Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A book review - Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar


The Book - Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Treat
by: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope

An interesting new cookbook that hit the store shelves in 2010 is “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.” This is a charming cook book with adorable pictures. These two authors are not new to the cookbook world, they also have several other very successful and much acclaimed vegan cookbooks. It is a fun book to flip through and just look at the great pictures, and maybe drool a bit.

The recipes themselves are varied too. This book has all-time favorites and regional classics as well as many interesting variations. Here are some of the great recipes; Magical Coconut Bars, Snickerdoodles, Cheesecake Brownies, Sweet Potato Blondies, Banana Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies, Frosted Grapefruit Icebox Cookies, Blackstrap Gingersnaps, Oatmeal-raisin, Deluxe Cocoa Brownies, Graham Crackers, chocolate cut-out cookies and Applesauce Softies to name a few. These utilize natural sweeteners and whole wheat flour. One recipe I really want to try is the Vegan Lemon Bars, it looks really good.

This cookbook is for those who wish to change the way they cook and eat. It has some amazing recipes and ideas in it. Remember that it isn’t just for vegetarians but for anyone; especially helpful to those with milk or egg allergies as well as to people trying to adapt food storage to their baking. This might be interesting to those who like to “taste” the raw dough, but worry about raw eggs in it. Now you don’t have to worry about raw eggs.

For those looking for a few 100% shelf stable, food storage, recipes to have on hand, this book is great. All the recipes are made from 100% shelf stable ingredients. The ratings on this book were surprisingly high, as they were for the authors Vegan Cupcake book.

Here are some more of the cookie varieties from the book:

Chocolate Chip Cookies. If you love the butter flavor in cookies you might be a bit disappointed by this one. But then, I’m an original Nestlé’s Tollhouse Cookie Girl! However, considering it has no dairy or eggs, it is an interesting option. This is the only recipe I did not read great review about so I did not give it a try.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows These cookies are dairy free and egg free. They are like stuffed cookies; a rich chocolate outside with a peanut butter surprise in the middle. This is a softer dough that is very easy to work with. This is a great recipe and just as good as other similar versions I have tried.

Lazy Samoas are the dairy free, egg free version of the famous Girl Scout Cookies. I have a recipe to make them and it is lots of work. The recipe is very long and involved and I’m not sure I want to put that much time into it for just the two of us. It could take all day. This dairy free and egg free version is quick and quite good. There is no shortbread bottom, in order to save time but the end results are good.

If you are looking for some recipes to adapt to your food storage you may want to check out this book. I think you will have fun experimenting with the different recipes.

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