One of the hardest parts of being a new vegan (or even an old seasoned vegan) is trying to keep up with all the new products out there. I must have spent over $50 looking for the "right" vegan cheese my first year being a vegan and I have over 50 vegan/vegetarian cookbooks in my arsenal but not all the recipes are the greatest. I’m the first born so I’m used to being a Guinea Pig and now I’m your Vegan Guinea Pig. So here are my recommendations and critiques. Let me know what you think!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Cookbook Review: Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

When Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar showed up on my doorstep I was absolutely ecstatic. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World is one of my favorite dessert cookbook’s and is always great in a pinch and I was hoping for the same go-to quality from Isa and Terry’s new adventure. I started with the classic cookies and worked my way up to the more adventurous. The Chocoalte Chip Cookies were bakery perfect. The taste was a bit different than what I’m used to in a chocolate chip cookie (likely because Isa and Terry use canola oil instead of Earth Balance like I usually do) but they were still soft, chewy and yummy – perfect with a big glass of cold almond milk. Next, I baked up some Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles, Cowboy and Cowgirl cookies for the Atlanta Bake Sale for Haiti. I spent 2 hours in the kitchen baking up pan after pan of cookies. Everything appeared great until the next morning when I went to try the Cowboy and Cowgirl cookies. They were hard as a rock, completely inedible and unfortunately had to be trashed leaving me with just the Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles to sell at the bake sale. Thankfully they turned out amazing!

There was just the right bite of cayenne and the cinnamon-sugary sweetness of the crust was amazing. They were also the quickest of the 4 cookies I tried from the book to make. They completely sold out at the bake sale so I think that means they are an official hit. I usually try to make at least 10 recipes from a book and give you guys my top 5 when reviewing, unfortunately, my waistline just couldn’t take another batch of cookies so I had to stop at four. However, I still highly recommend this book. The Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles alone are worth it. Some of the cookies on my “must try” list are:

Macadamia Ginger Crunch Drops
Pignoli Almond Cookies (although the ingredients are expensive)
Rocky Roads
Sweet Wine Biscuits with Sesame
Banana Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies (because who doesn’t want cookies for breakfast)


A special thanks to DaCapo books for providing me with a review copy of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.

7 comments:

  1. You should definitely make the sweet potato blondies, they're the best cake ever. Even better than chocolate cake/brownies! The carrot cake chewies are also seriously amazing (sadly not that great looking, but I've still fed them to guests and they haven't complained).

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  2. Where on earth do you find the time?! I got this cookbook for Christmas and have yet to have time to make a single batch of cookies.

    My sister made me the black and whites for Christmas and they were AMAZING, they are definitely a must-bake.

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  3. The Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles are amazing. The Pignoli Almond Cookies are totally worth the expense. I made them over the holidays and nearly ate the entire batch by myself. Also the Pumpkin Cookies taste like sweet potato pie cookies to me!

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  4. Man, I would love to try some of the cookies you made for the bake sale! I baked some vegan pumpkin muffins last night and they are AMAZING!!!

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  5. I just bought a copy of your book today after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's book "Eating Animals" turned me vegetarian.

    Thank you sooo much for this book! When I made the decision to be vegetarian I wanted to find a cookbook that would let me keep eating all the foods I eat now, just with animal-free products.

    I was so happy to see your book on the shelves. It has everything I was looking for - guides to alternative ingredients, information on finding local farmers markets, and of course great food.

    I'm so excited for the adventure that will be becoming a vegetarian. Thank you for all your hard work!!!

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  6. Congratulations on doing so well at the bake sale! Do you think you will try the cowboy and cowgirl cookies again and do something different with them? I hate it when cookies get hard like that. Thanks for the recommendation, I'm going to try to find this book.

    jessyburke88@gmail.com

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  7. Hey Jessica!

    I'm not sure if I'll ever try the cowboy/cowgirl cookie again. There's so many other phenom-looking cookies in the book that I have yet to try that I'll probably give those a whirl before rounding back to the cowboy series. But I know that Isa's recipes are really well tested so I'm sure it was an error on my part somewhere. In theory the cookies looked great.

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