Sunnut Butter Buttons

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Holiday cookie season. Before we had food allergic-children, any day leading up to the holidays were easily among our most favorite times of the year, along with any one of the other 364 days on the calendar. 

Things are necessarily different now, but there's no need to despair. On a recent trip down the candy aisle at our local grocery store, as we were walking by the Hershey's Kisses, we were met by a recipe card for Peanut Butter Blossoms, starring melt-in-your-mouth but very much off limits Hershey's Kisses, and sometimes toxic and highly offensive peanut butter.

Our recent discovery (thank you Ms Lauren!) of sunflower seed butter, aka sunnut butter, has made these cookies much easier to replicate in a food allergy-safe way. Straight out of the jar, our kids want nothing to do with sunnut butter, but baked into a cookie, the taste is somewhat mild and very well tolerated by our otherwise sunnut butter-hating children. It's very bewildering, why they don't like sunnut butter. Except for the finish, it is very very very close in taste to peanut butter.

We considered making our own version of Hershey's Kisses, but opted against it. After all, that would have entailed a LOT of effort, and we go for easy whenever we can. Instead of melting safe chocolate and solidifying it into coins to later press into the cookie tops, when the time came we just pressed three or four chocolate chips where one much larger Hershey's Kiss would have gone. Worked like a charm.

We're providing the recipe as written by Hershey's, and noting the changes we made where appropriate.

Ingredients

• 48 Hershey's Kisses (we used about 200 dairy-free/nut-free chocolate chips)
  
• 1/2 cup shortening
  
• 3/4 cup Reese's Creamy Peanut Butter (we used 3/4 cup creamy sunnut butter)
  
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
  
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
  
• 1 egg (we used one egg worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer)
  
• 2 tablespoons milk (we used soymilk)
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (we used this, even though our soymilk is vanilla flavored; you could omit it)
  
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• granulated sugar, for rolling the dough in
  

Steps

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove wrappers from chocolates. 
   
2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in a large bowl until well blended. Add the 1/3 cup granulated sugar and the 1/3 cup brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.
   
3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.
   
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately press a chocolate kiss into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.  About 4 dozen cookies.
   

Notes

• Egg Replacer works best if you prepare it with water before adding it to your other ingredients, so be sure to do that for optimal results.
  
• Our recipe made nearly 6 dozen cookies, so maybe they were a little on the small side, but the baking time didn't change. The three or four chocolate chips we added created the exactly right ratio of chocolate to cookie, so consider this when rolling balls of your cookie dough. Adjust the size of your cookie dough balls to suit your taste. 
  
• When the cookies came out of the oven, we enlisted adult help in the kitchen to get the chips on the cookies before the cookies got too hard and crumbly. The edges are supposed to crack, but we did have to act fast to get the chips to stick.
• After a day or two on the counter, store these in the refrigerator. There was some weird ingredient reaction as they sat out, and the center of the cookie had a funky green tinge. We tested multiple cookies and they all had it. Since mold doesn't grow in such a uniform fashion, and since the cookies smelled and tasted fine, we moved them to the fridge, and the green business cleared up. Anyone know an Alton Brown we can ask about that?

Boot Scootin' Biscotti

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Boot scootin'. As in, scoot your boot back to the kitchen to have another, and another, and likely yet another, of these really yummy, pretty, marbled biscotti.

Remember a few posts back, in our Bella Biscotti post for cranberry and chocolate chip biscotti, we said to stay tuned while we perfected our method? 

Well, bake baby bake!  

This recipe from Eating Well circa early 1990s (before they came off the shelves and then came back to life), has to be our all time favorite biscotti. And then we veganized it. And it is still our all time favorite biscotti. Vegan biscotti. Who knew egg-free biscotti could have the right mouth feel, texture, and crunchiness? We did, and now you do, too! 

As always, we've offered up the recipe exactly the way it was originally written, and we've noted our modifications where necessary. If your food allergy situation doesn't match up with ours, feel free to alter the recipe to suit your dietary needs/preferences.

