(Bacon) Bourbon Truffles

Photo by Edrabbit

I know, I know, it’s a little late, but these rich treats are a perfect Valentine’s day gift. Bookmark this for next year! I made these for my sweetie this year. I made half of them with bacon and half of them without. Both versions are delicious, it just depends on how much you love bacon. They’re dairy free, and if you leave out the bacon they’re vegan!

(Bacon) Bourbon Truffles

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma

INGREDIENTS

For the filling:
1/4 cup soy milk (or heavy cream)
4 tablespoons dairy-free margarine, like Earth Balance (butter works too, if you aren’t vegan) (Note: replacing part of this with bacon grease would be good if you really like bacon!)
12 oz semisweet chocolate (I like Guittard chocolate chips, which are vegan)
1/4 cup bourbon (I used Bulleit)
4 pieces of bacon
Cocoa powder, for rolling

For the coating:
12 oz. semisweet chocolate (again, Guittard chocolate chips are great)

DIRECTIONS

1. Cut bacon into bits and cook it in a frying pan. Allow to drain on paper towels.
2. In a heavy saucepan, combine the soy milk and margarine over medium-low heat. Stir until the margarine melts and the soy milk simmers. Remove from heat and add 12 oz. chocolate and stir until melted and smooth. A whisk is helpful here. Pour in the bourbon and bacon bits and mix thoroughly. Pour into a bowl. Cover and freeze until just firm enough to mound in a spoon, about 40 minutes.
3. Line the bottom of a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Scoop out the filling by tablespoonfuls, spacing them evenly. Roll them into rough balls. This will be messy, and they don’t have to be perfect-looking. Cover and return to the freezer for 30 minutes.
4. Pour cocoa powder onto a plate. Roll chocolate balls in cocoa powder to coat evenly. Re-roll balls to even them out — the cocoa powder will help them not melt and stick to your hands. They should look more like actual spheres now.
5. Return truffles to the foil-lined baking sheet, cover, and put in the freezer while you prepare the coating.
6. To make the coating, melt 12 oz. of chocolate in a double boiler until it’s smooth. Remove from heat.
7. Re-roll truffles between your palms to remove any loose cocoa. Gently drop one truffle ball into the melted chocolate coating, tilting the pan if necessary to coat the ball completely. Slip a fork under the truffle, lift it from the chocolate, and tap the fork gently against the side of the pan to allow any excess chocolate to drip off. Using a knife, gently slide the truffle off the fork onto the foil-lined baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining truffles.
8. Refrigerate, uncovered, until firm, about 1 hour. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks.

Peanut Butter Cookies

When I was a kid, I loved my mom’s old Betty Crocker Cooky Book. I think it was all the colorful cookies that enthralled me. Oddly, I only ever made one recipe from it regularly: Peanut Butter Cookies. They’re fantastic cookies so I never got bored of it. A few years ago for my birthday, my parents gave me a reprinted version of this book, which was originally published in 1963. It was then that I renewed my love of this peanut butter cookies recipe. Tonight I made a vegan version for a bunch of friends and everyone raved about how good they were. Thanks Betty!

Betty Crocker’s Peanut Butter Cookies

This recipe is doubled from the original, and produces about 3 dozen cookies.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup peanut butter (best if you use good, natural, unsalted, crunchy peanut butter)
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375°F
2. Mix butter, peanut butter, sugars, egg.
3. In a separate bowl, mix all dry ingedients.
4. Mix dry ingredients with wet ingredients until well blended.
5. Roll dough into 1 1/4″ balls and put them on a cookie sheet. Mash with a fork in a criss-cross pattern. Bake in a 375°F oven for 10 minutes. Cookies should be very slightly browned around the edges but still gooey and shiny looking in the center. Allow them to cool for about 5 minutes on the cookie sheet before transferring to a cooling rack.

To make these vegan, I substituted Earth Balance margarine for the butter, and Ener-G egg replacer for the egg. Two eggs worth of replacer is 1 tablespoon of egg replacer powder + 1/4 cup warm water, whisked together. I found that there wasn’t enough moisture though, so I added some soymilk, a bit at a time, until the dough came together with the right consistency. It should stick together and not be crumbly, but it shouldn’t be too mushy. I also added a little canola oil because some of the peanut butter I’d used was extremely dry.

