Giorgio stewmari

I am going to visit my friend during her radio show tonight and wanted to bring some of the banana bread I made yesterday but her co-host is vegan. I bought some Earth Balance last week and made a batch of pretty yucky-tasting cookies with it and with eggs, so not even vegan (they were gobbled up no problem by me and my mom). So I turned to the Post Punk Kitchen, internet repository of all vegetarian/vegan cooking knowledge (via); she recommended canola oil to replace butter and said to use 1/3 cup oil for every 1/2 cup butter in the recipe. I cut up 3 apples and a pear for sauce to replace the eggs, mixed the oil with organic cane sugar, molasses, vanilla extract and coconut chips. Added the applesauce, then flour, oats, soda, salt, chopped up Baker’s semisweet chocolate (“manufactured on equipment that processes milk,” the vegan OKed this) and walnuts. Because the dough was hot from the fresh applesauce some of the chocolate melted and, in general, the mixture seemed dangerously liquid. But after 10-12 minutes in the oven they were perfectly browned (I burnt the second batch, damn!) and my parents, and I hope the DJs, will agree: they are some of the tastiest cookies I’ve made in a long time, vegan or otherwise.

UPDATE: The cookies were well-received and earned me an on-air plug; I’m not sure who their audience is but I hope there’ll be some cross-over appeal.