White chocolate peanut butter cookies & cookie buttercreme.

I don't like "real" chocolate. Caffeine in general is pretty shitty to me so I stay far, far away. White chocolate, though, well.. That stuff's pretty nice. I can't find vegan white chocolate chips from anywhere in my city so I do some pretty slick trades with my faraway vegan pals. Oppenheimer has been treating me well. VeganSweets have been awful nice to me also. At the end of the day, I judge which packaging is sillier and that's my favourite. A quick word on white chocolate peanut butter? Holy shit. Peanut Butter & Co is mighty fine. I stocked up hard enough at the Supertargets in America, for $3 a jar, I can live with that. Biscoff's cookie butter was about the same price, and I've never tried it until AFTER I bought something like 6 jars of it, brought it home, and crossed my fingers it wouldn't suck. For once, luck was on my side, and it did not suck. 

Make these cookies and turn'um into sandwiches with the cookie buttercreme. You'll get 20 cookies out of these. The buttercreme makes for about 2 1/2 cups or so.



Cookies
Ingredients I
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 heaping tsp No-Egg (dry egg replacer for 1 egg)

Ingredients II
5 tbsp coconut almond milk
1 1/4 cups brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup vegan butter, softened
Vanilla bean paste
Caramel extract

Optional: 1/2 cup chocolate chips, nuts, or fruit. 

Whisk together Ingredients I in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, mix (by hand or an electric mixer) Ingredients II. Add your wet ingredients into your dry and mix by hand until incorporated. Throw in your 1/2 cup of optional ingredients.

Line two cookie sheet with parchment paper. Drop a heaping tablespoon of dough and flatten with a fork. Leave a few inches apart from one another (I fit 10 to a sheet).

Bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes, let sit on the baking tray for 5 minutes before transferring to your cooling wrack.


Cookie Buttercreme
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup vegan butter, softened
2 tbsp vegetable shortening
1/3 cup cookie butter
Vanilla bean paste
2 tbsp+ coconut almond milk

In a large bowl, cream together butter and shortening, for 2 minutes. Add in cookie butter & vanilla and mix for 2 more minutes. Add in remaining ingredients and mix on high speed for 3-4 minutes. Throw in more icing sugar or milk if your consistency isn't fluffy enough, or becomes too dry.

Pop into the refrigerator while your cookies cool.

Once your cookies are fully cooled, make some sandwiches out of them, will you? A few tablespoons of filling per sandwich will do just fine.

Sweet red curry, coconut basmati, & roasted squash.


Everything here tastes deadly together, you'll just have to trust me. The nutty red curry sauce runs thin, because that's my favourite, but you can certainly thicken it up at the end with a powdered starch or by cooking potatoes into the sauce and letting it simmer. Serve with roasted acorn squash and jasmine-scented basmati rice with toasted slivered almonds. Altogether this takes about 30 minutes and serves four.



Roasted squash
Quarter up 1 acorn squash, peel, and chop up. Place on a pan with parchment paper. Drizzle with oil and bake at 450F for 20 minutes. Ten minutes in, give'um a flip.




Rice
I used jasmine-scented basmati rice. The ratio for this is 2 1/2 cups water to 1 cup rice. Once your water is boiling, add in 1 tbsp coconut oil, then add in your rice. This'll take about 20 minutes, which works out okay as you're to get your 1/2 cup slivered almonds all toasty-like in a pan (over medium/medium-high) and cooled. This takes under five minutes, but get started on it ASAP. Once your almonds are toasted and cooled, stir into your fully-cooked rice.



Curry sauce
2 tsp coconut oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 sweet yellow onion
Red curry paste*
1/3 cup nut butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 can premium coconut milk
Vegetables of choice -- I used broccoli, baby corn, and bamboo shoots

Start by melting your coconut oil in a large pan or wok on medium-high heat. Add in your garlic and onions. Next, stir in your curry paste, nut butter and brown sugar.

*I used Cock brand red curry paste. A big ole tub of this runs for $2 from Superstore. It's a bit hot, be mindful of how much curry paste you'll be using here. I used 3 tablespoons because I'm tough as nails. (If it gets to be a bit hot, adding in some lime juice, nut butter, or brown sugar will take care of that)

Add in your vegetables and coconut milk. Simmer on low for 5-10 minutes.