As written by Eating Well, the recipe is pretty much fool proof. But with the modifications we have to make so these are safe to eat, well, let's just say it helps to have some idea what the dough is supposed to look like. If it won't send anyone in your household into anaphylactic shock, you might want to make up a batch of these as written, scrub and sanitize your kitchen, and bring the biscotti to work, game night, whatever you have to do to keep the offending cookies out of the wrong mouth. If that's problematic or just too much trouble for you (as it would be for us), give it a shot as we've modified it, take notes, and make additional changes to your recipe in the future. We don't mean to make it complicated, we just really want you to enjoy these.

Oh, one more thing. Our kids aren't into mocha, so we omitted the coffee. But it gives these biscotti their biscottiness, so if you can, leave it in.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup whole unblanched almonds (we omitted these)
  
• 2 cups all-purpose white flour
  
• 1 cup sugar
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 2 large eggs (we omitted these)
  
• 2 large egg whites (and we omitted these too - all of the eggs in the original recipe were replaced with: 1/2 cup whizzed up tofu - the shelf stable kind in the box,  1/4 cup drained applesauce, 1 egg-worth of Ener-G egg replacer, plus 2 to 3 teaspoons of canola oil to replace some of the fat in the whole eggs)
  
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
  
• 2 teaspoons instant coffee powder (we omit this)
  
• 4 teaspoons water
  
• 1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, melted (or make your own from cocoa powder and oil)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract (we replaced this with an additional 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract)
  

Method

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. 
  
• Spread almonds on a baking sheet and bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until lightly toasted. Set aside.
  
• Stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. 
  
• Whisk together eggs, egg whites (or alternatives) and vanilla, and add to the dry ingredients; mix just until smooth.
  
• In a small bowl, combine cocoa, instant coffee and 4 teaspoons water.
  
• Divide the dough in half. To one half, add the cocoa mixture and melted chocolate. Mix just until incorporated.
  
• To the other half, stir in almond extract and almonds. (If you're using the almonds, you probably want to cut them up a bit first.) Assuming you're not using the almonds, do what we did and replace the almond extract with a little more vanilla extract, so you get the right consistency. 
  

**We're going to continue with the original recipe as written, but have a look at our notes at the bottom to see how we make this next part easier.**

• *Place half of the almond dough on a well-floured work surface. Pat into a 4-by-8-inch rectangle. Top with half of the chocolate dough. roll up into a cylinder, then roll the cylinder back and forth to forma 14-inch long, 1 1/2 inches thick. Repeat with the remaining doughs. Place the logs on a prepared baking sheet.*
  
• Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until firm to the touch.
  
• Transfer logs to a rack to cool. Reduce the oven temperature to 300 F.
  
• cut the logs diagonally into 1/2-inch thick slices. Stand the slices upright on the baking sheet and bake for 40 minutes. Let cool before storing.
  

Makes about 4 dozen biscotti.

Notes

We don't go through the patting rolling thing. Here's what we do instead:

• Position a non-stick sprayed baking sheet on your counter so it is wider than it is tall, when you're looking at it.
  
• Put half of the almond dough on one half of the baking sheet, and the other half on the other half. The dough is going to spread just a bit, so don't put the two logs so close together that they may end up touching.
  
• Use a spatula to make a long, thin, relatively flat (maybe 1 1/2 to 2 inch thick) log out of it.
  
• Put half of the chocolate dough on top of one of the logs, and the other half on the other log.
  
• Use your spatula to mildly marble the dough. Do your best, it'll be okay no matter what.
  

At this point, get back on the recipe train and pop the baking sheet in the oven. See above to finish off the biscotti.

These are awesome on their own, dunked in a cup of coffee, or dipped in a glass of non-dairy beverage alternative.

P-Yumpkin Cookies

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

What's scarier for you on Halloween?

