More Adventures in Vegan Baking

I am discovering a love for baking these days, and I especially love making baked goods for groups of people, because then the goodies don’t sit in my fridge and force me to eat some every time I happen to open the door. I made this batch of classic chocolate chip cookies using the recipe from the Vegan Joy of Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. I have made them once before, and I found that when you use Earth Balance and add the salt she suggests, they turn out a bit too salty. This time I may have overcompensated a bit, because I made them with Soy Garden Earth Balance, and I added less salt, and they turned out a little under salted. Nonetheless, they were pretty fantastic. I made them for my acting class, and I truly enjoyed the shocked and amazed looks on people’s faces as I told them the yummy cookies they had just eaten were in fact vegan! One girl looked at me as if I must have made them with some sort of magical poison potion, but when I explained that Earth Balance was vegan, she seemed to calm down a bit.

Baked goods are hard to pair! Elegant lightly sweet tarts and dark chocolate gateaux are much easier to pair than old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies. You need something to stand up to their cakey sweetness, but also to the richer flavors in the semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli, by the way). This could probably do well with a tawny port or a light ruby port. Most white dessert wines would have trouble next to the chocolate. You might also try a late-harvest Zinfandel with a good amount of residual sugar or a Cognac with some nice caramel notes.