Vegan Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

December 10, 2015 by Britt Leave a Comment

I wasn’t looking for a great chocolate chip cookie recipe. All I wanted was a decent-looking ingredient list that I could tweak and muck up into a fun Halloween treat for a party we were attending back in October. I started with this recipe and, at first, I did just that—turning out a spirulina-tinted, ghoulishly green treat speckled with vegan white chocolate chips. The result was downright delicious. I could tell from the fab taste and texture, however, that if I backed out my spooktacular additions, I might just have a really awesome, straight-up chocolate chip cookie on my hands.

So I took two steps forward and one step back in adapting and arriving at this recipe, but it was totally worth it.

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Banana Oat Snack Cookies

April 23, 2015 by Britt Leave a Comment

These scrumptious little snack cookies are the result of a handful of overripe bananas and a simple google search for “banana cookies”. (Heads up: I have a few banana-based recipes in the works right now, so get to ripening! Apologies, banana-loathers.) The recipe below is a complete bastardization of the original, but definitely found its inspiration there.

I obviously adapted them to be gluten-free, but also skipped the oil, added a bit of flax for binding/fiber/omega-3 goodness, and swapped the refined sugar out for pureed dates. That’s right, these cookies are made without refined sugar! Excepting the chocolate chips, of course, but you could easily use grain-sweetened chocolate chips or something else entirely if you wanted them to be totally refined sugar-free.

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Blueberry Banana Muffins — Vegan & Gluten-Free

March 26, 2015 by Britt Leave a Comment

While most of my slightly overripe bananas go into the freezer for smoothies these days—because smoothies are typically more nutritious and quicker than baked goods, and also smoothies!—I will admit that I have occasionally been leaving a few on the counter to totally blacken up. These muffins are one of the reasons why.

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Pumpkin Spice Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

October 14, 2014 by Britt 1 Comment

Many exciting things of the nuptial variety have been happening in our families over the past few months: one of my cousins got married, two of my other cousins got engaged, and we finally received the call from my sister-in-law Amy telling us that her boyfriend had proposed! (Sorry for using the word “finally”, Jeff, but we knew you were the dude since, like, the day we met you, so we’ve all been waiting. 😉 ) Their wedding planning is well underway, and Chris and I are excited and honored to have been asked to be members of the wedding party.

I was also incredibly honored when my mother-in-law asked me to make a cake for Amy and Jeff’s engagement party. Chris’ aunt, a seasoned baker, would be making a regular cake already. We have a fairly significant list of dietary restrictions in our group, though, so I was tasked with producing a vegan, gluten-free, soy-free cake as well.

No problemo!

(Hindsight being 20/20, this cake should and could have been nut-free also, but I made it using homemade cashew milk. Apologies to the nut-free cousins!)

After a few inquiries as to what the guests of honor might enjoy, I decided on a season-appropriate pumpkin spice cake with a hint of cardamom and a vanilla buttercream frosting. Sound good? It really was. But before I get into how good this cake is, let me first tell you that this is apparently (thankfully) a forgiving recipe.

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Maple Green Chile Cornbread

September 26, 2014 by Britt 3 Comments

It’s officially fall. I can say that now without simply meaning that it’s “official” because I’ve had to put a sweater on before going outside for more than a week, my skin is getting a little dry, and we put our heat on the other day for the first time in months. Though maybe somehow those things count more than what the calendar says? Either way. It’s official.

I can also tell that fall has arrived because my mood in the kitchen has shifted. I’ve moved away from spiralizing zucchini into piles of raw pasta and more toward big pots of chili and smoky baked beans. Chris always teases me that I cook according to the weather. It’s true.

And why not? It feels good. A plateful of crisp, raw veggies is a light and refreshing foil to the heat of summer (I flirt hard with raw foodism in those dog days). Conversely, who doesn’t like to come in on crisp fall day, shake off the chill, and sit down to a bowl of something hearty and hot?

So it would stand to reason that I’d be serving up a hearty pot of goodness fit for fall, right? Nope! Instead I’m going to give you a sweet and savory sidekick for your own big pot of something.

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