Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yes, more of them.

After the fateful article about David Leite’s “perfect” chocolate chip cookies, the blogosphere, if not the entire world, has been inundated with these classic cookies. Overloaded with so much chocolate and brown sugar, it’s a true testament to the power of the CCC that no one is sick of them yet! I still wouldn’t blame you for skipping over this post, however, since I’m sure you already have at least a half dozen recipes bookmarked for the same exact thing already.

I too have a number of recipes for American staple, one of which is published in Go Dairy Free. Printed at a time when I thought it could get no better CCC, it was a wholly triumphant day when I pulled that final batch out of the oven and found them to be just as I had remembered from so many years passed, when I could merely hope to lick the beaters when my mom had finished, let alone create them myself. It will still be my go-to recipe for that traditional taste, but that doesn’t they couldn’t stand a somewhat more modern twist every now and then.

Encouraged by the wild success in using malted barley syrup recently, I could practically taste how harmoniously it would blend with the flavors of this cookie, and simply couldn’t resist the temptation to try it out. Now, I’m not about to claim that these are better than the first recipe, “just like mother made”, or the penultimate perfect CCC… But I’ll tell you one thing: They are damn good.

Yield: Maked 8 - 10 Large Cookies

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies

Name: Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies
Yield: 8
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 Cup All Purpose Flour; 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder; 1⁄2 Teaspoon Salt; 1⁄4 Cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips; 1⁄4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar, Loosely Packed; 1⁄3 Cup Malted Barley Syrup; 1⁄4 Cup Vegan Butter, Melted; 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

No Ratings

Chewy, gooey, and full of rich malted flavor, these are some next level chocolate chip cookies.

Ingredients

1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1⁄2 Teaspoon Salt
1⁄4 Cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
1⁄4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar, Loosely Packed
1⁄3 Cup Malted Barley Syrup
1⁄4 Cup Vegan Butter, Melted
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt so that all of the dry goods are evenly distributed throughout the mixture. Add in the chocolate chips and toss to coat.
Separately, combine the sugar, malt syrup, melted vegan butter, and vanilla. Stir well, and then add the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry. Using a wide spatula, mix just enough to bring the batter together smoothly without over-beating it.
Use a 3-ounce ice cream scoop to portion out cookies, and place them with at least 1 1/2 between each cookie on your prepared baking sheet. They spread out to become sizable cookies, so I usually bake about 9 per sheet.
Flatten them out slightly with lightly moistened hands, and bake for 10 – 12 minutes, until barely browned around the edges and no longer shiny on top. They may looks a bit underdone, but they will continue to bake once removed from the oven, and you want to keep them nice and chewy. Let the cookies rest on the sheets for 10 minutes before cooling completely on a wire rack.

Notes

Adapted from Dreena Burton's Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vive Le Vegan!

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Nutrition Information:

Yield:

Serving Size:

1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 167Total Fat: 6gSaturated Fat: 4gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 12mgSodium: 199mgCarbohydrates: 27gFiber: 1gSugar: 10gProtein: 2g

All nutritional information presented within this site are intended for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and any nutritional information on BitterSweetBlog.com should only be used as a general guideline. This information is provided as a courtesy and there is no guarantee that the information will be completely accurate. Even though I try to provide accurate nutritional information to the best of my ability, these figures should still be considered estimations.

January 21, 2009December 11, 2021

Hannah (BitterSweet)51 Comments

A Cookie Worth Celebrating

So far removed am I from the days of attending temple or any other religious proceedings, there tend to be many holidays that fall through the cracks. They often don’t even appear on standard calendars, and are difficult to observe without a whole congregation to facilitate a party.

Purim in particular has become a “lost” holiday for me, and I can only remember observing it about a decade ago, when I was too young to really understand what we were celebrating. Putting on a costume, running around and playing games for prizes, it was simply a second chance at Halloween in my eyes. You could make lots of noise and eat sweets, so the specifics weren’t all that important.

I do remember, however, getting the opportunity to make hamantashen with the help of one patient volunteer. Sculpting a mound of dough that was more like modeling clay than food, it was the process that we all enjoyed, not the end results. This traditional cookie didn’t grab my attention back then, but in searching desperately for a way to recognize this oft overlooked holiday, I decided to give it one more try.

A simple cookie, without any bells or whistles, it’s easy to see why it might not be the best seller at a bake sale. Prepared with care and a solid recipe though, it can win the heart of even the pickiest sweet tooth. The versatile dough allows for any filling you could dream of mounding up in the center, and it’s easy enough for the most reluctant of bakers to make.