A) Your food-allergic kid getting un-safe Halloween candy from your otherwise well-intentioned neighbors. 

B) Not having something safe at the ready to trade for the 90% of Junior's Halloween booty you had to confiscate because it's not safe to eat. 

C) Having that confiscated candy tucked away in your house, just begging for you to eat it after the kids go to bed because, let's face it, the kids can't have it and you don't want it going to waste, after all...

D) The weight you'll gain from eating all of that damned Halloween candy by yourself, because all your spouse likes is candy corn.

The answer is E) All of the above. So, to help allay your Halloween worries this year, we've got a really yummy dairy-free, egg-free, and nut-free pumpkin cookie recipe. This recipe is ALL OVER the Internet, so there's not really any one to credit for it. But how dumb are we that we've never thought to do a search on egg-free pumpkin cookies? And really good ones at that.

If anyone deserves credit for this recipe, it's our prima preschool teacher, Ms Lauren. We love Ms Lauren, who herself has a food allergic child, and who introduced us to this recipe. She did a simple Google search and voila, there it was. She made a few adjustments to the recipe - not sure why, but it worked out great - and we copied.

And how exactly does this tie in with the scary Halloween question above? Make these cookies and neither you nor your kids will care about that stuff they can't eat, and you won't be tempted to eat the contraband. Until the pumpkin cookies are gone, that is. 

Ingredients

• 2 cups sugar (or 1 cup white plus 1 cup brown, unpacked)
  
• 1 cup shortening (we used 1/2 cup Crisco plus 1/2 cup Earth Balance)
  
• 1 15 ounce can pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 4 cups all-purpose flour (or 3 cups ap flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour)
  
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
  
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon (or 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice) (but we used apple pie spice because we didn't have pumpkin pie spice)
  
• 12 ounces dairy-free, nut-free chocolate chips (optional) (we used Trader Joe's brand, and we used between 1/2 and 3/4 cup - just pulled a Rachel Ray and eyeballed it)
  

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
   
2. Cream the sugar(s), shortening, pumpkin, and vanilla until light and well combined.
   
3. Mix the flour, baking soda and cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice. 
   
4. Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture.
   
5. Stir in the chocolate chips.
   
6. Drop by teaspoons onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until set.
   
7. Let cookies cool on a rack.
   

They apparently freeze well, but if you want them fresh, you'll have to eat them within a day or two.

Bella Biscotti

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Have you ever done an internet search for "vegan biscotti"? Not at lot out there, is there? We've searched six ways to Sunday to find a recipe, but mostly we find a lot of people lamenting that there are no good vegan biscotti recipes.

We've been experimenting a bit, trying recipes for biscotti from a variety of vegan cookbooks, plus we've tried applying the techniques we found in those cookbooks as a means of veganizing our favorite biscotti recipes. Those recipes involved substituting most or all of the egg with applesauce, but none of them resulted in a biscotti recipe we felt good about posting.

Today we took matters into our own hands and came up with a vegan biscotti that is awfully damned good. The original recipe is Cranberry-Chocolate Chip Biscotti, which comes from the Cooking Light Complete Cookbook. We substituted two eggs' worth of whizzed up tofu plus one egg equivalent of strained applesauce for the three eggs called for in the original. Plus, we added a bit of water and one tablespoon of oil to make up for the fat and moisture lost by the omission of the eggs. This method is certainly the best we've tried so far, and we'll be applying it to our favorite biscotti recipe of all time, so stay tuned. We'll post that recipe once we have fine tuned it. 

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1 cup sugar
  
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
  
• 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
  
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (the original recipe calls for one teaspoon vanilla plus one teaspoon almond extract, but we went with straight vanilla in the extract department)
  
• 1/2 cup silken tofu, whizzed up in a food processor (use the shelf-stable, boxed tofu you find on the grocery shelves, usually near the Asian foods)
  
• 1/4 cup strained unsweetened applesauce (use a fine mesh strainer - we didn't bother with a paper towel or cheesecloth, just the strainer was fine)
  
• 4 tablespoons water, or enough to give your dough the proper consistency
  

Steps

• Preheat oven to 350.
  
