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Veganizing “Friends”: It’s Pronounced ‘Nes-LAY Too-LOUSuh’

September 30, 2013
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PictureCOOOOOKIES!

     Oh, I KNOW you know this one! It’s “The One With Phoebe’s Cookies”!! We’ve got everyone exactly in their element: Phoebe being silly and a bit ignorant, Monica absolutely obsessing over getting something perfect, Ross making everything about him (remember “IT’S BATCH 16! BATCH 16 PEOPLE! GET OUT OF THE WAY!”). This episode also has a fantastic Joey & Rachel storyline on Joey’s new boat*, and one of my favorite cold opens EVER. But back to the most important issue – cookies! So, Phoebe’s grandmother had the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, and Monica wants it as her engagement present, so she can one day be the mother who makes the best chocolate chip cookies:

Monica: Hey, I know I what I want!

Chandler: What we want honey.

Monica: No, you don’t want this. I want to have your grandmother’s cookie recipe.

Phoebe: You mean the chocolate chip cookie recipe?

Monica: Uh-huh, yeah.

Phoebe: You mean the one that my grandmother made me swear on her deathbed that I would never let out of our family?

Chandler: Dying people say the craziest things.

Monica: I wanted it for years! I was gonna make cookies for my children.

Phoebe: Break my heart—Oh, all right.

BUT SACRE BLEU!!! Phoebe lost the recipe in the fire*!! She does, however, have a few cookies frozen that were made from that recipe. Monica, the amazing chef she is, is determined to reverse-engineer the recipe from the few finished cookies. She spends dayyyys working and reworking various methods of CCC construction, with dozens of batches both good and, like Batch 16, terrible! And then…and then…and gentlemen, and then…this happens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3STSEzUnEc
All this time, this miraculous recipe was the one ON THE BACK OF THE BAG OF NESTLE TOLL HOUSE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!!!! (It warrants all caps.) My anger on Monica’s behalf is only lessened by the subtitles in the above video. (I love subtitles; I don’t know why.) To honor our dear Friends, we’re going to make the famous Nestle Toll House chocolate chip recipe found on the back of the chips! And we’re going to veganize it! Since I don’t buy NTH chips (do they even make any that are vegan?) I found the recipe online here. It’s pretty easy to veganize – vegan butter for the butter, and egg subs (I chose flax eggs) for the eggs! Let’s see if they are really the best. Do you think they could actually be better than Dreena’s Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookie? Or Isa’s, or Kelly Peloza’s? SUSPENSE.
VEGANIZED NESTLE TOLL HOUSE COOKIE RECIPE
INGREDIENTS:

  • 1C vegan butter (like Earth Balance)
  • 3/4C white sugar
  • 3/4C brown sugar
  • 1t vanilla extract
  • 2 large flax eggs: 3T ground flax seed, 4T hot water
  • 1t salt
  • 1t baking soda
  • 2 1/4C all-purpose flour
  • 1C chips (calls for 2, but 1 was plenty!)

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Preheat oven to 375°
  2. Blend your flax egg ingredients together in a small blender, like a Magic Bullet. Or, you can mix vigorously and let it sit for a few minutes, to get all gooey.
  3. Next, in a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugars together until creamy. If you have a stand mixer, use that. If you don’t, like me, I bet you have guuuuns.
  4. Add the vanilla and the flax eggs, and beat for a few minutes.
  5. Then slowly add the dry ingredients (I always add the small dries, like the salt and soda, first, mix through, then start with the flour) and the chips. It’s a lot of flour, right? But it all gets absorbed. Mix until it forms a ball.
  6. Form small cookie shapes with your hands and put them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. (I made about 16.)
  7. Bake for 9-11 minutes.
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Finished ball
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Making the flax egg
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Man alive that’s a lot of butter!
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Creaming the butter and sugars

