tschuppibaking

No no, definitely not.. 🙂 but never say never right?
It is not that I am anyhow interested into vegan food but when a friend of mine told me a few weeks ago that she changed finally from being vegetarian to vegan something inside piqued my curiosity. Would it be possible to bake without eggs, without dairy butter? Actually I never doubted as in the past I stumbled over several blogs which posted vegan recipes or are entirely full of delicious vegan recipes. I knew that vegan baking would be possible but I never got the full curiosity to have a try. But having a vegan friend in my surrounding is changing this situation as a whole. And besides, my sister who changed a few months ago to being vegetarian was also already requesting for vegan dessert recipes. 🙂

As this is more or less a total new world for me I thought to go first with something I really like to do, the cookies. I made research on some of my favourite blogs and stopped at the blog ‘Have Cake Will Travel’ with a Not Nutter Butters recipe. I was interested as it is made with peanut butter, which is something I love anyway. When I have read through the recipe two ingredients stroke my eyes: margarine and peanut butter. I really was not sure if margarine is real vegan, something told me that it couldn’t be so easy, going into the common grocery and buy margarine which would be automatically vegan. As I want to give the 100 percent guarantee to my vegan friends I made some researches and got to know that this is fact. Some margarines are containing palm oil which is being carried via very bad conditions and therefore a NO GO for a real vegan. It seems as well to be possible that the vitamin D is being carried from the wool of sheep, even if this is rarely. However, this was the point when I thought shortly: “Do I still want to take this challenge?” I throwed the thought away and looked forward immediately. 😉
So I made my way to my favourite health shop and asked for the soy margarine produced by Provamel. I have read that this margarine must be vegan and is also liked by several vegan clients in this shop. I cannot do more than self research and asking the sales assistant to be sure that I have bought the right margarine. I think it is ok, if it’s not and you know something else about this margarine I appreciate your findings and opinions.
The peanut butter was not that difficult as you just have to care about the palm oil. There were two different glasses available. My eyes were automatically aiming to the one which contains palm oil. 🙂 But I could resist and took the one without.

All ingredients worked good together while preparing the dough and I really was surprised that the consistency was getting well. The cookies smelled incredibly good due to the peanut butter and this was the point I already forgot that the cookies are vegan. There were just cookies in the oven like I always do them and enjoying the smell of it while baking – with one difference: they are vegan. I am happy that I can give away now simple but delicious cookies to my vegan, vegetarian, either-vegetarian-or-vegan friends… 🙂

Peanutbutter-cashew cookies (found at Have Cake, will travel):

preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius

56g soy margarine,
melt in a pan over low heat

106g oatmeal,
add into the melted margarine and stir until the oats are lightly toasted, takes approx. 5 minutes

170g soy margarine,
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract,
50g granulated sugar,
150g light brown sugar,
128g natural peanut butter,
mix together until fluffy

180g spelt flour,
1 tsp baking soda,
1/2 tsp fine sea salt,
mix together and add to the fluffy cream, don’t overmix the batter, take the bowl off the machine, chop 150g of organic cashew nuts and knead them into the batter with your hands

roll the dough into 5cm balls and place with 5cm space of each other, bake for 16 minutes in the middle of the oven