Vegan MoFo Day 19: Baking

It's the Compassionate Living Fayre here in Edinburgh tomorrow and I had promised to bake some cookies. I have CFS and seem to be having a bit of a relapse so I'd probably have been better going to bed instead, but I was determined to get some baking done this evening in case I have no energy at all tomorrow. I decided to bake two recipes from Vegan with a Vengeance. The first was a variation on the Mocha Chip Muffins, minus the mocha and the chips and with the addition of some halved frozen cherries. I've made this recipe before - it makes lovely fluffy muffins. I don't know if I need a new battery in my kitchen scales, but the batter ended up as runny as pancake mix. I ended up adding more flour and cocoa until I got a reasonable consistency but I should also have added more baking powder. The resulting muffins have not risen as much as they should and they feel pretty hefty. I shall try one in the morning to see if they are ok to be inflicted on the general public - I don't want to put them off vegan baking altogether! I had made some almond milk for my baking and it was cooling on the counter. Sadly whilst making the muffins I put 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract into my almond milk instead of into the muffin liquid. I realised my mistake as soon as I'd made it - I even watched myself put the second teaspoonful into the milk as if in slow motion, unable to stop myself! So now I have very vanilla flavoured almond milk - yuck, that it just so wrong, particularly as I had planned to use some of the milk to make almond cookies in the morning and the vanilla is going to fight with the almond flavour I'm aiming for.

The second recipe I made was the Sparkled Ginger Cookies. VeganinBrighton made these last week and they looked so lovely I really wanted to try them out. These were more successful, if perhaps a little overdone. Mine went a bit flat - I'm not sure is that was again because my mixture was a bit too liquid. If I have the time and the energy in the morning I plan to make those almond cookies and some date/oat cookies, if not then at least I won't be turning up empty-handed.