Mexican Chocolate Pumpkin Cookies (PS they are Vegan)

Festive-looking Vegan Cookies

     A couple of months ago, Jake sent me a link to a cookie contest for the LA Times.  The winner would be published in the newspaper and it seemed like a good way to begin trying to publish recipes.  Last year, Jake and I experimented with making Vegan cookies and came up with several good ones.  Applesauce Oatmeal, Tofu Mint Chocolate, Banana Peanut Butter and my favorite, Mexican Chocolate Pumpkin.  I brought in the cookies to my coworkers, who are not Vegetarian, let alone Vegan, and to my surprise, they loved the cookies.  They raved about them, and still ask me to make them whenever the topic of cookies comes up.  It turns out, this was one of those contests where you could vote 10 times per day; every day until the contest ended.  My friends and family spread the word and everyone voted quite a bit, but alas, I did not win the contest.  There were people with thousands of votes, which doesn't really seem like the most honest or truthful way to hold a contest.  (I recently went back to the link and saw that someone had commented on my recipe with kind words about Vegan cookies http://latimes.upickem.net/engine/Details.aspx?p=V&c=21592&s=5686339&i=1&m=X#SD.)

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     Vegan baking, is actually very easy.  The items to replace are the eggs and butter and milk chocolate.  The butter is easily replaced by Earth Balance buttery sticks (which taste almost identical to butter)or margarine, and the eggs can be replaced by a number of things, pureed pumpkin, applesauce, tofu, banana, or a store-bought egg replacer.  It's also very easy to find chocolate that is not made with milk or other animal products.  The best part about Vegan baking, is that you can eat the dough or batter along the way without worrying about salmonella from the raw eggs.  That way, you can adjust flavors along the way, ensuring that you will have a cookie to your liking in the end.  Salmonella has never stopped me before with dough, but with Vegan baking, I can eat the dough without getting a stomach ache.  

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     I made 4 batches of these cookies and gave them to my coworkers wrapped in plastic and tied with ribbon for a holiday present.  Most of them ate all the cookies within minutes of receiving them, and my Vegan coworker Crystal was very pleased as well.  These cookies aren't overly sweet, and can be made on the chewy under-baked side because there is no fear of raw eggs. 

Vegan Mexican Chocolate Cookies with Pumpkin

By Jake J. Thomas and Kaitlin Fasse

1 Earth Balance vegan buttery stick
1 cup evaporated palm sugar
¼ cup organic pumpkin puree
¼ tsp each of vanilla extract, baking soda, nutmeg and salt
2 cups of flour
1 ½ packages of Ibarra Mexican Chocolate, chopped into small pieces

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Bring the buttery stick to room temperature and cut into tablespoon sized pieces. Cream the butter in a mixer (on speed 2 or 4) with the paddle attachment for a few seconds. Add the palm sugar and continue whipping on speed four until light and fluffy, about 3-5 minutes.

3. Add the pumpkin, vanilla and nutmeg and continue to mix until combined.

4. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add the dry ingredients ½ cup at a time to the wet ingredients and continue to mix until combined. Once combined, check the consistency of the dough by pinching it to see if it holds its form (you can taste it at this point too!). Add more flour if needed.

5. Add the Ibarra chocolate and mix until the chocolate is dispersed throughout the dough.

6. Using an ice cream scoop (or two spoons), scoop out balls of dough and place on a baking sheet (no need to grease it). Flatten the balls a little with the back of a fork.

7. Bake the cookies for 12-16 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through to ensure even baking. Take the sheet out and let cool for about 3 minutes, then place on a wire rack to cool entirely. 

 

Technically, this is still considered baking...

The baked/stuffed pumpkin

     On a long rainy Saturday, when I had planned on making pasta with tomato sauce for dinner, Caroline came into the kitchen with her laptop and a recipe recommendation for a baked/stuffed pumpkin from her mom.  (I am working backwards a little bit, as this was before Thanksgiving and I was getting into a autumn mood).  It sounded great, but needed some tweaking as it was not a vegetarian recipe.  We immediately started to brainstorm about what we could fill the pumpkin with.  Roasted vegetables, cheese, lasagna noodles, pine nuts, potatoes; we were really getting into it.  We decided on garlic breadcrumbs (like the recipe called for), roasted butternut squash, sauteed onion, chard, carrots and celery, wild rice with black beans, and layers of mozzarella, Parmesan, and Gruyere cheese, with creme fraiche, and herbs.

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  While this recipe certainly takes a while, it is well worth the wait.  First, the pumpkin needs to be cleaned and the guts need to be removed (I really hate this part, it feels like pulling hair out of a drain, but it's worth it), we saved the seeds and roasted them which was a nice snack while we waited for the pumpkin.  The first layer was the wild rice with the black beans.  Next we laid down the sauteed garlic, onion, carrots, celery, butternut squash, and swiss chard.  Then we added the breadcrumbs with garlic.  In between each layer, we added creme fraiche in addition to Gruyere, mozzarella, and Parmesan cheese as well as salt and pepper, sage, thyme, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  After all of the layers are put into the pumpkin, it needs to bake for two hours.  The smells pouring from the oven are like the songs of the sirens to Odysseus; it is almost impossible not to pull it out of the oven and start devouring it.  Again, luckily we had those roasted pumpkin seeds.

 

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     Once the pumpkin was finally ready, we were so excited and could not wait to scoop it out. It was delicious, savory, warm, spicy and complex, everything we hoped for and more. I knew that this dish would be a wonderful vegetarian addition to the Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house, so I emailed my mom the next day telling her all about it. I ended up making the stuffed/baked pumpkin for Thanksgiving and it was a hit! I believe this will be a new addition to the standard Thanksgiving traditions.

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130704456 

Stuffed Baked Pumpkin

Adapted from NPR

by Caroline Carpenter, Jake J Thomas, and Kaitlin Fasse

1 or 2 sugar pie pumpkins, cleaned and gutted (save the lid)

1 cup wild rice

1 can of black beans

1 onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

garlic, to taste

small bunch of Swiss chard

1 packaged of pre-cut butternut squash

4-5 pieces of stale bread, cut into squares and toasted with garlic

Creme Fraiche

Grated Mozzarella, Gruyere, Parmesan

minced thyme and sage

salt and pepper

nutmeg, cinnamon (or cinnamon sticks)

butter.

     

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 with the rack on the lower third.  Wash and clean the pumpkin, remove strings and seeds.  Rub butter on the inside of the pumpkin and lid and salt and pepper generously.  Place on a baking sheet or pan and set aside.

2.  Cook the rice, following package directions and combine with one can of   beans.

3.  Saute the onions, carrots, celery, chard and garlic.

4.  Toast the breadcrumbs with garlic for a few minutes in a pyrex baking dish.

5.  Set the pumpkin on the baking sheet and begin to assemble.  Start with the rice and beans, add the onions, carrots, celery, chard, butternut squash, and garlic, then the breadcrumbs.  In between each layer, add the cheese, creme fraiche, herbs and salt and pepper.

6.  Finish with a layer of cheese, place the lid back on the pumpkin and bake for about 2 hours, checking on it occasionally. If desired, remove the lid to brown the cheese on the top.

7.  Carefully remove the pumpkin from the oven.  You can either scoop out of it, or cut it into slices like a pie.

Enjoy