• Lightly spray a baking sheet with non-stick spray.
  
• Combine flour, sugar, cranberries, chocolate chips, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.
  
• In a food processor, process tofu, applesauce, oil, and vanilla extract until smooth and combined. Add to dry ingredients.
  
• Stir until well blended; dough will be dry and crumbly. 
  
• Turn dough onto a lightly floured board and knead lightly seven or eight times. (This is the point at which we added the extra water because we couldn't get the dough to come together. We didn't knead the dough on the board, we just kind of mushed it together in the bowl)
  
• Divide the dough in half, and place on the prepared baking sheet. Form the dough into a log about eight-inches long, and leave a decent amount of space between the two logs. Pat the dough down to about one-inch thickness.
  
• Bake at 350 for 35 minutes (this was too long for us - next time we'll bake them for only 30 minutes). Remove baking sheet from oven, reduce oven to 325. Remove logs to a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes.
  
• Cut each log on the diagonal into 15 or so 1/2 inch slices. Put the biscotti back in the oven, cut side down, for 10 minutes. Take the sheet out, flip the biscotti onto the other cut side, and return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes. Cookies will be slightly soft in the center but will harden as they cool.
  
• After the second baking (or third, depending on how you look at it), remove the cookies to a wire rack until completely cool. 
  
• These will last a good long time on the kitchen counter in an air-tight container, but you probably won't be able to resist them, and you'll be brewing up a pot of hot coffee or tea just to have one, or ten. They're also really good dipped into your milk beverage of choice. 
  

 

Happy Hamentaschen

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Why are the hamentaschen so happy, you may be asking? Or you may be asking: what exactly is a hamentaschen? In reverse order, a hamentaschen is a triangle-shaped cookie with an exposed fruit filling, traditionally eaten during the Jewish holiday Purim - think Mardi Gras without the parades, liquor, beads, or boobs. 

Now to the first question: the reason that these hamentaschen are happy is because they are dairy-free, egg-free and nut-free! Can you say "hurray"?! We can't hear you! Now, you, in the back row! Alright! All together now!

These cookies totally rock - no kidding! If you like yours a little crisper, roll them just a bit thinner than 1/4", and if you want them a little crumblier (crumblier?) stick with rolling them out to the recommended thickness.  Someone we know and love called the crisper ones "cookietashen," but what does he know? A beloved member of the older generation (read: our Mom) thought the crisper ones were better, and everybody knows Mom knows best. The dough ingredients are from the Fig Not-Ins cookies, in the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook, but the method is ours.

Dough Ingredients

• 1/4 cup margarine, softened
  
• 1/4 cup shortening
  
• 3/4 cup sugar
  
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  
• 1/4 cup soy milk
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (or to taste, depending on whether or not your soy milk is vanilla flavored like ours is)
  
• 2 cups flour
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  

Filling Ingredients

• Jam or spreadable fruit of your choice. Try to find one that seems pretty thick but won't lose too much moisture when baked. Traditional fillings are poppy seed, prune, apricot, but we've also seen strawberry and blackberry, so knock yourself out. You could probably also try apple (or apple pie filling - nice!) with great success. We think.
  

Steps

• In a mixing bowl, cream together the margarine, shortening, and sugar. 
  
• Add the cornstarch and mix well. 
  
• Beat in the soy milk and vanilla. 
  
• Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, and mix well. 
  
• Refrigerate the dough, covered, until it's chilled but still malleable enough to be rolled out, probably around an hour in the refrigerator.
  
• Roll the dough to about 1/4-inch thickness, maybe just a little less.
  
• Using a round cookie cutter (with a decorative edge, if you have one) with about a 3-inch diameter, cut circles out of the dough. 
  
