Carrots? Check.

Nuts? Check.

Healthy? Not so much, but when there’s healthy protein and veggies in a cake, it’s kinda hard not to pretend it’s health — or at least rationalize that if you weren’t eating this, then you’d be eating some kind of Death By Chocolate Chocolate cake, and that’d kill you, so this is definitely healthier and therefore better, so why not have a second slice, hmm?

I have to say that I’ve always hated carrot cake. It’s the raisins, you see — I absolutely hate dried fruit, and raisins are up there with prunes in the “Most Evil Dried Fruit from a Delicious Fruit Ever” category. In fact, in my mind, they duke it out regularly, vying for this most prestigious title, while somewhere else in the world, okra realizes that no one else is competing against it for “Most Evil Vegetable Ever!” this year. Or any year. Ever.

I digress.

The directions are for a cake — either a round layer or a rectangular sheet cake. I’ve also had success many times in the past making these into delicious little cupcakes that the ladies at my office adore. Just line a cupcake/muffin tin with 12 liners, fill till 3/4 full, then bake for about 20-25 minutes.

And that, kids, is why I love Isa’s recipes — they’re substitute-friendly and nearly idiot-proof.

Ginger-Macadamia-Coconut-Carrot cake

• 2 1/3 c. flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 c pinapple juice
• 1/2 c canola oil
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1/2 c pure maple syrup
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 c macadamia nuts (I substituted walnuts because they’re WAY cheaper and still taste good.)
• 1/4 crystallized ginger, chopped.
• 1 c. unsweetened coconut
• 2 c. carrots, grated.

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Have ready two 8″ round springform cake pans, lightly greased. (I used a 9×13 pan and made a single layer cake, because I felt a bit lazy.)
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.
3. In a separate large mixing bowl, mix together the pineapple, oil, sugar, maple syrup, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in batches, and combine well with a hand mixer or strong fork. Fold in the nuts, ginger, coconut, and carrots.
4. Divide the batter evenly between the two round cake pans, or spread in the retangular pan, and bake for 40-45 minutes. Let cool in pans. Remove from pans and put a layer of coconut icing between the layers and another layer of icing on top; I like to leave the sides free of frosting because it looks pretty.

(Ed. Note: if you’re like me and something of a sugar junkie, I strongly recommend making a double batch of the icing and doing the sides with what’s leftover after you glop it on really thick to the top and middle. Trust me, you’ll want all that sugar!)

Coconut Frosting:
• 1/4 c. non-hydrogenated margarine at room temperature.
• 1/4 c coconut milk (Ed. note: if you’re a little short, soy works fine but doesn’t taste as coconutty.)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 c confectioner’s sugar, sifted.
• 1 c. unsweetened coconut.

1. Cream margarine until light and fluffy.
2. Add the coconut milk and vanilla and combine.
3. Add the sifted confectioner’s sugar and mix until smooth (use an electric mixer; otherwise it might take a good 5 minutes to mix.)
4. Add the unsweetened coconut and combine. Refrigerate until ready to use (Ed. note: trying to frost the cake while it’s still warm is a REALLY bad idea. Really.)

Does anyone else remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ads from the early 90s, where two people — one holding a bar of chocolate, the other holding a jar of peanut butter — bump into each other, causing the chocolate bar to drop into the peanut butter jar?

“You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” one exclaims.

“You got peanut butter on my chocolate!”

The new ads for Reese’s special holiday Peanut Butter eggs — where a chocolate Easter bunny finds itself inexplicably attracted to a jar of Reese’s peanut butter — also explores the mystery of how someone thought to put chocolate and peanut butter together to make one absolutely fantastic snack food that changed America forever. (Hershey, the chocolate company that makes Reese’s cups, does not say how Mr. Reese — the dairy man who invented the confection — came up with the idea for peanut butter-covered chocolate, but I think it had something to do with beer or drugs. Most good inventions do.)

All of this digression brings me back to the point at hand: making something chocolate peanut buttery at home. If you’ve picked up the book Top Secret Recipes like I did when I was a kid, you know that the recipe for a “clone” of the iconic Reese’s cups exists (a picture of it is right on the cover!) though it’s really not the same and didn’t satisfy the same sweet spot that the real Reese’s cups always did.

That, however, has changed.

This, my friends, is all you need to make your own chocolate-peanut butter deliciousness in your very own kitchen, in cookie form. The recipe is from the forth-coming Isa Moskowitz book Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Treats. The book’s available for pre-order now, though I do not believe it has a release date coming any time soon, as Isa’s brunch book, Vegan Brunch: Homestyle Recipes Worth Waking Up For-From Asparagus Omelets to Pumpkin Pancakes, is coming out in May.

Thing is, I don’t need another cookbook. Honestly, I just don’t. My tiny kitchen’s cabinets are already buckling under the weight of 10 cookbooks plus several years worth of Cook and Bon Apetite magazines. And, while I have all of Isa’s cookbooks to date in there, I really don’t need another one considering I haven’t cooked everything within the pages of the first three books she wrote.

Still, those peanut butter cups did look tempting. And take another look at the ingredients picture up there. Unlike some of Isa’s other recipes, this one uses no special ingredients — everything I need, I already had ready in the cupboard. That was pretty special in and of itself. And then there was the awesomeness factor of making a recipe from a cookbook that doesn’t even have a cover uploaded yet, and the ability to review the recipe before other people. (Please ignore the fact that the recipe has been online for several weeks now.)

