Raid The Cupboard Vegan Christmas Cookies

Mom baked all year long, but only
at Christmas did she turn out an array
of cookies that made we three
sisters drool.

It seems that every family has it's favorite cookie. My sister-in-law adores Snickerdoodles and two of my seven grandkids think they are the only cookie worth making. My husband loved all cookies and it mattered not what they were made of. Somehow, he managed to get his large hand in and out of our cookie jar with great dexterity. My daughter-in-law makes the best oatmeal cookies in the world. I kid you not. She has won several Blue Ribbons with that cookie and lucky me, she shared the recipe so I could make them too. But that's another post.

Church suppers were the norm in the
tiny town of my youth. I think we went
to every one of them, no matter what the
denomination.

Growing up in Minnesota, our family ate a vast array of Norwegian and Swedish cookies that appeared only during the Christmas season. Since my dad was a business owner, we got invited to any and every church Christmas supper for miles around our little rural town. My mom got some of those recipes and they became our favorites too, even though we had to wait a whole year for them to show up once more on our table. But that's another post too.

Shortly after I was married, I went to
mom's and copied all her recipes I'd
grown to love. The cards were stained
and the print had grown dim. Now my
cards look just like hers.

With the holidays upon us, it seemed like the right time for me to share tried and true cookie recipes that I grew up with and love to this day. During the coming month, I'll share the best of the best recipes that I've veganized successfully and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I also hope you print out or write down the ingredients and stash that piece of paper wherever you keep your treasured recipes. I also hope that over the next many years, your recipe cards become as stained and wrinkled as mine are.

RAID THE CUPBOARD COOKIES

These are NOT the most beautiful cookies you'll
ever make. Nor do they travel well. But they do
stay fresh a long time and chances are,
they won't last long enough to get stale anyway.

1 stick of vegan margarine, room temperature

3/4 cup of sugar

1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. of unsweetened applesauce

2 Tbs. non dairy milk

1 cup flour

1 cup rolled oats

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup diced nuts, your choice

1 cup flaked coconut

1 cup raisins

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup dried mixed fruit

This is my personal favorite brand
of mixed dried fruit

You can change the ingredients to whatever you wish. Just make sure that if you eliminate 1 cup of one thing, you make up for it by using 2 cups of another ingredient. Since I'm not a big fan of chocolate chips, I change the mixed fruit and chocolate chips around. Sometimes I exchange the raisins for chopped dates. The recipe is quite versatile. Just keep the quantities as given.

Preheat the oven to 350.

In a medium sized bowl, beat the margarine and sugar until it is light and fluffy. About 2-3 minutes. Add the applesauce, vanilla, and non-dairy milk. Mix to blend.

Use any uncooked
oatmeal you have on
hand.

Now add the flour and oatmeal along with the baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix till just blended. Do not overbeat or you'll have a tough cookie.

Stir the remaining ingredients into the dough by hand and then drop the dough by teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes or until the edges are nicely brown. Allow the cookies to cool a bit on the sheet before moving them to a rack to finish cooling. Small pieces will fall off each cookie. Don't be alarmed. I've made this recipe at least a hundred times and that is the norm. Once cool, the cookie hardens a little so they can be transferred to your cookie jar. They can also be frozen for up to a month with no noticeable difference in taste.

I love this cookie. Not only because it is easy to make but because I don't feel guilty giving them to my grandkids. All told, they are a healthy alternative to most cookies out there.

Whoever thought of drying cranberries
to they could be used in assorted
treats goes down in my book as
a genius. 

Beer Bread Worth Baking

I've used beer to boil my brats, to create a deep fry batter and to make quick bread. The beer brats and onion boil always turned out well and even now, as a vegan, I sometimes still use that mixture to pre-boil my faux meat sausages before finishing them off on the grill.  As for deep frying, that has gone by the way since veganism took over my life. I discovered I'd rather eat the veggies fresh or roasted other than deep fried.

Now to get to the beer bread: over the years I've tried recipe after recipe and been disappointed in every single one. The bread didn't rise; it was tough and dense; it lacked moisture and tasted like it was already a week old just out of the oven.

Then one day while I was perusing food blogs, I came upon a recipe labeled "the best beer bread you'll ever eat." Who could resist?  I made the necessary changes to convert the bread to vegan and stirred it up. It took all of five minutes. Then I popped it in the oven, hoping for the best.

Wonderful aroma. Great crunchy crust. Soft, mellow, almost fluffy interior. Immensely satisfying mouth feel and great taste. But be warned: this isn't the prettiest loaf of bread you've ever seen. The top bakes up full of crooks and bumps and crevices. But it is, irrefutably, the best beer bread I've ever eaten. Give this recipe a try and tell me what you think.

Now for some basics:

Use a regular metal bread pan that's been sprayed with a non-stick spray. Use any brand of beer you wish. I used the least expensive one I could find and the bread still turned out great. If you have any leftovers (the loaf isn't especially huge), toast it up for breakfast and top it with your favorite jam or jelly. I used strawberry because that's what I had on hand.

BEST BEER BREAD EVER

3 cups white flour

1 Tbs. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 Tbs. baking powder

2 Tbs. caraway seeds or any other type of seeds you like

12 oz. beer

Put the dry ingredients into a large bowl and give everything a good stir to evenly distribute the flour, etc.

Add the beer and stir. The dough will be wet. That is how it should be. Don't overstir or the bread will be tough.

Spread the batter in the loaf pan, leveling it off  the best you can. It will be uneven. That is how it's supposed to be.

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. The bread should be golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean.

Turn the bread onto a wire rack to cool. If left in the hot pan, the bread will sweat and you won't be happy with it.

Check the expiration date on your baking powder. That particular ingredient can last for years and years and years. If your can has expired, throw it away and buy a new one. The bread won't raise with old baking powder and neither will anything else you use it in.