Vegan Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

To preface this post, I am not vegan. I do this in case it’s not obvious in some of my earlier posts about foods that are definitely NOT-vegan… But I do have several friends who are vegan, and I like to cook/bake for them when I can. (I do the same for my friends who are gluten-intolerant, so I promise that some gluten-free recipes will be coming too!)

I first made these cookies to hand out at my first regional Burn. I’d made about 500 cookies to gift over the weekend, and I wanted to make sure my vegan friends didn’t feel left out. After that, these cookies became my go-to vegan recipe because they are amazing, whether you are vegan or not! They are like little banana bread cookies: crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, and loaded with chocolate chips!

It’s been over two years since I first made these cookies, based on a recipe from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Since then, the recipe has evolved, as has my education on cooking and baking vegan. Personally, I sometimes gravitate towards vegan foods because I’m severely lactose intolerant, and vegan foods are frequently the only way I can ensure no tummy troubles later in the day…

A few important things to remember about this recipe:

• The more disgusting your bananas look, the tastier they are! I like to let my bananas turn mostly black, and then I stick them in the fridge until I’m ready to use them. It looks and feels gross, but the extra kick of banana flavor is totally worth it!
• Make sure you use quick-cooking oats or rolled oats and not instant/minute oatmeal.
• Vegan chocolate chips are getting easier to find. Personally, I use this variety from Enjoy Life, which I first found at Whole Foods. (They’re now also carried by my local Target!) I’ve tried a few other brands of vegan chocolate and carob chips, and these are my favorite!
• If you’re not concerned about making the cookies totally vegan, you can use white sugar and regular miniature chocolate chips. Vegan or not, they’re super-tasty!

Click below for the recipe! Have a question? Feel free to ask in the comments below! And thanks for reading! 🙂

Monster Five-Chip Cookies

When I was a kid, about 10 or 11 years old, I remember my mom making these amazing cookies filled with different types of chocolate and not-chocolate chips. Even though I swore to her that these cookies and the lingering half-full bags of chips that my sister and I would pick at existed, she could not remember them. She only made them once, and the recipe was apparently lost. Over the years, I mostly forgot about the elusive cookies, though a memory would peak up every now and then.

This weekend, when I was trying to decide what to bake and blog about this week, I remembered my resolution to bake more cookies! Cookies were one of the first baked goods that I gravitated towards. They’re soft and sweet and have built-in serving sizes! So I mulled around on different cookie ideas and these cookies popped in to my head… Like I said, they’re hard to forget!

It’s been over 15 years, but I’ve finally pulled together a recipe and recreated these cookies. They’re like a regular chocolate chip cookies, with the amp turned up to 12! The peanut butter and oatmeal cookie base is studded with five different types of chips: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch, and peanut butter. And some chopped walnuts are added for a little bit of extra crunch.

While I remember my mom making these cookies in normal-cookies sizes, I decided to bulk them up a bit. I wanted to make sure each cookie had a little bit of every type of chip!

Click below for the recipe! Have a question? Feel free to ask in the comments below! And thanks for reading! 🙂

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked for a recommendation for a pumpkin-based recipe, with the specific request that it also include chocolate. Well, I hadn’t spent much time looking at pumpkin recipes or making them either, so I unfortunately didn’t have a quick answer for her. But I added to my list of “things to make”, and came up with a pretty stellar recipe while on my pumpkin kick!

Thankfully, I had some time to catch up on baking this weekend. I got an unexpected two days off work due to Frankenstorm Sandy, and I a lot of time to bake in between packing up my apartment for the move-in with the boyfriend coming in a few days! (By the way, all is well in DC after Sandy. A lot of branches and leaves came down, but we maintained power and stayed safe through the storm. My heart goes out to everyone in states much worse off than us, including New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.)

These pumpkin chocolate chip bars are a like a cake’y Blondie, with chocolate chips and a strong pumpkin flavor. They are super-easy to mix and bake, which I was thankful for since my apartment is a bit crowded with boxes… I decided to bake them up in 2 8″ brownie pans, but you can also use a 9×13″ cake pan if you wish. (You may need to adjust the cooking time slightly though to make sure they are completely cooked in the center.)

Click below for the recipe! Have a question? Feel free to ask in the comments below! And thanks for reading! 🙂