Cookies

Final idea + Recipe

This is a vegan, gluten free, and sugar and oil free cookie that is easy to make and perfect for the busy college students. All of these ingredients can be found in a typical college vegan’s pantry.

Idea Generation

For my first brainstorm of cookie ideas, I wanted them to be vegan and consisting of items a typical college vegan would have in their kitchen. Additionally, as a busy college student, I don’t really have a fully stocked pantry for baking ingredients like flour, baking soda, sugar, etc, so I wanted to keep these recipes very simple. I also wanted these recipes to be mug and microwave recipes, so they would be extra easy to make for a college student without a kitchen.

Here are the ingredients already existing in my fridge and pantry that I used as inspiration for creating a cookie

My favorite one out of this first brainstorm of ideas was the black bean chocolate cookies.

For my second set of idea brainstorm, a couple of them were not vegan, but still consisted of ingredients that a typical college student without a stocked baking pantry would have. I really liked the nutty mocha cookie idea and avocado + hummus protein cookie.

Idea Test 1

I really liked the idea of using black beans and oats as the primary ingredients for “dough,” so I tested both the chocolate cookie and the nutty mocha cookie in mugs.

Double chocolate

For this cookie, I used black beans and apple cinnamon quick oats as my base. I didn’t have any regular oats in my pantry so for the test I just used the oatmeal that I had. I used almond butter, almond milk, and maple syrup for the fats/liquid, as well as for some flavor. Lastly, I used coco powder and chocolate chips for the sweetness. This recipe is fully vegan and gluten free, and there are no added oils or sugars either.

I added all of these ingredients into a mug and mashed/mixed it together. The resulting batter looked promising, and I popped it in the microwave for 45 seconds.

The resulting mug cookie ended up tasting really good and chocolate-y, it was just with a perfect amount of chocolate. The texture was very liquidy, though, and did not hold together and fell apart when I took it out of the mug.

Nutty mocha

Using the same black bean/oatmeal base, I added in some coffee because I wanted to test out different flavors and making it taste like a nutty mocha. I didn’t use any coco powder in this recipe because I wanted the coffee to be the standout flavor, and didn’t use any maple syrup or almond milk either because I knew the previous recipe was too liquidy.

I brewed about 2 teaspoons of coffee grounds in my french press with about a shot of water. This is probably 1/2 an espresso shots worth of coffee, which I felt was an appropriate amount for a single cookie. I let the coffee brew for about 20 minutes to make sure the coffee was very strong.

I added all of my ingredients in my mug and mashed/mixed it all together, and sprinkled some chocolate chips on top.

I microwaved it for 45 seconds, and the result looked a lot better than my first recipe texture wise, as it was more firm and I was able to take it out of the mug whole. Overall, the coffee flavor was not as strong and I thought it would be, but the texture was a lot more cookie like and the flavor was good.

Idea Test 2

For my second idea, I wanted to try making an avocado and hummus based cookie. I’ve seen recipes for chocolate mousse using avocados, so I knew that avocado and chocolate would be a good pairing (to mask the taste of avocado). I wanted to use the avocado and hummus as the fat and protein, and chocolate and maple syrup as a sweetener to make the protein cookie sweeter rather than savory. I also decided to add in some crushed up rice cake to make the recipe more firm and have more of a varied texture than only mushy.

I mixed the ingredients together and added them to my mug, and microwaved it for 45 seconds. The texture came out a bit more soft than I wanted, but I think the race cake helped keep it together. This cookie, however, tasted terrible and I wasn’t able to mask the flavor of the hummus (even though it was unflavored) without having to add more sugar which I didn’t want to do because I also wanted to keep this recipe oil and sugar free.

Iteration

I decided to modify my first recipe, the double chocolate cookie. I lessened the amount of liquid and added more oats, as well as adding in the crushed rice cake from my 2nd idea test. I still did not have plain oats so I still used the apple cinnamon oatmeal in this recipe. This is what my final recipe consisted of.

I added everything to a mug and microwaved it for 45 seconds. The resulting cookie tasted really good and I think the addition of the rice cake was a good idea to add more texture to the cookie. I had my roommates try it, and they really enjoyed it as well. They also thought that the apple cinnamon oatmeal added a tasty twist to the cookie, so I decided for my final recipe that I’d keep using the apple cinnamon oats instead of plain oats.

Here is the final recipe and instructions for making this double chocolate mug cookie.

Although the premise of my mug cookie was for a busy college vegan, I also wanted to make a recipe for this cookie that could be baked in order to make more at once and to get a firmer texture. Using the same ingredients, I adjusted the amounts and this is what I came up with.

After mixing everything together in a bowl I put them on 2 cookie sheets and got about 20 cookies out of this recipe. I baked them for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Here are the final cookies I came up with. I think they tasted great (as did my roommates), and the texture was much more firm and held together better than the microwaved cookies. Even though I didn’t intend for these to have an apple cinnamon twist, I really liked how it ended up tasting so I wanted to incorporate that into my final recipe.

Timeline

9/04/18: come up with some ideas for what my recipe will be

9/05/18: continue brainstorming recipes, choose a final one

9/06/18: buy ingredients for recipe

9/07/18: bake and test some recipes, taste

9/08/18: modify recipes as needed, keep baking and tasting

9/09/18: come up with final recipe, bake again to test, start writing up blog post

9/10/18: finish up blog post

9/11/18: finish up blog post

9/12/18: finish up blog post

9/13/18: bake cookies to bring to class