Rum Balls

This is another Lynch family classic recipe. I’ve been making these with my mom for as long as I can remember. Be warned: since these aren’t baked, they remain slightly alcoholic. However, the amount of alcohol in a single rum ball is pretty minor so you don’t need to worry about getting drunk unless you eat a whole batch (in which case you probably have other problems to worry about, like a stomachache!). I don’t know where the recipe originates, but I think it’s one of those 1960’s recipes that was passed around between housewives. I have at least one other friend who grew up making these.

The funny thing is, these decadent confections can easily be made vegan, with a little attention to ingredient lists. Make sure that your chocolate chips have no dairy (Guittard is my favorite) and look for generic brand Nilla wafers that don’t contain any eggs or dairy. The brand I use, Valu Time (!) is actually far “better” for you than name-brand Nilla Wafers. The name brand version contains all kinds of hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup, whereas Valu Time is mostly real sugar and non-hydrogenated oils. And they leave out the dairy products too (name brand Nillas have whey in them).

You can make these with bourbon instead of rum if you wish. I’ve never done it (the family tradition is to use rum) but I bet it’s delicious!

Rum Balls

INGREDIENTS

6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips (vegan)
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 cup rum or bourbon
2 1/2 cups crushed Nilla wafers (approx. 1 12-oz. box) (real Nillas are not vegan, but sometimes the generic brands are)
1/2 cup powdered sugar, plus more for rolling
1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)

DIRECTIONS

1. Crush Nilla wafers in a food processor, blender, or by putting them in a bag and rolling them with a rolling pin. Chop nuts, if they’re not pre-cut.
2. Mix nuts, powdered sugar, and crushed Nilla wafers in a large mixing bowl.
3. Melt chocolate chips and corn syrup in a double boiler.
4. Pour melted chocolate mixture over the Nilla wafer mixture. Add rum and mix well.
5. Let stand 1/2 hour at room temp for 30 minutes. Do not skip this step! It gives the rum time to soak into the Nilla wafer crumbs.
6. Roll dough into balls and coat with powdered sugar. Store in an airtight container.

Cranberry Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

What does one do with a bunch of leftover cranberry sauce? Make cookies, of course. The cranberry sauce is sweet enough that it can be enjoyed in both sweet and savory contexts. It was the inspiration for these tender little sandwiches.

Cranberry Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

Adapted from Sunset Magazine, December 2009

INGREDIENTS

2 cups flour
1 cup cold butter, cubed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
leftover cranberry sauce (you shouldn’t need too much)

DIRECTIONS

1. Using an electric mixer (preferably a stand mixer), mix flour, butter, sugar, and salt on low speed until just blended. Increase speed to medium and mix until dough is no longer crumbly and just comes together. It might take a while; don’t lose patience.
2. Form dough into a disk and chill 30 minutes.
3. On a lightly floured work surface, roll dough 1/8″ thick. Cut out cookies into whatever shape you desire. I used a knife to cut mine into squares, but you can use cookie cutters too. Re-roll dough if necessary. Cut small “windows” out of half of the cookies: they will be the top of the sandwich.
4. Preheat oven to 325°F. Put cookies into refrigerator to chill for 15 minutes while the oven is preheating. Bake until light golden brown, 12-15 minutes. Let cool.
5. Spread each bottom half with about 1/2 teaspoon cranberry sauce, then put the top half on top and press very gently (cookies will be delicate, so be careful not to break them).
6. Store in a covered container. You can eat the cookies right after you make them, but they’re actually better the next day when the sauce has soaked in a little.

Dairy-free Cherry Ice Cream (vegan, if you eat honey)

At the request of my lovely lactarded fiance, I made some cherry ice cream with coconut milk. Added bonus: it cleared some of those damn cherries out of our freezer!

Dairy-free Cherry Ice Cream

Adapted from 101cookbooks.com

INGREDIENTS

1 14 oz. can of full-fat coconut milk
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup pitted, chopped cherries (I used ones I picked during the summer and froze)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon Amaretto or cherry liqueur

DIRECTIONS

1. In a bowl, mash the chopped cherries so some of their juice comes out. Add juice + everything but the amaretto to a saucepan and heat until honey is melted. Don’t let it boil fully — just heat it.
2. Remove from heat and stir in Amaretto. Cover and put in the fridge to chill until it’s cool. Be patient — if you try to freeze the mix while it’s still warm, your ice cream won’t have a good texture.
3. Freeze per your ice cream maker’s instructions. Put in containers and let freeze fully in the freezer for another 12 hours or so.

