Sunday was my cookie baking extravaganza! Although I set aside the whole day, I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped (how does that happen?) I made orange-chocolate chip biscotti, iced gingerbread oatmeal cookies, a sugar-free cookie for myself, and the dough for gingerbread cutout cookies. The gingerbread dough is sitting in the fridge, patiently waiting to be rolled, cut and baked.
All these cookies were vegan (but only the sugar-free one was keto.) If you’re interested in making vegan cookies, you can do one of two things: a) simply pick a recipe that’s already vegan, or b) take a non-vegan recipe and make vegan substitutions. For this cookie baking party, I did both.
I got the recipe for the iced gingerbread oatmeal cookies from Sally’s Baking Addiction. This is not a vegan blog. But her recipes are so delicious- I’ve made several of her cookies and use vegan substitutions. If it calls for milk, I use oatmilk, soymilk, or almond milk. For the butter, I use Earth Balance vegan buttery sticks. You can usually find them in a regular grocery store, and they act and taste just like butter in a recipe.
Eggs are the most challenging thing to substitute. For most cookies, I’ve found that a flax egg works great. A flax egg is one tablespoon of ground flaxseed mixed with three tablespoons of water. Mix it, let it sit for a few minutes, and it becomes thick and gloppy- like the texture of an egg. I usually stick to recipes that only call for one egg. If there are multiple eggs, then it seems like a pretty important part of the recipe and I don’t want to mess with that. There are plenty other recipes to choose from!
Like… anything from Isa Chandra Moskowitz, the queen of vegan cookies. For my gingerbread cutout cookie dough, I used her recipe from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. And I used her recipe for the biscotti from Veganomicon.
Her orange-chocolate chip biscotti are insanely delicious. One year we gave some to my son’s teacher and he wrote me a note telling me that they were the most delicious biscotti he had ever tasted, vegan or otherwise. The recipe in the book is actually for almond-anise biscotti, but she gives a variation for orange biscotti. I’ve never made the almond anise version. Maybe someday I will, but I don’t see how they could compare with the orange chocolate chip.
As you can imagine, my house smelled AMAZING. First with the gingerbread spices, and then with the orange and chocolate. I got inspired to make my own cookies, and used this recipe for keto chocolate chip cookies from Chocolate Covered Katie. I do NOT follow a ketogenic diet! But if I find a vegan, keto cookie recipe I’ll make it every once in a while. If the recipe is keto I know it has no sugar. Her version calls for erythritol, but I used this:
The maple-flavored syrup is sweetened with monkfruit, and the chocolate chips are sweetened with stevia and erythritol. If I eat too much erythritol is bothers my stomach, but in moderation it’s okay. I added the zest of an orange to these cookies and they were yummy!
I ate ONE and put the rest away. If these cookies had sugar in them, I would have kept eating and eating them. I would have eaten until I felt ill, and that’s why I don’t eat sugar.
Most of the cookies went into the freezer. I still have a couple more cookies to bake, but it feels good to have a large stash already made. I’ll take them out over the next couple of weeks to add to gifts, and of course for my family to eat. I had my son in mind when I made the gingerbread oat cookies- he’s a big oatmeal cookie fan.
The gingerbread cutout cookie dough will be used to make our gingerbread houses! I’ll bake the pieces of the house this week, build the houses on Saturday, and we’ll decorate them on Sunday. I’ve learned over the years that this project is best done in stages.
How about you- do you bake cookies?
What’s your favorite cookie?
23 Responses
I love that you and I spent Sunday doing the same thing!!!!! But you were definitely more productive! Look at the variety of those goodies!
The vegan replacement of the egg for my gingerbread cookies was apple sauce in case you ever want to try that out as an egg replacement.
I have used applesauce as an egg replacer- it works well. I should try you recipe sometime!
Wonderful, Jenny!
I’m not a big baker but I LOVE eating biscuits. If I have cookies at home, they will be eaten in a day.
