I had a yen for oatmeal cookies yesterday but had to make some more today as I gave myself a brief bout of food poisoning and had to throw out the entire batch. Fortunately there was no chocolate in those ones. I would have cried, as I hugged the toilet bowl.
The food poisoning came about from attempting to incorporate poorly prepared chestnuts to the mix. I had gathered some conkers on my way home from Robynn's on Saturday, which made me start thinking about a recipe for Chestnut Tagliatelli. When I found a small burlap sack brimming with chestnuts at the farmer's market on Sunday I decided I needed my diet to be more nutty. And what better way than to add to cookies?! It wasn't a good idea. I hadn't quite expected to react so. But it's a lesson learned. Be very, very careful when preparing chestnuts.
In any case, I had begun all this following Terry Romero's recipe in Veganomicon, and even though I know her recipe is awesome and there are no chestnuts in sight, I did not want a repeat of last night. I do have a recipe somewhere, but my notebook's gone AWOL, so I Googled it and came across Eggless.com. This might just be my new favourite website -- so many cookies! And cakes! So many cakes!
This is a resource I'm going to keep coming back to; it's easy to navigate and has a fantastic selection of recipes to choose from.
Here's my version of their Vegan Oatmeal Cookie:
1/2 c. soft vegan margarine
1/2 c. firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 c. granulated sugar
1 tsp. cornflour
1 tsp. vanilla essence
1/4 c. plain flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1 1/2 c. oatmeal
1/2 c. dried cranberries
method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas mark 4
In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and light brown and granulated sugars. Dissolve the cornflour in a small amount of water and add to the mix, with the vanilla. Sift in the flour, baking soda, spices and salt and blend thoroughly into the creamed mixture. Fold in the oats and dried cranberries.
Arrange about two inches apart on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 F/180 C for 10--12 minutes or until light golden brown. Wait a couple of minutes to let them cool a bit before transferring onto a wire rack.
At the last minute I decided I needed to add chocolate, maybe 1/2 c. of dark chocolate buttons. Nom! Seriously tasty.
Ooh, I hope a conker didn't find itself into the biscuit mix. Poor you. Hope you're feeling better. It was great to meet you on Sat.
Posted by: P | September 29, 2008 at 07:00 PM