chocolate

Healthy Brownie Batter Dip

February 24, 2020 by Katherine Baker Leave a Comment

Healthy Brownie Batter Dip that happens to be vegan and gluten-free and also delicious? And made from a handful of ingredients you probably already have in your pantry? Yes, please!

This blog primarily started as a baking blog, hence the name. If you look back to some of my earliest posts, you’ll notice I was all about the sweets.

But since that time, I’ve evolved. I still love to bake, but I’ve also graduated undergrad, gotten two masters degrees, spent years working in the real world, and started a PhD program. As I have evolved through these experiences, my content on this blog has also evolved.

Now, I focus more on disseminating evidence-based nutrition and environmental health science information with a bi-weekly ‘recent eats’ post thrown in the mix. But every once in a while, I still like to share a recipe, just because.

So here I am rambling on and on about my life when you just clicked this link to get the Healthy Brownie Batter Dip recipe. So I’ll stop my chatter and get back to the food.

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Vegan Cowboy Cookies

January 6, 2020 by Katherine Baker Leave a Comment

Yeehaw! Welcome to this post, devoted entirely to Vegan Cowboy Cookies!

What’s a cowboy cookie you may ask? Well, it’s basically an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, elevated with a hefty dose of crunchy pecans and coconut. Some versions I’ve seen also add other nuts, and/or Cornflakes.

The first cowboy cookie I ever had was from Collectivo Coffee, which at the time was Alterra. Something about the combination of chewy oats, crunchy nuts, and oodles of chocolate sucked me right in and I became an instant fan.

Collectivo’s cowboy cookies contained not only pecans, but also walnuts. Seeing as I’ve been a walnut fanatic since I was a tiny tot, this only made me love the cookies more.

My cowboy cookie experience(s) as a youngin’ inspired me to add oats, nuts, and coconut shreds to my chocolate chip cookie creations.

In fact, I’d say more often than not, when I make chocolate chip cookies, I tend to add at the very minimum, oats and a nut.

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Vegan Chocolate Lasagna Recipe (Olive Garden Inspired)

December 28, 2019 by Katherine Baker 2 Comments

Welcome to my Vegan Chocolate Lasagna Recipe post. In the off chance you find the title offputting, please note that this isn’t really lasagna, and there are no noodles mixing with cocoa, but rather, the title of the dessert is a result of the cake’s multilayer chocolate cake, which is stuffed with almond buttercream and topped with chocolate chunks and syrup.

Before I get into the recipe, I’m going to go on and on about the inspiration for this post. If you have no interest in the story, scroll on down. But if you feel like a little nostalgia time would be fun, continue reading all about Chocolate Lasagna from Olive Garden, which has inspired this Vegan Chocolate Lasagna Version listed below.

I am a child of the 90s. I grew up in the days of colorful iMacs, Walkmen, PepperAnne, trips to Blockbuster video (with the movie bucket of popcorn, of course), and neon green ketchup. Life was good.

But one thing that wasn’t as great about the 90s was the restaurant scape, especially in suburbia. Olive Garden, which I now view as very meh and most certainly Americanized Italian-inspired junk food, was kind of a big deal. Our family would go occasionally, request a spot in the non-smoking section, and eagerly wait for our pager to buzz so we could feast on salad, breadsticks, mediocre pasta, and of course, the beloved Chocolate Lasagna.

Did you ever have the Chocolate Lasagna at the Olive Garden? It was incredible; it possibly their best creation of all times. Chocolate Lasagna did not and does not contain any actual lasagna noodles, but rather, is a multi-layer chocolate cake (the ‘noodle layers’) with almondy buttercream frosting serving as the filling/ricotta.

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The Best Vegan Chocolate Pudding

August 24, 2019 by Katherine Baker Leave a Comment

Looking for the best vegan pudding recipe of all times? You’re in the right place. This pudding is 100% vegan, easy to make, naturally sweetened, and contains only a handful of ingredients.

Bonus: this vegan pudding is actually pretty darn good for you! The pudding is rich in protein, calcium, iron, and magnesium, thanks to the tofu and cocoa powder.

This pudding is both nourishing and tastes decadently delicious, making it a perfect anytime treat. Eat it for breakfast with nuts and chopped fruit for some quality fuel, or top it with some coconut whipped cream or non-dairy whipped topping for a luscious dessert.

This pudding is actually a refreshed version of the original “Best Vegan Chocolate Pudding” recipe from yesteryear, which is also featured in my ebook. The main differences: I swapped white sugar for dates, added some salt for a better balanced pudding, and nixed the cornstarch because I don’t find it necessary.

The result: creamy, dreamy, naturally sweetened vegan chocolate pudding.

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Vegan Italian Jam-Filled Sprinkle Cookies

July 30, 2019 by Katherine Baker Leave a Comment

For some reason I had the urge to make Italian Jam-Filled Sprinkle Cookies the other day. This thing happens to me where I randomly get a cooking or baking idea in my head and then I fixate on it for days, weeks, or even months, until I make it. It’s like scratching a creative itch. In this case, the itch I had to scratch was for Vegan Italian Jam-Filled Sprinkle Cookies. Yum.

These cookies are yummy and remind me both of my childhood (I had an Italian grandma) and my time at NYU (during which I lived by the famous Italian bakery Vieneros). Nostalgia is a powerful flavor. Sprinkle some into an upcoming meal, if you can. 😉

These Vegan Italian Jam-Filled Sprinkle Cookies have a lot going on. But not too much going on that they’d overwhelm.

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Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

June 15, 2019 by Katherine Baker 1 Comment

These Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies were heavily inspired by Chris Morrocco’s “BA’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies” recipe that I stumbled upon first on YouTube, because I obsessively watch the BA YouTube channel because it is the best YouTube channel of all times, as far as I’m concerned.