Veganifying “Mrs. Fields” Chocolate Chip Cookies

Remember this? It’s my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe in the world. My only problem with it is that it’s not vegan, nor is it dairy free. This means that neither my fiance nor many of my friends can eat them. Needless to say, that’s not a good situation for my waistline. So I figured out how to veganify them. They’re just as delicious without animal products — though be warned, they don’t stay good for nearly as long. If your house is anything like mine, though, that won’t really matter.

Vegan “Mrs. Fields” Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yield: About 50 cookies

INGREDIENTS

1 cup Earth Balance margarine
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon Ener-g egg replacer plus 1/4 cup warm water, mixed well
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
2 1/2 cups oatmeal
1 12-oz. package vegan chocolate chips
1/4 cup soy milk (approximately)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.
2. Cream the margarine, sugars, and vanilla with a mixer until fluffy.
3. Add replacer + water. Mix well.
4. Add salt, baking powder, baking soda, flour. Mix well.
5. Put the 2 1/2 cups oatmeal into the blender and whiz it till it’s ground like flour. Add to the dough and mix well. It should be pretty thick at this point.
6. The dough will probably be pretty dry and crumbly at this point. Add some soy milk and mix it in until it’s the consistency of thick cookie batter — about 1/4 cup.
7. Add chocolate chips and mix with a wooden spoon until thoroughly incorporated. It should look about like this:

   

8. Roll into balls and place on a cookie sheet.
9. Bake one sheet at a time for about 9 minutes, or until the peaks of the cookies are just getting golden brown but the rest of the cookie is still light and looks uncooked (it should still be shiny).
10. Remove from oven and let cool on the cookie pan for 5 minutes. Transfer to wire cooling rack. (Cookies will fall apart if you try to transfer them sooner.)
11. Devour.

Vegan Pumpkin Ginger Ice Cream

I think this ice cream speaks for itself. It’s vegan–made with coconut milk–and has chunks of candied ginger and ginger cookie dough. It’s ridiculously creamy, spicy, and delightful. I got the idea for the ginger cookie dough from my friend Josie, who, upon tasting this particular dough, declared that it would be fantastic in ice cream. She was absolutely correct.

Vegan Pumpkin Ginger Ice Cream

Adapted from Pumpkin Ice Cream, by Williams-Sonoma and Ginger Sparkle Cookies from Vegan With A Vengance.

Yield: About 1 quart.

INGREDIENTS

For the ice cream:
1 cup canned unsweetened pumpkin puree
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 14 oz. can of full-fat coconut milk
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ tsp. salt
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch ground cloves
1 tablespoon bourbon (I like Maker’s Mark)
¼ cup chopped candied ginger

For the cookie dough:
½ cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
generous ½ teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon soymilk
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla

DIRECTIONS

For the ice cream:

1. Whisk together all ice cream ingredients except bourbon and candied ginger. Cover and refrigerate as long as you can stand, up to 24 hours. The longer the better. Admittedly I was impatient and only let it cool for about a half hour. It was still good.
2. This is a good time to make and roll the cookie dough (see below).
3. Freeze the ice cream according to your ice cream maker’s directions. In the last five minutes of freezing, add the bourbon and candied ginger. When it’s done freezing, gently fold in the cookie dough balls. Transfer to a container and freeze in the freezer for another 12 hours. You can eat it now, but it will be really soft and much tastier after it’s hardened a bit.

For the cookie dough:

1. Sift together flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the canola oil, molasses, soymilk, sugar, and vanilla.
3. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.
4. Roll into small (dime-sized) balls of dough.

*Note: This cookie dough won’t bake into proper cookies because it doesn’t have any leaveners in it.

Variations:

If you prefer real dairy ice cream, just substitute 2 cups (1 pint) of heavy cream for the coconut milk. It will be divine, I promise.

If you accidentally picked up canned pumpkin pie mix instead of plain pumpkin, just reduce the sugar and spices a bit. Here’s what I did:

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
small pinch cloves
small pinch nutmeg
1/2 cup packed brown sugar

Everything else remains the same.

Broiled Grapefruit

Hello friends! It’s been far too long since I posted. A lot has happened in the past few months. I went to Lark Camp, Burning Man, and the Florida Keys for Ed’s cousin Stephanie’s wedding. Oh and did I mention, I got engaged!! That’s right, my dearest Ed asked me to marry him the last night of Burning Man. :) Needless to say, it’s been a flurry of activity for a few months solid, leaving me with very little time or energy to cook, let alone write about cooking. But now that things have calmed down a bit, I can get my head straight and start getting back into my old routines.