Soft and tender, these cookies are far better than the dry, sad triangles sold in supermarkets these days that turn so many unknowing eaters away from this traditional treat. And although nothing could ever beat those made by my Nana, this vegan version does come pretty darn close, if I do say so myself.

Yield: Makes Approximately 18 Cookies

Hamantashen

No Ratings

Soft and tender, these cookies are far better than the dry triangles sold in supermarkets these days. Jazz them up with any fruit preserves or jams you like!

Prep Time 25 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Additional Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 35 minutes

Ingredients

3/4 Cup Vegetable Shortening or Vegan Butter
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
3 Tablespoons Smooth Cashew Butter
3 Tablespoons Orange Juice
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Teaspoons Baking Powder
2 1/4 Cups All-Purpose Flour
Jam or Preserves of Your Choice*

Instructions

Using a stand or hand mixer, thoroughly cream together the shortening or vegan butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the cashew butter, followed by the orange juice and vanilla extract.
Mix the baking powder together with the flour, and then slowly incorporate the dry mix in until it forms a ball. It might take a bit of time, but don’t be tempted to add any more liquid; it just needs a little persuasion. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour before proceeding.
Once the dough is completely chilled, preheat your oven to 375 degrees and line two cookie sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4-inch thickness. You will probably want to coat the dough itself lightly with additional flour, and if it becomes too finicky to roll out without sticking, toss it back into the fridge for a few minutes.
Cut out circles of about 3 inches in diameter with either a cookie cutter or drinking glass. Move the circles onto your prepared baking sheets, and spoon a small mound of filling onto the center of each circle, about 1 tablespoon each.
Pull up the sides of the circle in order to form a triangle, and pinch the corners firmly so that they don’t separate or fall down during baking. If you’re really concerned about them staying in shape, you can freeze them just prior to baking and move them directly into the oven from there.
Bake for 8 – 10 minutes, until lightly golden brown but still rather pale. Allow them to sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes before sliding the silicone mats or parchment onto a cool surface.

Notes

*For the jam in this batch, I just went through my fridge and used up whatever I could find. Some are strawberry, cherry, guava, and yellow plum preserves. Anything you like is just fine! It would never hurt to throw in a few chocolate chips, too.

Peace Offering

Feeling for all the world as if I had just swallowed a ton of bricks, the dread of leaving for school grew only more powerful as the hours passed, my days in a comfortable home numbered and quickly slipping away. There wasn’t a thing I could say to express my jumbled emotions, no matter how I tried to talk through it, ignore it, or try to keep my mind off it; I’m simply no good at keeping anxiety at bay.

Laying awake in bed, pondering what on earth might make my mind at ease, there was only one answer that kept coming back, echoing through the depths of that tired brain, but I was desperate enough to try anything.

Early the next morning, before the first light had even filtered in through my bed room window, the oven was already cranking away at full speed. Yes, baking does calm me down, and even better, I could make a treat for my new roommate and perhaps bribe a few new friends to think of me kindly. Still reeling a bit from my last baking venture, successfully signing off on a full half-dozen new recipes, there would be no fancy-pants decorating or masterful creations here, but instead something that I myself might find comforting if dropped in an unfamiliar place with only odd eatables around.

Subtracting as many ingredients that might be offensive as possible, I arrived at the perfect recipe that needed only to be veganized: Dorie Greenspan‘s Korova Cookies, also known as World Peace Cookies. Considering how I planned to use them as a crutch to be accepted by my dorm mates, I could only hope that they might become Peace Offering Cookies as well.

And can I tell you? I think I made a lot of new friends already.

Yield: Makes 18 - 20 Cookies

Korova Cookies

No Ratings

The only thing better than chocolate is chocolate cookies with big chocolate chunks and a pinch of salt. These are sure to win over new fans and friends with ease.

