Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Taste & Create: Chocolate Explosion Oatmeal Cookies

This month for Taste & Create I was paired with Alisa Fleming of Alisa Cooks... Alisa's blog is dairy free, not a realm in which I oft' walk so reading her blog was an interesting experience for me... further more many of her recipes are gluten-, soy-, egg- and/or nut-free... I had a great time perusing her recipes!

Eventually though, I found her recipe for Chocolate Explosion Oatmeal Cookies made with rolled oats, they are vegan, egg-, nut-, dairy- and soy free - therefore they MUST be a health food... and BOY! are they the tastiest health food EVER! :)
Beautiful, glossy, dark brown cookies...

Deliciously gooey in the centre - yes that's a broken-in half cookie... they're light enough to sit a-top a rose petal!
I was so proud of me - I was going to tell y'all about how I finally, finally followed a recipe to the letter! And then I thought about it... and how I:
  •  halved the recipe...
  • and then I didn't have any ground flaxseed (linseed), so I tried to replace it with wheat germ (apparently you can do that...?) but I didn't have any of that either so I used oat bran instead (I made that alternative up myself)... (ironically, if I'd been at the flat making these I would have been able to use flaxseed as directed...)
  • and then I doubled the vanilla called for because we only had essence, not extract...
  • and I added just the tiniest pinch of cinnamon a la Laura Vitale...
  • and used all coconut cream, rather than coconut flavoured dairy-free milk and olive oil...
So, in the end, I baked like the Kat I am - to my own tune! But the cookies truly are delicious!

I do have one question though - I halved the recipe, but I made the large, 2 Tbsp sized cookies Alisa recommended... a whole 14 of them (after I ate, maybe a cookie's worth of batter... hey! it's egg free, it's all good!)... which begs the question: Have I finally found someone who enjoys eating cookie batter even more than I do? :)

Ingredients: This is for the half recipe...

1 cups Quick Oats (not instant)

1/2cup plus 1/3 cup wholemeal flour
1/3cup cocoa
1/4tsp baking soda
1/4tsp baking powder
the scantest sprinkle of cinnamon ever, like, 1/2 an 1/8 of a tsp...
pinch salt

3/4cups sugar (I used a combination of white and brown sugar) 

1Tbsp Ground Flaxseed (I'm not sure what this does - I used oat bran which seems to work)
2/3cup coconut cream (or 1/3cup milk alternative, 1/3 cup unflavoured oil)
2tsp Vanilla Extract

1cup Chocolate Chips (I used a chopped chocolate block)

Method:


Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C and line/grease a baking sheet.
In a large bowl, combine the oats, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and combine the sugar, flax, milk alternative, oil, and vanilla. Stir or mix until smooth - slowly incorporating the dry ingredients from the edges of the well... Finally, stir in the chocolate chips.
Make 2Tbsp sized blobs of batter on the baking sheet...
Bake for 10 minutes, or until the tops are no longer shiny. Alisa prefers them a little soft in the middle, and they sure are fantastic  that way!

3 comments:

  1. Glad you enjoyed! They definitely look different from the ones I make (which are less gooey and less shiny), so your changes made a whole new cookie really. Subbing full fat coconut milk for milk and oil definitely makes for a different result, but works! I like the experimentation ... They look yummy! Posting on your recipe today :)

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  2. I actually tried this recipe out, tastes good :)

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  3. Looks intriguing! See you again soon at T&C!
    Min

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