I realized while watching Chris stir his brown butter mixture that I have never had brown butter anything in my life and became deeply intrigued in the idea of making it – vegan, of course.

So here we are – Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies – my riff on BA’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. I subbed dairy butter for Earth Balance baking sticks (which are the best for vegan baking and frosting), and the eggs and yolks for a bit of apple sauce and a spoonful of sunflower seed butter. Another neutral-flavored nut butter (such as cashew or almond) would also work well, as would a tablespoon of plain old oil. I also added a pinch more leavening agent for any extra lift the eggs provided to the original recipe.

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My Favorite Easy Vegan Dessert Recipes

April 12, 2019 by Katherine Baker Leave a Comment

Hello everyone! It’s Thursday night and he fire alarm just went off which meant me + Millie got to hang out with all of our building neighbors in our pajamas while the fire people cleared up the situation. Anyways, thanks to our 10:00pm adventure, I am now fully of energy and in the mood to whip up an easy vegan dessert recipe! I’ve been working on a couple new ones, but while I’m working out all the kinks, I thought I’d share a roundup of my favorite easy vegan dessert recipes from this blog. I hope you enjoy!

…and if you’re hungry for more, check out my ebook, 40 Easy Vegan Desserts, from way back in the day! #shamelessselfpromo

Vegan Levain Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

Lucious as can be! Make these beauties with this delicious recipe.

Sunflower Seed Butter Salted Caramel Date Truffles

Probably my all-time favorite easy no-bake snack or sweet treat. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…something about sun butter and date paste together is so magical. Recipe is here.

Vegan Samoas (Caramel DeLite Style) Girl Scout Cookies

These beauties are a take on the original and are made with date caramel. Give them a whirl!

Giant No-Bake Peanut Butter Cup

No explanation needed. Find the details here.

Homemade Vegan LoftHouse Style Frosted Cookies

So fluffy and soft and pretty! Cookie + frosting recipe here.

Vegan Nutella-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

…honestly, need I say more? These things are insane(ly delicious). Get the recipe here.

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Easy Vegan Pancake Mix Cookies

March 10, 2019 by Katherine Baker Leave a Comment

I absolutely adore pancakes. Light, fluffy, and wholesome, there’s nothing more I love than a quick-to-cook warm carb to brighten my morning and serve as a vehicle for nut butters and maple syrup. To me, pancakes make a day feel special. I often make a large batch on a weekend day, pop them in the freezer, and then microwave them on busy weekday mornings for a much anticipated moment of happiness. Pancakes just brighten my day and my mood.

For this very reason, I most often keep pancake mix on hand. While I like to bake from scratch, I have found select pancake mixes are affordable, delicious, convenient, and made with ingredients I would use at home (Bob’s Red Mill Organic multi-grain mix is one of my favorites, and I also love their Buckwheat variety).

In the past year or so, I’ve been intrigued to test the flexibility of a pancake mix; that is, I’ve been enjoying experimenting with using pancake mix as a base for non-pancake items. Muffins, Oatmeal Almond Butter Blueberry Breakfast Cookies, these Vegan Pancake Mix Cookies, even quick breads – I’ve realized the sky is the limit with pancake mix, as long as you’re comfortable with your final product maintaining a mild pancakey flavor.

Enter these Vegan Pancake Mix Cookies. Using pancake mix as a base, these cookies come together in mere minutes, and result in wholesome, fluffy, puffy dreamy cookies.

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Vegan Dark Chocolate-Dipped Homemade HobNobs

January 13, 2019 by Katherine Baker Leave a Comment

Do you ever just randomly get the urge to bake something British in the middle of a Saturday afternoon? Because same. I’m not sure if Mary Berry was whispering in my ear as I was sleeping last night, or what (okay, more likely that I saw a pile of HobNobs in the clearance section at Sendiks the other day), but for some reason, I had quite the hankering to make some homemade dark-chocolate dipped homemade hob nobs this weekend.

After chanting “On your mark, get set, Bake!” to myself, I got to the kitchen and made my British bake-off homemade Hobnob dreams come true.

Now what is a HobNob, you may ask? ‘HobNobs‘ are a brand of commercial biscuits popular in the UK (and according to Wikipedia, parts of Ireland).

They’re simple, salty-sweet, crispy cookies that are similar to digestive biscuits, but are visibly studded with oats, making for a rustic-looking round cookie.

The best way I can think to describe the flavor of a Hobnob to someone who has not yet experienced their glory is as follows: imagine a salty and more-textured-than-usual, oat-studded circular graham cracker. That’s kind of what you get when you eat a Hobnob. And they are nothing short of glorious.

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Easy Vegan Peanut Butter Blossoms

December 24, 2018 by Katherine Baker 4 Comments

Lol it’s been a month since I last blogged. What can I say, other than sorry? Even though you probably didn’t even notice or care I didn’t post for a month, it bothered me. I just was under so much stress from the hardest semester of school of my entire academic career/finishing my applications and finals and my two jobs I just kind of drafted like, 9 different posts, got anxious they weren’t good enough, and didn’t publish them. Reminder to self: don’t let the obsession with being perfect prevent you from being good. Moving on. It’s Vegan Peanut Butter Blossom time.

^That was the worst transition ever. And why did I keep it in the first paragraph? Because according to SEO crap I have engrained into my brain, the search term should be in the first paragraph. So there it is. Here it is again in the second paragraph: easy Vegan Peanut Butter Blossoms.

Wow, this post is officially all over the place, and we’re only to the third paragraph! But such is life. I’m just pumped to be back home in Wisconsin, with ample time and creative energy to devote to creative pursuits, including this blog.

I also am very stoked to have a new camera. The upgrade was years overdue, but being a chronic student doesn’t leave much wiggle room for big purchases.

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