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 14 minutes

Additional Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 29 minutes

Ingredients

1/2 Cup + 3 Tablespoons Vegan Butter
2/3 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 1/4 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1/3 Cup Cocoa Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
5 Ounces Bittersweet Chocolate, Chopped

Instructions

Begin by beating the vegan butter in your stand mixer just to soften it up a bit, and then cream in both sugars, salt, and vanilla, mixing until creamy and fully combined.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa, and baking powder, and slowly sift these dry ingredients into the mixer. Stir on a low speed until just combined, and toss in the chocolate chunks. Again, mix very little in order to distribute the chocolate, but manipulate the dough as little as possible. It should still seem rather dry and crumbly.
Divide the dough into two lumps, press them together gently to form two logs, and wrap them up in plastic wrap. Place them in the fridge to chill for at least one hour.
Once thoroughly chilled, go ahead preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Slice the cookie logs into 1/4 inch rounds. Don’t worry if you mush them into strange oval shapes, as you can easily reform them with your hands after placing them on the prepared baking sheets. Be sure to give the cookies plenty of room to breathe, since it should be no problem fitting them all on both sheets with lots of space between each.
Bake them for 12 – 14 minutes, and although they will not look completely done, they will no longer be so shiny on top and appear to have firmed around the edges. Leave the cookies on the sheet to cool. This will leave you with a delightfully soft and chewy cookie!

Notes

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets.

My Own Rocky Road

By no accounts have I ever heard of high school being an easy, enjoyable time through and through, but who knew it would ever be so difficult. No, I’m not talking about the school work or tests, but everything that happened in between; The last thing that you learn from this establishment is math and english. These past four years stretch out endlessly in my mind, making a time line that is so immense, it sounds positively absurd that so much could change in only a handful of months. I’m sure everyone reaches a this point at one time or another, but to actually experience it and be able to say for myself that know what if feels like… It’s just wild.

Honestly, for so many years I thought that life would not happen to me. All of the inevitable life events would somehow look the other way while I crept out the door and I would be exempt from all the baggage they bring. Relationships, jobs, driving, applying to colleges- For some inexplicable reason, I felt certain that these worries could never actually happen to me. Clearly, adolescence spared me no amount of naivety. Through car crashes, both figurative and literal, I’ve blindly felt my way through all of these complicated things that I was in no way prepared for. I can say with relief that ultimately I made it out in one piece, but in no way am I the same as that bright-eyed 14-year old who first marched in the doors of that decripit urban school I would come to know as my own.

I’ve learned a lot, more than I would have liked to about some things, but none of it was taught in class. All the same, I owe a lot to that place; Without the bitterness that counterbalances my timid optimism, there’s no way that I would have ever found myself in the bittersweet state of mind.

On that note, with such a bitter taste left in my mouth after recounting all those horrific highschool blunders that I hope to bury in the farthest corners of my brain, the only thing that I could find as an appropriate way to commemorate the end of this era would be to bake.

And what could be more appropriate than a rocky road bar? Lumpy, bumpy, and not exactly a beautifully sculpted dessert, this is one where you can rest assured that it will taste far better than it looks. Including just a little bit of everything and even some rather unexpected ingredients, the mixture of flavors and textures is surprising at first but completely enjoyable. Somehow it all manages to work together without creating a harmony that sounds like our high school band [aka, banging two trashcans together repeatedly] and makes any rocky road seem like a worthwhile path to venture down.

I know that although I may have made it through the mire and muck of compulsory education, I still have a long, rocky road ahead of me… But if it’s anything like this bar, then I think that life will be a whole lot less bitter, and a lot sweeter instead.

Yield: Makes 12 - 16 Bars

Rocky Road Bars

No Ratings

Unlike an actual rocky road, these bars are easy to navigate. Loaded with marshmallows, chocolate, and nuts, everyone will enjoy this classic crowd-pleasing treat.

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 40 minutes

Additional Time 30 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 20 minutes

Ingredients

Base:

1/2 Cup Vegan Butter
1/3 Cup Dark Brown Sugar, Firmly Packed
1 Cup All-Purpose Flour
3/4 Cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 Cup Mixed Nuts, Chopped

Topping:

1/2 Cup Vegan Caramel Sauce
1/2 Cup Mixed Nuts
1 1/2 Cups Mini Vegan Marshmallows
4 Ounces Dark Chocolate, Chopped into Chunks

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease an 8x8-inch square pan.
In a stand mixer, beat the vegan butter until softened and then cream in the sugar. Add the flour, oats, baking soda, salt and chopped nuts, stirring to combine. Once all of the ingredients are evenly dispersed and you achieve a crumbly mixture, remove 1/2 cup and set aside. Transfer the remainder into your prepared pan and press it in with your fingers so that it fully covers the bottom in a level layer. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes until lightly browned around the edges.
Meanwhile, combine the crumb mixture that you saved with the whole mixed nuts, marshmallows, and chocolate. Have this ready when the pan comes out of the oven.
Once baked, pour the caramel over the warm bars and spread to cover. If your topping is a bit too firm to spread, microwave it for a few seconds before pouring it on. Sprinkle the mixture of sweet morsels over the top and disperse evenly, pressing them in very lightly.
Bake for another 15 – 20 minutes, until the marshmallows are puffy and nicely
browned. Let cool to room temperature, and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before cutting or you will end up with one sticky (albeit delicious) mess!

