de facto redhead

Last week, Ami and I had a bit of a miss, but this week, we’re back on track with a total hit! Our recipe in Week 8 (beach “cookies” that are actually more like squares) comes from Chef Chloe, and it’s also the last cooking adventure of March, which also means the end of Ami’s month of being 100% vegan. She didn’t miss much in her four weeks of animal-free eating, but is glad to be able to use butter and eggs again. Hear, hear!

I didn’t join Ami in vegan solidarity this week, and that is simply because I just used what I had at home. I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store. Me lazy.

INGREDIENTS

½ cup vegan margarine (Earth Balance soy-free non-hydrogenated buttery spread)
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (Chef Chloe suggests Health Valley Graham Crackers, which you can pulse into fine crumbs in the food processor. Feel free to do this with any vegan graham cracker or wafer cookie.)
1 cup canned coconut milk
¼ cup agave or maple syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons arrowroot
1  1/2 cups shredded sweetened coconut
1/2  cup chopped walnuts, toasted (optional)
2 cups non-dairy chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Melt margarine in microwave or over stove, and pour into a 9″x13″ baking pan. Swirl around until the bottom of the pan is completely coated.
3. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs evenly into pan until bottom of the pan is completely coated in crumbs. Pat down lightly with your hands.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together coconut milk, agave, vanilla, salt, and arrowroot. Drizzle this mixture evenly over the graham cracker layer.
5. Sprinkle the shredded coconut into the pan, then layer the optional nuts, then the chocolate chips. With the palm of your hand, gently pat the top of the cookie pan so that the chocolate chips get cemented into the rest of the cookie.
6. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until centre looks thick and slightly bubbly with very lightly browned edges.
7. Let cool, then refrigerate for a couple hours or overnight. Cut into even bars. The textures and flavours of this cookie really work best after refrigeration.
8. If you’re feeling festive, platter the cookies on a tray or dish of organic brown sugar (mock sand) and stick some cocktail umbrellas in the sugar for a “beach scene.”

My ingredients. (I had to use plain old Aunt Jemima syrup because I was out of pure maple syrup. I felt guilty about it, and the fact that I used regular chocolate chips. Am I vegan-chip convert? Maybe. Time will tell…)

Ami’s ingredients. She’s so wholesome and organized with her labelled mason jars!

Left: The top view of my squares, before they faced the heat of the oven. Right: The side view.

My finished product, laid out all lovely-like on a Pyrex plate.

Ami’s version of the beach cookie. Mmmmmmm!

This recipe is really easy to bake, and, vegan or not, finding the ingredients is simple. The combination of chocolate, coconut, graham crackers, and walnuts is pretty unbeatable, and the firm square that’s created after the pan hardens in the fridge is delicious! First, though, let’s start with a discussion of the ingredients:

• Ami didn’t substitute or change anything this week.

• As for me, I manually crushed my graham crackers into crumbs (like I did with the peanut-butter cups), and it takes a lot of crackers and a lot of crushing to get two cups’ worth of crumbs! I think I used about a sleeve and a half of crackers, and my arms were getting sore. Who knew the act of pummelling with a rolling pin was so arduous? I dare you to try it and not complain!

• I used corn starch in place of arrowroot, and I have Ami to thank for the tip that substituting one for the other is A-OK.

• I didn’t toast my walnuts, and, as I mentioned, I used regular chocolate chips and Aunt Jemima syrup.

As for the directions, instead of melting her margarine in a separate bowl, Ami just melted it in the pan, inside the pre-heated oven. She made a good point when she told me that it saved a dish, and this note was particularly poignant after I put my pan in the oven, and my kitchen counters looked like about five children under the age of six had been helping me bake.

There’s really nothing else to say about the directions, other than the fact that Ami and I both recommend eating these squares COLD. She left hers in the fridge for three to four hours before eating them, and I had mine in there for about five hours. (Well, that’s a bit of a lie – I took them out after three hours and ate one, and then put the pan back in the fridge until suppertime.) And, I think they tasted even better the next day, when the squares really had a chance to harden overnight.

Now, for the rave reviews. Ami made these for friends, and they loved them. Two people asked her for the recipe, and one commented that they were similar to “magic bars,” and that she would likely be abandoning her magic-bar recipe for the almighty beach cookie. Go, beach cookie, go!

Here is Ami’s first paragraph in her “review” e-mail to me, sent the day after her get-together: “Man, oh, man, were they tasty. I had to send Chris to work with five of them on Monday to get rid of the rest, after devouring like four on Sunday afternoon. I actually think this might be my FAVOURITE recipe so far…OK, well, tied with the PB cups (I can’t choose between the two).” Is it any surprise that she rated this recipe a five out of five (“I couldn’t find anything wrong with the recipe or that I didn’t like!! A definite remaker!”)? I am pretty addicted to them, too, and I am rating them a 4.75 out of five because I also like them just as much as the PB cups, and that’s the score I bestowed on that recipe. Oh, the power I wield!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Baking, Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.