekend, we don’t have a lot of plans which means I’m extra happy. It doesn’t mean we’ll be hanging out and relaxing though. This weekend will be full of wedding planning mostly. We’re going to design our invitations for one which I’ve been dying to do. I have an idea in mind and we’ve got a few key elements to put them together.

It’s hard not to tell you all about them right now, but once they’ve gone out I’ll have tons of photos I promise (and there might be some clues in this post). They’re going to have a Victorian theme (mixed somewhat with handmade, if that’s possible). I have to say, it’s hard to balance the dark creepiness of the Victorian era that Shawn and I love with the sweet romantic feeling of a wedding. While we both love skulls and medical instruments and such, they’re not something you’d exactly want to see on a wedding invite. I think we’re going to do a good job of making it all work though. I can’t wait to get started. Right now I’m super inspired by this video of invitations being made.

We still have about a million other plans to work on for the wedding, so hopefully we’ll be able to make a dent this weekend. We have about 2 1/2 months left! We still haven’t picked a caterer yet. We found a cool hotel for our out of town guests to stay at only to have them tell us a week later that they were totally booked. I can’t even tell you how many times family members have asked me why we don’t have a registry yet. (We do now, by the way, as of last night.)

We still have official engagement photos to take, even though we’ve been engaged now for awhile, I’m not passing up this opportunity to take some awesome photos of me and Shawn. We have decorations to think of and wardrobes to finalize. Not to mention a super secret project I’m working on for our guests that is taking me a ridiculous amount of time. Not that I mind a bit. I love it, in fact.

Besides that I’ll be cooking up some holiday treats and doing some decorating…maybe even getting a tree. I think our first batch of holiday cookies will be made this weekend plus whatever else I can come up with. I am hopefully going to start testing some holiday recipes. What are your favorite holiday foods?

Also, in case you hadn’t heard, Earth Balance is holding a recipe contest where 8 lucky winners will get a $400 gift certificate to Whole Foods and a years supply of Earth Balance. How cool is that? From a girl who uses more Earth Balance than a normal person should, I totally want to win this. I’ll have to think of something really awesome to make.