My favourites are very simple Swiss butter biscuits: https://www.helvetickitchen.com/recipes/2015/12/10/mailanderli
They’re not vegan and definitely not keto 🙂
Hmmm! You’ve presented me with a challenge- I looked at that recipe and it would be tricky to vegan-ize because of the egg yolks. Still… I’ll bet they’re similar to the sugar cookies I make.
I think I tried making homemade gingerbread houses once…and that was that, LOL. I found some Pampered Chef gingerbread house “stone” molds (for lack of a better word) at a garage sale, and tried using those. Let’s just say, the neighborhood squirrels were served a healthy breakfast the next morning, LOL. We did make houses out of kits, though, for several years when the kids were young…those were fun!
Homemade gingerbread houses from scratch is definitely a trial-and-error undertaking! I’ve had a lot of disasters, but I think I’ve finally got it right (we’ll see- we’ll be building them this weekend!)
Those look delicious! With two teen boys, I’m baking ALL THE TIME. This time of year, I bake gingersnaps (my grandma’s recipe), gingerbread, and sugar cookies. I love baking, even if I rarely eat it.
Same here- I enjoy it even though I’m not eating the cookies myself. I don’t know how you survive with two teen boys- my 19-year-old eats SO MUCH. I can’t imagine two of them.
Your Christmas cookies look delicious. My wife also cooked a lot of cookies but with a husband, 2 children, 4 grandsons and herself they disappeared in one day.
However this morning I bought local Christmas cookies at the market too. In my city there is an ancient tradition about this kind of “biscotti” (in local slang “biscuttine”).
Yes, now that I think about it, “biscotti” is an Italian cookie, right? I’m sure mine aren’t very authentic- but they taste good!
Yes biscotti is the Italian for cookies. Here, in my city, we have an ancient tradition about the Christmas cookies.
I don’t make many cookies this time of year (a batch of ginger cookies, my favourite, to distribute to neighbours), but I did make a small batch of candy-cane sugar cookies the other day because no one in my family is a fan of candy-canes and I happen to love them…and so I treated myself (I’d never actually made this recipe before).
I do make a batch of peanut butter balls and my Mom will bring over a few cookies + sweetened condensed milk squares. But I’m just not a big holiday baker. It makes it easier to say no if there aren’t as many items in the freezer! I also find that lots of people make and give us things (boxes of chocolates, homemade cookies), that we end up having plenty of variety anyway.
I’ve always been too intimidated to make biscotti, but your post is inspiring me to try…
Biscotti isn’t that hard! It’s not like I’m a master baker, and I can make them. Everyone loves them so much, I’m thinking of making another batch tomorrow. You can do it!
I made one batch of cookies while at my Mom’s house and will make another batch when I go back this weekend. I still haven’t made any cookies here for us, though… I plan to do that next week while Pablo and his humans are here to help me. 😀
Yes, making cookies is better with other people around. You definitely don’t want tons of cookies sitting around for just the two of you.
I used to bake all the time for the holidays but now with the kids grown and working from home, I just eat the ones others give me lol
I like sugar cookies.
We’ll be decorating sugar cookies on Christmas Eve! Too bad I can’t send you some.
Yum! That orange biscotti does sound amazing! I just made vegan choc chip cookies for my daughter. I am not going to tell my husband how good they are!
Ha, I’ll bet they’re great! I’m going to have to make more biscotti- they’ve been very popular.
That really is a baking extravaganza! I make one batch of cookies and I’m worn out, haha. I made vegan cookies once and they were SO delicious. I brought them to a friend’s house and they couldn’t believe how good they tasted. I think I used the flax egg method you mentioned. So easy!
I really love these double chocolate peppermint cookies from Joy the Baker’s blog. I try to make those every Christmas! https://joythebaker.com/2008/12/double-chocolate-peppermint-cookies/
Oh boy- my daughter would LOVE these. I might have to do some post-Christmas baking.
I love that there are so many options out there these days to accommodate food preferences. I am not vegan, but will happily eat a good vegan cookie any day!
San, you would like my cookies.