Christmas Baking

Since this is my first vegan Christmas, I have been very busy planning holiday meals and trying out holiday cookie recipes.  I'm using this as the excuse for my recent blogging hiatus.  But I am back to share the fruits of my labor! 

I began my Christmas cookie baking bonanza with some good old sugar cookies.  And they turned out fine.  Nothing to rave about, but then, they were your basic sugar cookies that the kids just can't live without.  I used a recipe from The Joy  of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau (http://www.joyofveganbaking.com/)

Then I decided to try something a little different.  For some reason I got biscotti into my head and I went searching for recipes.  I found a very good one in Veganomicon http://www.theppk.com/books/veganomicon-the-ultimate-vegan-cookbook/.  I chose one of the variations, and made an absolutely fabulous cranberry pistachio biscotti.  These cookies just scream Christmas with their red and green colour scheme.  They were so great that I ended up making two batches.  In the first I used all whole wheat pastry flour, in the second I used half whole wheat and half white flour.  Both were very good, but the half and half ones had a slightly nicer texture.  I brought these to my yoga potluck xmas lunch and they were popular!

Since the cranberry-pistachio biscotti was such a hit, I moved on to a gingerbread biscotti.  I found the recipe on fatfreevegan.com (http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/12/fat-free-gluten-free-gingerbread.html).  If you go to the blog post you will see that she had some issues with the gluten free version, so I used whole wheat pastry flour and white flour.  I accidentally added too much cinnamon to mine, but they turned out pretty well.  Not as good as the aforementioned cranberry-pistachio delights.

I moved on to peanut butter, since my son wanted to make some for his dad.  I had a recipe hanging around for peanut butter quinoa cookies, so we gave those a go.  This is the recipe I used:  http://www.suite101.com/content/vegan-quinoa-peanut-butter-cookies-a138244.  I doubled the recipe, and cooked them for longer than the 10 minutes they called for since they came out quite soft.  But they were still pretty good, and they have a unique chewy kind of texture from the quinoa.  A bit of a modern twist on the traditional peanut butter cookie.

And last, but definitely not least.... a traditional Canadian Christmas favorite.  I made Better Than Butter Tarts from the How It All Vegan! Cookbook by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer (http://www.amazon.com/How-All-Vegan-Irresistible-Animal-Free/dp/1551520672).  This was one of the first recipes that I have tried from this book, but I have to say these tarts were SUPER EASY and SUPER yummy.  I have the 10th anniversary edition of this book and it says that this recipe is 'new', so it may not appear in earlier editions.  But it worth hunting it down.

Since there are only  a couple of days left before Christmas, and I still have much cooking to do (lentil, wild rice and mushroom timbales with mushroom gravy, sweet potato-pecan casserole) to prepare for Christmas dinner and Christmas Brunch (pumpkin waffles, fruit salad, and various muffins), I wish you all a very joyous and peaceful holiday season.