• Put a small dollop (around a teaspoon) of fruit in the center of the circle, then the tricky part: you want your circle to become a triangle. So, mentally divide the circle into three equal pieces.  Create a pinch in the dough (creating one corner of the triangle) at the "top", repeat it to create a second corner, and do it once more for a third corner. Note: You don't want to mangle your dough, but you don't want the cookie to open up in the oven and your filling to run out all over the place, either. Leave a good portion of the filling exposed. Look at the photo for tips on this.
  
• Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until they are as crispy as you'd like. The thinner you roll your dough, the less time it will take to bake to your preferred degree of doneness. 
• After 3 to 4 minutes on the baking sheet, remove to a wire rack to fully cool.

Devil's Food Fudge Cookies

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Ooowee! We like this cookie - it's fast and fabulous. If you don't have nut allergies, you can add the nuts that the original recipe (courtesy of Duncan Hines) calls for. If you're like us, avoid them like the plague. But, don't avoid this cookie. So, so good. You won't even believe it. And, they taste nothing like cake (which is a good thing).

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Ingredients

• 1 box Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Devil's Food Cake Mix
  
• 2 large eggs (we used two eggs' worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer)
  
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet dairy-free chocolate chips
  
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (we used extra chocolate chips to make up for some of the volume of the nuts, but not an additional 1/2 cup more)
  

Steps

• Preheat oven to 350. Grease two baking sheets.
  
• Combine cake mix, eggs and oil in a large bowl. Stir until thoroughly blended.
  
• Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if you're using them). The mixture will be stiff.
  
• Shape dough into 36 1 1/4 inch balls. Place them 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.
  
• Bake at 350 for 10 to 11 minutes. Cookies will look moist. Do not overbake.
  
• Cool 2 minutes on baking sheets, them remove to cooling racks. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

April 2008 Update

We made these recently, and frankly were horrified by the 1/2 cup of oil that the recipe calls for. So, we pulled a foodie and - OMG - modified the recipe all by ourselves! Instead of that 1/2 cup of oil, we used 1/4 cup oil and 1/4 cup applesauce (Did you know that the single serve applesauce cups you can get at the grocery store are 1/4 cup? Now you do.) We also added one to two tablespoons of water to the mix, to get the right consistency. Snaps to us - they were awesome and a little more figure friendly.

Black and White cookie frosting

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Black and White cookie aficionados know that a true Black and White cookie is different from a sugar cookie with black and white frosting. However, we have not yet had luck reproducing the texture of a Black and White cookie in a confection that is safe for our kids. So we make our standard, allergy-safe Sweet as Sugar cookies in a round shape and top them with this frosting. It's a little bit of a cheat, but hey, no harm, no foul.

We found this recipe for cocoa-infused royal icing from celebrity chef extraordinaire (and fellow petite person) Sara Moulton. Our cookies certainly looked like Black and White cookies, even if they weren't an exact replica.

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups powdered sugar
  
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
  
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
  
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  
• 4 to 6 tablespoons water
  
• 1/4 cup cocoa
  
• One batch Sweet as Sugar Cookies

Steps

For the white:

• Stir the powdered sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice and vanilla with 2 tablespoons of the water, adding additional water 1 teaspoon at a time until the icing reaches the correct consistency.
  

For the black:

• Remove half of the white frosting to another mixing bowl. Add the cocoa and mix. 
  
• To reach the correct consistency, add water 1 teaspoon at a time.
  

For the cookie:

• After the cookies have baked and cooled, spread half of the cookie with the white frosting and half with the black. 
  
• Depending on how runny you've made your icing, you may need to outline the white half moon and outline the black half moon. Later, when this amount of icing has hardened, you can go back and fill in the blanks.
  

Cookie Concealer, aka Royal Icing

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Let's face it. We all look a little better with some concealer on. A little patch here, a blemish there... Evening out the surface a bit never hurt anyone. And when the cover up is as tasty as this, not too sweet, not too bland, no one really minds the fact that you're simply improving upon nature. Again, this recipe comes from the johnandkristie.com web site. Kudos to them for a yummy posting.

