I love white chocolate. In my pre-vegan days, it was definitely my favorite type of chocolate. Now, I've developed more of a taste for dark and semi-sweet chocolate, but when I heard about these vegan white chocolate chips on Amazon, you bet your vegan butt I was ordering 'em. And since you have to order them in batches, I am now the happy owner of 3 bags of these suckers. When they arrived, I had to hold back from tearing into a bag to see what they tasted like. But it wasn't long after that I was coming up with a recipe to use them in.
In fact, there are TWO recipes I saw that I knew I wanted to use my new little vegan nuggets of gold in: SMBP's white chocolate truffles, and Happy.Healthy.Life's white chocolate macadamia cookies. Since I made these on a Saturday afternoon when it was just me and the man, I opted to start out with a version of the latter. But, I really don't like nuts in my cookies, so I switched to white chocolate cranberry cookies. Also, since I was fairly horrified by the TWO sticks of butter used in the original recipe, I changed it up to a lower-fat cookie. The result was a moist, cake-like cookie filled with oh-so-sweet chewy cranberries and melty white chocolate chips. 100% vegan deliciousness.
Recipe adapted from Health.Happy.Life
Ingredients:
- 1 cup white chocolate chips
- 3/4 cup dried cranberries
- 4 Tbsp Earth Balance or Smart Balance butter
- 1/3 cup cinnamon applesauce
- 1/2 tsp coconut oil (optional)
- 1 large ripe banana
- 1/2 cup maple agave syrup or maple syrup
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 and 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour + 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp baking soda
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Combine sugar, butter, syrup, banana, applesauce, coconut oil, vinegar and extracts in large bowl, mixing with hand mixer until well blended.
- In separate bowl, mix together the baking soda, flour, and spices. Add the flour mix to the sugar mix, stirring well.
- Fold in the white chocolate chips & cranberries.
- Store in the fridge for ~30 minutes. Place by spoonful on cookie sheets and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.
Notes:
As mentioned, this is a somewhat cakey-cookie- that happens when you make cookies lower-fat by substituting with apple sauce. But despite having less than half the fat of the original recipe, this version still comes out delicious- moist light texture, spices, sweetness from the chips, and more sweetness plus a little chewiness from the cranberries. It all comes together to equal yum. As long as you don't have your heart set on a traditional, super buttery, white-chocolate macadamia nut cookie, these cookies should make you pretty happy. In fact, I gobbled up a bunch of these right away... they were just so good fresh out of the oven. And Yes, they are husband- approved; my man loved 'em too.
While we're on the topic of white chocolate, let's talk about these vegan white chocolate chips. I just might have sampled some of the chips on their own before baking them - can you blame me? I mean, it's white chocolate people! Sweet, buttery, creamy, dreamy white chocolate.
Vegan white chocolate chips |
I am totally in love with the fact you remade the recipe to include less butter! 2 sticks was pretty decadent - loving your version though, it just means I can eat double the cookies :)
ReplyDeletehahaa I know! I think I ate like 10 in a row. ;-)
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