Tonight I was inspired by three delightful little grapefruits left at our house by the lovely Arlette. She had brought them to our engagement party to make some truly inspired Greyhounds, rimmed with homemade smoked salt. But I digress. Tonight there were no greyhounds– I’m sure mine would pale in comparison to Arlette’s anyway. Instead, I made a dessert that my parents have made for me for as long as I can remember: broiled grapefruit. It’s incredibly quick and easy to make. It doesn’t even really need a recipe.

First, turn your broiler on. Then cut your grapefruit in half horizontally and place it on a cookie sheet. Use a sharp knife to cut the edges of each triangle, which will make them easier to remove with a spoon later. Sprinkle with granulated sugar, followed with a bit of sherry. Place in broiler for about 8-9 minutes, until it starts slightly blackening on top (but don’t let it burn!). Take it out of the broiler, let it cool for a few minutes, and eat it with a spoon. Be sure to slurp up all the tasty juices from each grapefruit half! Getting messy is half the fun.

Absinthe-Cardamom Cupcakes

Oh yes.

I have no special story for these ‘cakes, just a stroke of inspiration and a homey Sunday afternoon. I chose to make these vegan because Ed can’t do dairy and because I have a lot of vegan friends. And honestly? Vegan cupcakes are just as scrumptious as their animal-product counterparts. My cupcake bible is Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero. This recipe is based on the “Golden Vanilla Cupcakes” and the “Fluffy Buttercream Frosting” recipes in that book. The absinthe and cardamom are pretty subtle, but definitely there.

Absinthe-Cardamom Cupcakes

Adapted from “Golden Vanilla Cupcakes” and the “Fluffy Buttercream Frosting” in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Yield: 12 cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

Cupcakes:
1/4 cup absinthe (I used Kubler)
3/4 cup soymilk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom (heaping)
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (or more vanilla extract)

Frosting:
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated shortening (I like Spectrum)
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine (I like Earth Balance)
1 3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted if clumpy
3 tablespoons absinthe

DIRECTIONS

Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk together soymilk, absinthe, and apple cider vinegar in a 2-cup measuring cup. Set aside to curdle.
3. In a large bowl, sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cardamom.
4. To the soymilk mixture, add sugar, oil, vanilla, and almond extract. Mix thoroughly. I like to use a whisk for this job.
5. Add wet mix to dry and stir until there are no more clumps.
6. Line cupcake tray with cupcake liners. Fill each cup 2/3 full with batter. Bake 20-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
7. While they’re cooling, make the frosting!

Frosting:

1. Beat all ingredients together till well incorporated and fluffy.
2. When cupcakes are 100% cooled, frost them. Then devour.

Kathy’s Banana Bread, remixed

Last week, I baked some banana bread for my friend Cat over at Baking With Cinnamon, which is a great baking blog that you should check out. Cat has thyroid cancer and is in the midst of preparing for another round of radioactive iodine treatment. Having had thyroid cancer myself and going through the same process a couple of years back, I know just how rough it is to be on a low iodine diet — where you have to make basically everything from scratch — while simultaneously experiencing severe thyroid hormone withdrawal. So I baked her some delicious low iodine banana bread so she’d have something nice to munch on without having to make it herself. Because there’s no dairy or soy in this recipe, the only thing I had to do to make it low iodine was leave out the egg yolks and make sure to use kosher salt (not sea salt or iodized salt) — but of course, you don’t have to do this unless you’re on a low iodine diet too. For the record, I noticed the loaf was a bit flatter and denser without the egg yolks.

This recipe originally came from my old boss, Kathy, who would bring loaves of banana bread into the office on a regular basis — much to our delight and our expanding waistlines. I mixed things up a bit by adding the spices and using 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar instead of one full cup of white sugar.

Kathy’s Banana Bread, Remixed

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup non-hydrogenated shortening (I like Spectrum, which is organic and made out of palm oil)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3 ripened bananas – mashed
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon ginger

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Grease and flour a loaf pan. For those not familiar with the technique, here’s how you do it. First, using a paper towel, rub a thin layer of oil — I use shortening — around the inside of the pan, completely coating it. Then add about a tablespoon or so of all purpose flour. Over the sink, shake it around so the flour coats the all surfaces: the bottom and all four sides, up to the top rim. Tap out any excess flour. You should now have a thin layer of grease and flour coating the inside of the pan. This will prevent sticking like nobody’s business.
3. With a mixer, blend shortening and sugars till thoroughly combined.
4. Add all other ingredients and mix well. Spices are to taste, so if you want to add more, have at it!
5. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake at 350°F for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.