I love Sesame Street. I always have. My adorable mono-lingual mother proudly smiles as she boasts that I could count to 10 in French before I could count to 10 in English thanks to Sesame Street (growing up on the Canadian border, I watched the Canadian version which featured French as its second language). Now this is before Dora and her super-bi-lingual powers folks, so bear with us…
We dig on Sesame Street here at the Fish residence for, gee, a billion different reasons (have you checked out their new Video Player feature on their web site? You can watch hundreds of clips, even the super-cool retro ones! “A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.” Need I say more?) Anyway, we love all the characters, but of course one of our very favourites is Cookie Monster. What’s not to love? He’s blue, isn’t pretentious, nor does he apologize for his grammatical handicaps or his gourmandise.
We are all admitted cookie monsters in this house, and I come from a very long and distinguished line of cookie monsters. I have fabulous memories of making oatmeal raisin cookies with my dad, of sneaking still-too-hot-to-eat Grandma Mary’s Ice Box Cookies my mom slid onto the cooling rack, decorating holiday sugar cookies (and ourselves) with my younger sibs… cookies have been and always will be a part of my life. This has not changed through my many transformations from vegetarian to vegan, though I sometimes find myself playing with recipes to make them work, and to make them more healthy without tasting healthy for the Guppy, Mr. Fish, and yours truly.
The following is a mélange of a few of my favorite cookie recipes. I made them yesterday afternoon, and I can tell you they were hands down the most amazing cookies I have ever had in my entire life, and that, my friends, is saying something! They were so super-chewy and delicious…I’m rather proud of myself (for the recipe, not for having eaten like 5 of them!) Warning- the measurements are slightly approximate because I kept going back and forth between metric and Imperial to have them both for you! They are very, very close, though.
- 225g/8oz flour
- 180g/7oz rolled oats
- 1 teaspoon salt (on dit une cuillère à café aussi)
- 2 teaspoons baking powder (attention, c’est pas du bicarbonade de soudre)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 150ml/about 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 200g/15 tablespoons non-sweetened natural peanut butter
- 100g/3.5 oz granulated sugar
- 100g/3.5 oz xylitol
- 225g/8 oz brown sugar
- 125ml/4fl oz non-dairy milk (I used plain soy)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
Mix up the dry stuff so it’s all combined and in a large bowl use a mixer to combine the wet stuff along with the sugar. Once the wet stuff is a nice, thick soupy peanut-buttery thing, add the dry, and mix. It’s totally normal that it be all thick and sticky- that’s the good part!
I put loony or half-dollar or two euro sized globs of batter on my baking sheets and had the oven at about 180c/350f, and I took them out when they were just barely done- not wiggly any more when I shook the cookie sheet, but just browning a little. I let them cool a tiny bit on the pan (maybe the minute it took me to get the next batch in) and then spatulaed them onto the cooling rack. They hardened up while cooling. I think the only thing I would change is to maybe add a little nutmeg next time & a little more oats, but that may be the beginnings of another cookie recipe.
It’s a darn good thing I run so much with all this cookie eating!
If you try this recipe out, let me know what you think!
Musings From The Fishbowl 