As the fall arrives my oven begins to beckon. I have been fairly focused on raw foods this summer-which is partly why I haven't been posting much. I've been eating a lot of very simple meals-apples, bananas etc. But with Canadian thanksgiving just a couple of weeks away I am starting to crave the zen effect that comes with baking batch after batch of delicious vegan cookies. Luckily I have a really good excuse this year-A Vegan Cookie Challenge. I often write cookbook reviews for my local Vegetarian Association newsletter but for the holiday season I wanted to do something a little bit different. So I pulled out six fantastic vegan cookbooks and found their recipe for traditional chocolate chip cookies and/or spicy ginger cookies. I selected ginger, because, I am a ginger-addict. I would happily add it to just about everything I eat, so finding the most amazing ginger cookie recipe could be a benefit to me for years to come.
With all of these recipes in hand, and the tasting challenge in mind I had to recruit some volunteers. A group of volunteers for the vegetarian association, a colleague, a man off of the street and some diners from the restaurant below the resource centre all agreed to eat a lot of cookies in exchange for their honest opinons. I baked eight batches of recipes:
1. Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vegan with a Vengence
2. Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vive le Vegan
3. Chocolate Chip Cookies from the Complete Vegan Kitchen
4. Chocolate Chip Cookies from How it All Vegan
5. Ginger Cookies from Vegan with a Vengence
6. Ginger Cookies from How it All Vegan
7. Ginger Cookies from Simple Treats
8. Ginger Cookies from the Artful Vegan
It was a night full of fun and sugar (that is, natural evaporated sugar cane)! Everyone had a lot of fun tasting and scoring the different iterations of these classic recipes. I really enjoyed testing out the different recipes as each author had an interesting take on how to combine the various ingredients. If you have any of these cookbooks the results of these recipes will not disappoint you. Although, some were certainly better than others. But....I can't tell you the winners until the article is published in our association newsletter. I promise to keep you posted-you may be surprised.
