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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Cookies!


Here's a pic of the cookies I made yesterday. First I made the Chocolate Chunk Spice Cookies from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan. I really like these; I think the combination of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves) is a really interesting addition to the never-fail pairing of chocolate-on-chocolate. I splurged and used Scharfenberger chocolate (did I spell that right?) for the chunks and it is SO good.

Next I made Terry's Favorite Almond Cookies from Veganomicon. As you know, I am a firm believer that the batter must taste just as good as the cookie, and this one threw me a little because I could really taste the teaspoon of toasted sesame oil in the batter. But once they cooked it was much more subtle and they turned out pretty good. Not my favorite cookies ever, but I imagine if I was of the coffee drinking persuasion (I'm not), they would be a nice cookie to enjoy with coffee. I don't think I'll make them again.

Matt thought both cookies were just 'pretty good' but that they both had 'too much spice'; this is coming from the guy who pretty much only gets excited about traditional chocolate chip cookies though so whatever.

So... that was my first experience cooking from these two new books - yay! I also made Chipotle Lime Two-Bean Hummus from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan and it is quite tasty. I love all of Dreena Burton's hummus variations, and I have resolved that as long as this obsession with making fresh bread continues, I'm going to always have some kind of homemade hummus in the fridge to spread on it instead of the mass quantities of Earth Balance I've been consuming lately. Much healthier, right?

My last comments on these two new books have to to with aesthetics and layout... they are both beautiful on the outside - two totally different styles but both very nice to look at. I love the green and pink combo that Dreena used - very fresh and appetizing. I'm having a bit of a hard time with Veganomicon's internal layout though. It really annoys me when recipes start in the middle of a page and/or wrap to the next page (unless, of course, it's unavoidable because they are just too long). I've tried to get over it, because I know this type of layout must save tons of paper (and therefore trees), but damn, it really sucks when your hands are covered with cooking goo and you have to stop to take the cookbook out of the cookbook holder (yes, I own and use a cookbook holder; it rocks) to turn the page. Grr.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

1 comment:

Vegan_Noodle said...

Yum yum cookies. The chocolate spice ones sound yummy. I think I would have the same problem with the almond cookies since I"m not a coffee or tea drinker.

I enjoyed the chocolate chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon, I think they're traditional enough for Matt to enjoy...

And I must say I agree about your comment on Veganomicon. It's very difficult to focus on the pages. Not sure where to look. But then again, we should appreciate that trees were likely saved...