This recipe makes enough to cover about 2 dozen medium cookies.

Ingredients

• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
  
• 6 to 8 teaspoons soy milk - vanilla soy milk works just fine
  
• 4 teaspoons light corn syrup
  
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (omit or substitute with vanilla extract to keep this nut free - we omitted it because our soy milk has a vanilla flavor to it)
  
• Food coloring
  

Steps

• In a medium bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and soy milk until smooth. 
  
• Beat in corn syrup and extract (if using) until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.
  
• Add food coloring to desired intensity. 
  
• Dip cookies into icing, instead of trying to spread the icing onto the cookie, and allow to dry overnight.
  

Sweet as Sugar Cookies

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

We had a heck of a time finding a sugar cookie recipe that could be rolled out for use with cookie cutters, didn't bake up too hard but also didn't fall apart as soon as you took a bite. Oh, and it had to taste good, too.  Lucky for us, we found this on the johnandkristie.com web site. One batch bakes up into about 3 dozen medium cookies. Your mileage will vary (depending of course on the size of your cookie cutter).

Ingredients

• 1 cup margarine (we used Earth Balance)
  
• 1 cup white sugar
  
• 2 whole egg replacements (Ener-G) (yup, they used Ener-G Egg Replacer, which is what we would have used had they used eggs)
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  
• 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1/4 cup tofu cream cheese (Tofutti) (and again, they used what we would have substituted into the recipe - we must have access to the same stores)
  

Steps

• In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar. 
  
• Stir in the egg replacement and vanilla.
  
• Gradually add the flour, baking powder and tofu cream cheese. You may have to use your hands at this point to finish the mixing. 
  
• Form the dough into a long loaf and wrap in cellophane. Refrigerate for a couple of hours.
  
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheets or use a non-stick foil or parchment paper.
  
• On a lightly floured surface (or on more non-stick foil taped to your countertop) roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Transfer to baking sheet, leaving about 1 inch between each cookie.
  
• Bake for 12 to 14 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bottoms and edges just start to get light brown. Remove from baking sheet and cool on wire rack. Store in an airtight container.
  

I'm a sucker for a Snickerdoodle

Egg-free/Dairy-free/Nut-free

What a bummer these turned out to be. Other recipes we've tried for cake-mixes-turned-cookie-dough have been good, but not so much with these. To us, they tasted like cake mix, not cookies. Stay tuned, though, for a cake-mix-cookie recipe that is super simple (which makes it super brilliant!) that tastes truly terrific.

Ingredients

• 1 box yellow cake mix (read the label to be sure that yours meets your food allergy situation)
  
• 2 eggs-worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer (1 tablespoon Ener-G beaten with 4 tablespoons water)
  
• 1/4 cup oil 
  
• 3 tablespoons sugar
  
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  

Steps

• Spray a cookie sheet with your favorite choice of baking non-stick sprays.
  
• Combine cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl. Set aside.
  
• Stir to combine the cake mix, Ener-G, and oil. 
  
• Shape cookie dough into one-inch balls.
  
• Roll each ball in the cinnamon sugar.
  
• Place dough balls on the cookie sheet.
  
• Using the bottom of a drinking glass, press each dough ball into a flat disc.
  
• Bake 8 to 9 minutes.
  
• Look at them on your counter every day and consider whether they're worth the calories. Um, we mean Enjoy!
  

Bake me a boatload of Oatmeal Cookies

Egg-free/Dairy-free/Nut-free

In solidarity with our children, it's been a good, long time since we've had any nuts. So long, in fact, that while sampling one of these cookies today, we could swear we tasted a certain nuttiness to them. Knowing the ingredients that go into making them, and that the list included no nuts of any kind, was a huge comfort. 

