Zizi's Adventures - Real Food, Real Stories

Cocoa, Chocolate, Walnut Cookies

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Note: I was so happy to find out that my blog was nominated as the Best Healthy Cooking Blog category for this year’s The Kitchn Homie Awards. If you agree the nomination, a vote or two would be great & much appreciated (voting ends March 2nd, 2012 at 11:59pm EST). Thank you so much! 


So my blog is nominated as healthy cooking blog and I’m posting a cookie recipe. 🙂 But! There is only 1/2 cup cane sugar in 32 yummie cookies. This is sweet enough for me. I think we can call them healty cocoa, chocolate, walnut cookies. 
There’s peanut butter and 70% cocoa content chocolate chunks in the batter. Yum and gulp. It’s best to eat them when they are lukewarm. We shouldn’t be ashamed to have two or three at once.
Or four.
If noone sees us, maybe five.
  
Cocoa, Chocolate, Walnut Cookies
(Recipe inspired by Bakerella)
Ingredients (makes about 32 cookies)

– 1 cup white spelt flour, sifted
– 1/2 cup whole wheat spelt flour, sifted
– 1/2 cup cocoa (unsweetend), sifted
– 1 teaspoon baking soda
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– 1/2 cup butter, softened
– 1/2 cup cane sugar
– 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
– 1 teaspoon vanilla
– 2 organic eggs
– 100 g dark chocolate (70% cocoa content), roughly chopped
– walnut, chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C (350F). Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

In a bowl mix together the dry ingredients: flours, cocoa, baking soda and salt. In another bowl cream butter with cane sugar, then stir in peanut butter and mix until fluffy and light (you can also taste it, it’s so yummie :)).  Add vanilla, eggs and mix until combined. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until combined. Stir in the chocolate and the walnut.

Take two teaspoons of the dough, form a ball and place on the prepared baking sheet. Flatten the ball slightly, then repeat with the remaining dough. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 170C (350F).

Vegan Applesauce Cookies

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I posted my last cookie recipe on the blog last August. It’s high time to share a new one. I baked so many vegan cookeis during Christmas time but I didn’t have time to take photos of them. I’ll bake them again (because it’s always great to have homemade cookies at home in case of emergency, isn’t it?). 
I found this recipe on Julie’s blog. I veganized the recipe and I omited raisins. I don’t like them in cakes and cookies. These comforting cookies are great for breakfast but also go well with your afternoon tea, coffee or hot chocolate. 

Vegan Applesauce Cookies

Ingredients (makes about 40 cookies)

– 120 g coconut oil
– 120 g dark cane sugar
– 250 g apple sauce, unsweetend
– 150 g white spelt flour
– 150 g whole wheat spelt flour
– 1 teaspoon aluminium free baking powder
– 1 teaspoon baking soda
– 1 teaspoon cinnamon
– 90 g walnuts, chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C (350F). Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

In a bowl mix together coconut oil with cane sugar and apple sauce. Mix until smooth then set aside. In another bowl mix together flours, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon. Add the wet ingredients to the dry + walnut combining just until mixed. Take two teaspoons of the dough, form a ball and place on the prepared baking sheet. Flatten the ball slightly, then repeat with the remaining dough. Bake for 12-15 minutes at 170-180C (350F) until the cookies are golden brown.

Cacao Nibs Buckwheat Cookies and Honeymoon Around the World

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Before the recipe I would like you to meet a Hungarian couple, Arpad and Zita. They are cycling fanatics. Many adventures are already behind them and more ahead in the future! They found a great new tool for this lifestyle, the recumbent bike. On their 214th date as an engaged couple they rode their recumbent bikes to Rome, Italy. 🙂 They got married on 4th June this year and they set off on their honeymoon a week later on a Saturday morning.  Around the world. With their recumbent bikes. This is what their website is about. Posts are written mostly in Hungarian, but there are more and more translated into English. On the Facebook page, Honeymoon around the world, they share their adventures in English too. Watch this video of the first part of their exciting journey from Budapest to Istanbul.

Before going to the farmers market on 11th June we went to say good-bye to Arpad and Zita. Family members and friends gathered together on Heroes Square early in the morning watching this brave couple to leave on the journey of their life. Isn’t it amazing?

Back to the recipe. These cookies are so yummie and easy to bake. I adapted the recipe from Heidi. She is a talented foodblogger, photographer and cookbook author. Unfortunatelly I still don’t have her latest book, Super Natural Everyday but I read many nice critiques of the book on other foodbloggers’ website. So I can’t wait to hold Heidi’s book in my hands.