These little pillows of peanut butter and chocolate heaven live up to their name — the exterior chocolate cookie is very lightweight, with a dense inside of peanut butter that is gooey and delicious fresh out of the oven. David and I ended up eating so many, we barely ate our dinner an hour later — even though the cookies were supposed to be dessert — because we couldn’t stop popping the little delights into our mouths.

It should be noted that they are a bit more labor-intensive than your usual drop cookie. The peanut butter dough requires natural peanut butter, which means a good five or so minutes of very slowly mixing the separated oil and peanut butter layers if you’re opening a new jar. Using a mixer made mixing up the doughs easier, but then there was the process of making the peanut butter balls (not so hard) and making the chocolate outer layer, which is not hard, but just time consuming to do 24 times, all the while making sure that the peanut butter is completely encased in the chocolate.

But the time it takes to get it right is totally made up for in the perfection of these cookies. Please keep in mind that these are NOT as sweet or dense as a Reese’s PBC. They’re not meant to be. But, they totally satisfy that part of me that loves PBCs, and both my stomach and my wallet look forward to carrying these little gems to work every day rather than going to the vending machine to shell out $1 for two HFCS-filled candies just to get my chocolate and peanut butter fix.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows

From the upcoming book Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Treats

INGREDIENTS

Chocolate dough:
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons non-dairy milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened dutch processed cocoa powder (Ed. Note: I used Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder)
• 2 tablespoons black unsweetened cocoa or more dutch processed unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt


Filling:

• 3/4 cup natural salted peanut butter, crunchy or creamy style
• 2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2 to 3 tablespoons soy creamer or non-dairy milk
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a large mixing bowl combine oil, sugar, maple syrup, non-dairy milk and vanilla extract and mix until smooth. Sift in flour, cocoa powder, black cocoa if using, baking soda and salt. Mix to form a moist dough.
2. Make the filling. In another mixing bowl beat together peanut butter, confectioner’s sugar, 2 tablespoons of soy creamer and vanilla extract to form a moist but firm dough. If peanut butter dough is too dry (as different natural peanut butters have different moisture content), stir in remaining tablespoon of non-dairy milk. If dough is too wet knead in a little extra powdered sugar.
3. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
4. Shape the cookies. Create the centers of the cookies by rolling the peanut butter dough into 24 balls. Scoop a generous tablespoon of chocolate dough, flatten into a disc and place a peanut butter ball in the center. Fold the sides of the chocolate dough up and around the peanut butter center and roll the chocolate ball into an smooth ball between your palms. Place on a sheet of waxed paper and repeat with remaining doughs. If desired gently flatten cookies a little, but this is not necessary.
5. Place dough balls on lined baking sheets about 2 inches apart and bake for 10 minutes. Remove sheet from oven and let cookies for 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack to complete cooling. Store cookies in tightly covered container. If desired warm cookies in a microwave for 10 to 12 seconds before serving.
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Welcome to the first ever post on Nom-Able, a blog about food. For a little bit of background material, I’m a chunky girl with an appetite for, well, food. And not just any food, but the most fattening, butter-laden food known to man. As such, this will not be a health food blog, though there will be healthier meals from time to time. What you’ll mostly find here is a collection of my favorite recipes that I have made. Naturally, since these are my recipes, there will be substitutions and adaptations, but I promise I will always post the ingredient list and instructions exactly as I made it, with a link to the original recipe so you can make it yourself.



One of my first and fondest memories of Christmas is chocolate chip cookie baking. My mother and her sisters would gather around the small, wooden table in my grandmother’s kitchen, and together with their mother, they’d always make the same Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe from the same scrap of yellow plastic wrap taped to a 3×5 card in my grandmother’s metal recipe box. Over the ten minutes or so it took to mix, bonds would be broken, new alliances forged, and the catty, petty bitching that defines a family of women would take full shape. Then, they’d sit around in the living room and drink tea while the youngest sister and I were usually left with the all-important duty of mounding the cookie dough onto the sheet with a teaspoon and into our mouths with our fingers. The cookies this produced were probably like your own mother’s cookies — warm and gooey and best fresh out of the oven; nearly rock hard three hours later.



Ladies and gentlement, these are not your mother’s cookies.

The secret, as the New York Times has revealed and reveled in, is in the butter. For this recipe, it comes out of the fridge cold, it goes into the mix cold. This way, as the butter melts during the cooking process, it leaves lovely little air pockets that make the cookies light and help them spread rather than remaining in little spoon-shapped lumps. The butter is also creamed with the sugar for five minutes, to allow for maximum air mixture. Finally, the dough rests in the fridge for at least twenty-four hours, to allow for maximum moisture penetration of the dry ingredients.

Is it worth the extra effort?



Oh yes. Even the dough is more delicious — both fresh from the mixer (no wooden spoons here, Mom!) and a day later. Better yet, let them sit for two days and ooh, are they ever cookie-gasmic.

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The Consumate Chocolate Chip Cookie

Adapted from The New York Times

Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling

• 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons
• (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
• 1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour (I used all purpose flour for both)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
• 2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (I used dark chocolate morsels from Nestle because it’s what I had on hand)
• Sea salt.
1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.
4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Note: Disks are sold at Jacques Torres Chocolate; Valrhona fèves, oval-shaped chocolate pieces, are at Whole Foods.

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