These cookies, from the Quaker Oats website, are equally delicious with chocolate chips as they are with raisins, so take your pick, or don't, and use a little bit of both. The original recipe was for chocolate chips, and that's how it's written here. In parentheses, you'll see the substitutions we made for our batch. 

As for the "boatload," this recipe makes a ton of cookies! You can easily get 5 dozen from these proportions, so if you don't want that many lying around the house, reduce the recipe by the proper amount to suit your need for a cookie fix.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound margarine or butter, softened (it's horrifying to think of it as half a pound of butter, but yes, you're reading that right) (and BTW, we used 1/2 of a 16 ounce tub of Earth Balance 100% Vegan margarine)
  
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  
• 2 eggs (we replaced it with 2 eggs' worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer: 1 tablespoon Ener-G beaten with 4 tablespoons water)
  
• 2 tablespoons milk (we used vanilla flavored soymilk)
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla (we used between a splash and 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract)
  
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional) (we used it)
  
• 2 1/2 cups Quaker Oats (quick or old-fashioned, uncooked) (we used quick)
  
• 2 cups (12 ounces) mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (see note above - in previous batches, 1 1/2 cups of regular sized chips was plenty, and we're chocoholics!)
  
• 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) (duh, we omitted this, and used an additional 1/2 cup, for a total of 3 cups, of oats to make up for some of the bulk lost to the absent nuts)
  

Steps

• Heat oven to 375 degrees.
  
• In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Mix well and set aside.
  
• In a large bowl, beat margarine and sugars with an electric mixer until creamy. 
  
• Add eggs, milk and vanilla; beat well.
  
• Add combined dry ingredients to wet ingredients.
  
• Stir in oats, chocolate chips, and nuts (but again, we left those out), mixing well.
  
• Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets.
  
• Bake 9 to 10 minutes for a chewy cookie or 12 to 13 minutes for a crisp cookie. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets, remove to wire rack. 
  
• Cool completely, store tightly covered.
  

Update 7/2/08:

I wanted to make a batch of cookies, and these came to mind. If you've been paying attention recently, you know that I'm crazy about calorie burning these days and therefore didn't want too many of these lovelies lying around in the kitchen, beckoning... So, instead of making a full batch, I went for half. I halved all of the ingredients except the flour (because I didn't feel like trying to measure out 7/8 cup of flour) and the chocolate chips. I went with 1 full cup of flour and about 3/4 cup of chocolate chips.

But the important thing here is that instead of egg replacer, I whizzed up some silken extra firm tofu that I had in the fridge from the Bella Biscotti baking. I measured out 1/4 cup to equal one egg, took the electric beater to it (because I didn't want to make the mini-food processor dirty, and although I don't think it made a significant difference, it probably would have been generally better if I had gone to the extra trouble) and proceeded with the recipe as usual. They turned out great (!) and I will be pulling this rabbit out of my hat again and again.

P.S. According to my calculations, the cookies clock in at about 70 calories each. That's less than 10 minutes on the treadmill per cookie.

Soft and chewy (and delicious!) chocolate chip cookies

Egg-free/Dairy-free/Nut-free

These are so good. The recipe comes from the Silk website, and we're giving it to you exactly as it was written by them. But, we used less chocolate chips than they did, with outstanding results. If you're looking for a crunchy cookie, this one isn't for you. It's soft and light, without being crumbly. Yummy.

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter or organic shortening (we used Earth Balance 100% Vegan margarine) 
  
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
  
• 1/4 cup Vanilla Silk Soy Milk (we used another brand)
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (extract? that's what we used)
  
• 2 1/4 cups unbleached flour
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips (we used dairy-free, nut-free chips)
  

Steps

• Preheat oven to 350.
  
• Cream the butter/margarine/shortening until light and fluffy. 
  
• Slowly add Silk, cream well, then add vanilla.
  
• Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
• Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, then fold in the chocolate chips.
• Drop by teaspoons on parchment lined cookie sheets. 
• Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.