Snickerdoodles From A Box--Vegan And Doggone Good

Have you ever had a day when you received a phone call from out of town relatives that they were headed your way for a visit? That happened to me yesterday and I was down for the count with back pain I figured must be at least at level 15. The medical community says that pain reaches only a level of 10, which they consider to be maximum, but they don't have my falling apart spinal column. I greatly hate osteoporosis combined with osteo-arthritis. But that's another tale.

Fortunately, I had recently purchased a boxed cookie mix simply because I had a coupon for a good amount off the regular price. I don't ordinarily cook from a box, but since I never know when I might be in a hurry, I tend to keep a couple on hand. I always try to veganize whatever is inside the box, usually giving the recipe a once-through and then messing with the substitutions until I think I have a winner. With no time to mess around with experiments, I used my usual exchanges, hoping for the best.

To begin with, I used my favorite product in the whole cookie/muffin/pancake world--Krusteaz. I made the cookies by hand, exchanging my tried and true swaps and was I surprised how good the cookies turned out. I served them to company, along with some wonderful Kona coffee purchased for me by my cousin during his recent Hawaiian trip. Everyone raved about how good the cookies were. I didn't tell them they were vegan until every last crumb had been devoured. All four of my guests were amazed--carnivores that they are.

Here's how I did it:

Heat oven to 375 degrees

Into a bowl place:

1 box bakery style cookie mix by Krusteaz
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 stick vegan margarine, room temperature

Blend together the vegan margarine and applesauce. Add the cookie mix and stir until a stiff dough forms.

Form the dough into balls, and roll them in the cinnamon/sugar mixture enclosed inside the box. Lay them at least 2" apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake until the cookies are golden brown around the edges.

Depending on which size cookie you want, bake them for:

2" cookies, 6-8 minutes
2 1/2" cookies, 8-10 minutes
3" cookies, 10-12 minutes.

I like big, crunchy cookies so I made the 3" size. They came out perfect.

The cookie mix box has two more great sounding recipes on it and I intend to try both of them. But for right now, the Snickerdoodles this boxed mix made hit the right note with everyone who ate them, especially when served with a hot and steamy cup of fresh coffee from the Islands.

If you give these cookies a try, let me know how you liked them or how you changed the recipe to be even better.

Since I like a hint of nutmeg in my Snickerdoodles, I'm going
to add some to the sugar/cinnamon mix inside the box.

Taste The Rainbow Cupcakes

Lets talk about cupcakes, because guys, I love cupcakes. I could eat cupcakes all day long if I could, they are that tasty! And my sister, well, she makes some pretty good red velvets, but I have been itching to make some vegan cupcakes so I recruited her for the job.

We started making a yellow cake mix and adding in the water and oil, but when it came to the eggs (of which we needed three) we opted to sub in with applesauce. I looked up the amount of applesauce per egg on the great wide Google, answerer of all questions in the universe. Basically everything I found said that 1/4 cup applesauce equals one egg. So we put in 3/4 cups applesauce. I found in a few places that people mixed their applesauce with baking powder, and well, why not try it out?

So that's what we did. 3/4 cup applesauce mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder all mixed together and then added to our boxed mix with the water and oil. And then we beat it up so there was no lumps. A few black eyes maybe, some broken ribs for good measure but there were no lumps!

And then we got crafty up in here, folks. I mean, we got really into our cupcake making and separated out the batter into six different bowls. One for each color of the rainbow.

Yes, I know. You're impressed. And but who wouldn't be? I mean, those colors are fantastic! Once they were all bright enough for our liking, we started to fill up the cupcake liners with multitudes of different amounts of the myriad of colors.

And then we baked them. For what seemed like an eternity. We set the oven to 350 and once it was nice and hot we stuck our multicolored magic in for whatever the all-knowing cardboard box told us to. But they weren't done when the timer beeped. So we put them in for two more minutes, only that wasn't long enough either. More time. The toothpick finally came out clean, but the tops didn't bounce back when you pressed on them. We waited longer.

I think we must have put them back in the over a total of four times. Three times we just added two more minutes and the fourth time we put them in for five minutes. By that time we were afraid of burning them, so we pulled them out and left them in the tin for a little while to see if that helped.

They were completely cooked, just a little spongier than we were used to, which we attributed to the fact that we used applesauce instead of eggs, so just be aware. But they taste super delicious and they're pretty to boot!

So cupcakes out of a box don't have to be ordinary. With a little effort (and I mean little! we be lazy up in here, yo!) you can turn them into vegan rainbow cupcakes of mass deliciousness!

Next time though, I'm going to leave out the baking powder from the applesauce because it doesn't really need it. And I'm only going to use 1/2 cup of applesauce and one banana, because actually you can sub in bananas for eggs too! One banana equals one egg! Who knew!

Banana Muffins Too Good To Be Vegan

I've long had a banana muffin recipe baked up by Giada on one of her television cooking shows and it is the best banana muffin recipe in the world. Don't just take my word for it. The many people I served it to agree and nearly all have either gone off with the recipe or written me to ask for it.

My two cats love
watching Giada.

What makes this muffin recipe so different is that it is all about the banana--at least that was Giada's claim when she created the formula. I have to admit that she made a good point. While there are a few spices in the batter, the main ingredient is bananas so ripe they are black and ugly and look like they should be tossed in the garbage.

The blacker, the
better.

Well, I had some bananas that looked just like that sitting on my table so I wondered, could I veganize the recipe and still have the great banana taste of the original product. I figured it was worth a try. If the end result was horrid, I'd just toss it all out--which in any other scenario I'd have done with those nasty-looking bananas anyway.

Bananas should be so ripe
they mash up into a slurry.

The muffins smelled great baking. They looked high and light in the muffin cups. The taste? Amazing. I think they are every bit as good as the real thing and maybe even a little  better. I fed them to some friends who stopped by who just happened to be fans of the original recipe. "Are they as good?" I questioned. They didn't answer right away but rolled their eyes and kept eating. They did manage to shake their heads, "yes" so I knew the veganized version was a winner.

Since the oven had warmed up the house, I opened the front door, never realizing I'd let that warm, banana bready smell escape into the outdoors. While my friends and I were scarfing down most of the warm banana muffins and tea, I just happened to look out the screen door and what to my wondering eyes did appear, but half the neighborhood standing in line for a sample. "Sorry, gang, the recipe only makes a dozen and we've already gobbled them up."

Whip these up yourselves and tell me what you think. If you make them, I suggest you leave your front door closed.

BANANA MUFFINS

Into a quart bowl put:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup sugar

Stir to mix the ingredients together.

In another bowl put:

1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
2 tsp. vanilla
2 bananas, very ripe and thoroughly mashed

Mix these ingredients and pour into the dry ingredients. Mix everything together by hand. Do not overmix or the muffins will be tough and not light and airy. Divide the batter into 12 muffin cups and bake on the middle rack until the tops are golden, about 25 minutes at 325 degrees F.

Transfer the muffins to a cooling rack as soon as you can handle them or the bottoms will sweat and ruin your perfect muffin.

Makes 12

Vegans love sweet things as much as non-vegans do