Cacao Nibs Buckwheat Cookies

Ingredients

– 1 cup whole wheat spelt flour
– 1/4 cup white spelt flour
– 3/4 cup buckwheat flour
– 150 g unsalted butter, softened
– 1/2 cup natural cane sugar
– 1/3 cup cacao nibs
– 1/4 teaspoon salt
– 1 vanilla pod, split and seeded

Method

In a bowl mix together the flours. Set aside. In another bowl beat the butter with the cane sugar (I did it by hand and didn’t use an electric mixer! :)), then add salt. Mix until smooth and creamy. Mix in the vanilla and nibs. Add the flours to this mixture and mix until incorporated. If it is necessary, add more flour to the mixture.

Wrap the dough into clingfilm and place in the fridge at least 2 hours or for overnight.

Preheat the oven to 170C (325F) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Unwrap the dough and roll out on a floured surface with a rolling pin and cut out shapes with cookie cutter. Place the cookies 3-4 centimeters apart on the baking sheets. Bake the cookies until golden brown on the edges and lighter in the centre (for about 12-15 minutes). The cookies will keep in an airtight container in a cool dry place for a week.

 Picnic on Margaret Island, Budapest – healthy food & buckwheat cookies

Vegan Oatmeal Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

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I found this recipe on Stephanie‘s blog, Desserts for Breakfast. Do you know her blog? If you don’t, hurry up and check it out after reading my post. She is such a talented baker and photographer. She bakes so fantastically. Make sure you don’t look at her photos when you are craving after sweets… otherwise you will die in front of your computer. 🙂 Thanks to Twitter we became friends. I hope we will have the chance  to meet in person one day. My secret wish is to bake, stlye and photograph a cake together with Stephanie. 🙂
So the basic recipe is hers but I veganized it. I didn’t use eggs, milk and butter but the recipe worked without them. I used a natural sweetener birch tree xylitol to sweeten the cookies. It is roughly as sweet as normal sugar with only two-thirds the food energy. Xylitol is an all natural sugarless sweetener from birch trees. If you can’t find xylitol of course you can use cane, palm or normal sugar.

Vegan Oatmeal Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

– 1 cup white spelt flour
– 1 cup whole wheat spelt flour
– 2 cups rolled oats
– 1,5 teaspoons baking soda
– 1,5 teaspoons baking powder
– 1 teaspoon salt
– 1 cup coconut oil
– 1/2 cup xylitol (natural sweetener, birch tree sugar)
– 3/4 cup oatmilk
– 1 cup walnut, roughly chopped
– 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
– 2 tablespoons hot water
– 1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeded

Method

Preheat the oven to 175C (350F). Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. 
In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients: flours, rolled oats, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl mix to combine the wet ingredients: oatmilk, coconut oil, vanilla and at the end the xylitol. Mix quickly then add the wet ingredients to the dry ones. Add the hot water and mix until combine. Using a spatula fold in the walnut and chocolate chips. Take two teaspoons of the dough, form a ball and place on the prepared baking sheet. Flatten the ball slightly, then repeat with the remaining dough. The biscuits will spread during baking so leave space amongst them. Bake for 15 minutes at 170C (350F) until the cookies are golden brown.

Anzac – Vegan Oatmeal and Coconut Biscuits

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I found this recipe on a fellow Hungarian food blogger’s site, Niki. I haven’t heard of this Anzac biscuit before. Have you? Let’s see the interesting story of it…
Anzac biscuits have long been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) established in World War I. It has been claimed the biscuits were sent by wives to soldiers abroad because the ingredients do not spoil easily and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation. Today, ANZAC biscuits are manufactured commercially for retail sale. The first published use of the name Anzac in a recipe was in an advertisement in the 7th edition of St Andrew’s Cookery Book (Dunedin, 1915). This was a cake, not a biscuit, and there were no mixing instructions. The combination of the name Anzac and the recipe now associated with it first appeared in the 9th edition of St Andrew’s Cookery Book (Dunedin, 1921) under the name “Anzac Crispies”. Subsequent editions renamed this “Anzac Biscuits” and Australian cookery books followed suit. This is a sweet biscuit and very popular in Australia and New Zealand. (Source: Wikipedia.)

Anzac – Vegan Oatmeal and Coconut Biscuits

Ingredients
– 100 g rolled oats
– 100 g desiccated coconut
– 100 g whole wheat spelt flour
– 50 g white spelt flour
– 100 g coconut oil
– 80 g birch tree xylitol (you can use cane sugar instead of this)
–  1 teaspoon baking soda
– 2 tablespoons rice syrup (you can use honey, agave or golden syrup)
– 2 tablespoons hot water
Method
Preheat the oven to 170C (325F). In a small bowl combine coconut oil and rice syrup. In another separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients: oatmeal, desiccated coconut, flours, baking soda and birch tree xylitol. Pour the rice syrup mixture into the dry ingreditens, add the hot water and using a wooden spoon mix until just combined. You will get a sticky dough. Take two teaspoons of the dough, form a ball and place on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Flatten the ball slightly, then repeat with the remaining dough. The biscuits will spread during baking so leave space amongst them. Bake for 15 minutes at 170C (325F) until the biscuits are pale golden brown.