Spritz-ed Sugar Cookies

I just love using my spritz gun – It makes such cute little shapes, without all the hassle of rolling out the dough, cutting, re-rolling, re-cutting… I’m sure you can understand how tedious that can become, especially in big batches. I don’t often do “shaped” cookies, because usually you have to sacrifice flavor in order to accommodate design, but I thought it could be a fun activity, and a good way to test out a recipe I might not otherwise consider.

So I whipped out my In the Garden of Vegan cookbook and set off creating “Mum’s Sugar Cookies.” I shot out a tray full of cute little dough-flowers, and they went into the oven like so:

Cute, huh? And so well defined! With high hopes, I set the timer and wandered off to clean the counters and such (I don’t cook very neatly.) 15 minutes I returned… and pulled this out of the oven…

It looks like someone set off an atomic bomb in there, they’re completely leveled! What happened?? It couldn’t be the recipe, these are supposed to be tried and true… and even they aren’t all perfect, I can’t imagine that they would be so far off…

So I threw the remaining dough in the fridge, and sulked in front on my laptop, blog-hopping as usual. Then, after the first dozen blogs or so, it hit me: I’m a moron. Clearly, they spread so much because there was too much fat, but I’m positive I used the correct amount… Somehow, I have a feeling in my bones that I skimped on the flour. By about a cup. I bet that could do it.

I retrieved my exiled dough from the chill chest and mixed in another handful of flour. Repeating the same process of using the spritz gun and resetting the oven, I waited anxiously. In the end, I was rewarded for my [relative] patience:

It worked! Now, however, I had wasted about half of the dough to the nuclear explosion effect, and there was no way I would have enough cookies to share around. Back to work making a second batch to supplement, and this time I made sure I used the proper amount of flour.

For decoration, I made a simple confectioner’s sugar glaze, and mixed in 2 teaspoons of lemon juice for interest. I must say, that little lemony flavoring made all the difference. Being plain sugar cookies, I was worried that kids might find them boring or bland, but they were gobbled up as if I had put crack in them! ….Which of course I didn’t. [Shifty look]

With one and a half batches, it made a whole field of flowers! I chose to mix in three different colors for the petals and top them with colored sugar, but they were all the same flavor. As an interesting side note, I did notice that for some inexplicable reason, red was the most popular. Heh, who knows, right? I was lucky that they were consumed so enthusiastically, because this amount would have taken my household about a decade to finish off. One little girl even took ten for herself! If you find yourself in need of quick, cute kid-pleasers… Don’t make these. The icing alone took me at least two and a half hours to complete, but maybe if you had someone to help or weren’t nearly as obsessive as me, it could be a bit simpler.

April 20, 2006November 19, 2025

Hannah (BitterSweet)1 Comment

Oat Couture

The unfathomable reality has fallen upon me; …I’m tired of chocolate.

It feels like everything I’ve been baking lately has been made of, dipped in, drizzled, or smothered with chocolate. Quite frankly, I’m just getting bored. So I set off, in search of a broader horizon, and then the request came in – something with peanut butter. An excellent challenge to undertake, since nut butters are wonderfully varied and contribute fantastic flavors and textures to baked goods in general, although chocolate and peanut butter are such a natural go together… Clearly, it was going to be tough.

By now, I’ve basically figured out that you just can’t go wrong with the recipes on PPK, so I set my eye on their Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies.

I had everything set and ready to go – The blender was plugged in, the oven was preheating, and I was excited to try out something new. I was cutting open my package of tofu… When all of a sudden, it smelled as though I had just stuck my face in a public restroom urinal. Oh my god, what is that?! I sniffed frantically at the garbage, and then it hit me: It was the tofu. Crap! Does that mean I have no choice but to abandon ship?!

Never! I reached deep into the depth of my freezer and came out with… A banana! Perfect! Changing ingredients and faking my way through the instructions, I came up with my own version of the Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie.

I might finally be getting the hang of this ‘vegan baking’ thing! No textural issues to speak of, they have a very tasty peanut butter / banana flavor, and you can almost pretend that they’re good for you, too! Next time though, I may throw in a handful of raisins just for contrast, or if I came out of this rut… Maybe even some chocolate.

April 14, 2006November 18, 2025

Hannah (BitterSweet)1 Comment