Cookie Time!

If you've read any part of this blog ever, you know I'm really awful at making food look good. I can't do pretty plating or decorating or anything like that. I'm lucky if I can make food appetizing enough to eat. So I don't really bother trying to model my food after cookbook photos. And I certainly would never dream of trying to copy a cover photo. Until now.

Hypnosis Cookies from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur

Despite my personal rule not to buy any cookbooks that are only sweets (and aren't IsaTerry books), I picked VCC up at the same party I got The Vegan Girl's Guide to Life. Everything in it looked delicious and I didn't know what to make first. Then I was invited to a birthday. I wanted to make something festive, but that didn't need tons of ingredients because I still wasn't in my kitchen. The more I looked at the book and thought about the birthday, the more I wanted to make the cover cookies. With the sticks and the ribbons and the bows and everything (this may have been the first time in over twenty years that the desire for bows crossed my mind). But, being aware of my inability to make anything attractive, I put the idea aside in favor of something simpler.

Turned out I was going to miss the party, and meet up with the birthday girl at work instead. My mind returned to the pretty cookies because while getting cookies on your birthday is great, someone showing up at work with a cookie bouquet is fucking awesome*. So that's what I did.

Obviously, these cookies are really easy to make. They're a bit time consuming, but you can spread it out over a few days, and I got over 40 cookies out of the batch, enabling me to give them as a birthday present, serve them at my family's Channukkah party, share them at Farm Sanctuary's screening of Forks Over Knives, and share them with a few random friends. So yeah, totally worth the time.

On the first day, I made the two doughs:

On the second day, I rolled them flat, laid the chocolate dough on top of the vanilla and rolled them up...

...with the plastic wrap still inside. I unrolled it, took out the plastic, re-rolled it and it still looked good! This recipe is VERY forgiving. After that, it's just slicing and baking. Or, if you want to get fancy about it, slicing, shoving sticks in them and baking (of the 40+ cookies, I only made five the fancy way; if it's not your birthday, you don't get bows).

Everyone oohed and aahed over the pretty spirals. They're definitely impressive presentation cookies. As for the flavor, they're good, but not awesome. The chocolate dough is great, but the vanilla needed a bit more extract or something. This was the first time in history that something I made looked more impressive than it tasted. But if you don't want something really sweet or overpowering, these are good. They'd also be lovely with a strongly flavored tea, or stuck in ice cream.

I'd definitely make these again, especially trying some of the variations in the book, and am looking forward to breaking this book out for future birthdays and bake sales. Recommended!


* Provided the person isn't some sort of weird, creepy stalker.