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    So wow, these puffed up like whoa! I think from the egg! Can you believe, the vegan version of the Nestle Toll House cookies are TOO EGGY! They were of course really good, and I particularly enjoyed how slightly salty they were. If you like your cookies puffy and almost cakey, you will love these!! I prefer mine a bit crunchier, so if I made them again, I would cut the egg in half at least. Also, wow they use a lot of butter for my tastes. Wow! So, they are really good, but I don’t think they are better than the above-mentioned 3 stars of vegan chocolate chip cookies. It’s too bad these other recipes didn’t exist 10 or so years ago, because Monica would have flipped out over them and avoided all of these dramazz. Oh well! If cakey and buttery is your thing, go make these yummy cookies!

Editor’s edit: These may be the only cookies that are 100x better hours after baking than they are straight out of the oven! So good, actually! Go make them!

      Congratulations on reaching the end of VeganMoFo, for all of my fellow participants! Don’t worry, I will still be Veganizing “Friends” recipes – just not everyday! And if you have any requests, please let me know in the comments.
Giveaway Trivia: Last Chance!!!

  1. What was the name of Joey’s boat?
  2. When out on the water, who does Joey yell at and call a jackass?
  3. What caused the fire in Phoebe’s apartment?
  4. In Chandler’s hilarious side-plot, what happens when he plays racquetball with Monica & Ross’s dad?
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Nutty Protein-Packed Homemade Granola! So Easy!

December 9, 2014
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    How many of you bake during the winter months just to make the house warmer? Here in London, it’s more of a necessity than a quirky activity. They didn’t get the memo on windows here so there’s like a good centimeter of separation between windows and frames. Cold air blows in all the time and you’re like, man alive turn on the oven or something. 
    But cookies? Those jerks only take 10 minutes or less in the oven. PASS! Cakes? Who am I making cakes for? Muffins are just bread with sugar and I’d rather eat my bread without sugar (and with hummus). Kale chips? Am I the only vegan who prefers kale raw (or any other way) to chippified? What can I make that’s feasible and that takes a long time so I have maximum oven usage? GRANOLA!
      Yes, granola is the easiest, best way to run your oven for at least an hour. Also, you actually want to eat the final product. And it’s healthy! This version I made uses nut butters as its main wet ingredient, and it works great as a binder. Add chia seeds, hemp seeds, and protein powder, you’ve got a power-giving snack that’s perfect for any time of day. I liked using unflavored rice protein in this recipe, mostly because it is too pasty to use in my smoothies. Also, I used puffed millet as my cereal. It’s great because the puffs are teeny tiny, almost like puffed quinoa. So just make sure you choose a cereal that’s on the small side. You don’t want huge puffed buckwheat or something that’s going to be significantly bigger than an oat. 
     Ingredients on the small side plus a superb wet ingredient mix based in nut butter will ensure that you get lots of big crunchy clusters instead of sad granola-flavored crumbs. As with all granola recipes, this is really more of a guide that you can play around with to suit to your preferences. Add chocolate chips! Or cocoa powder! Or use chocolate-hazelnut spread! Or add something non-chocolate. But that seems like a move in the wrong direction. 
POWER PUNCH GRANOLA

      I love mixing different nut butters with date syrup for the main binder. Date syrup adds a dark, deep flavor that you don’t get when you use regular liquid sweeteners alone. Try half the amount of molasses if you don’t have date syrup. 

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 generous cup peanut butter
  • 1/3 cup almond butter
  • 2 tablespoons date syrup (or other dark syrup)
  • 1/4 cup agave syrup (or maple syrup, but what are you made of money?)
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla paste 
  • 2 tablespoons unflavored rice/pea/hemp protein powder (or protein powder of choice)
  • 2 tablespoons ground flax seed
  • 16g chia seeds (you know I don’t know grams, but I used two ‘Chia Shots’ which are 8g each. Just use 2 tablespoons or something)
  • 1/4 cup dried fruit of choice
  • 1/2 cup hemp seeds
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
  • 1 + 1/2 cups rolled oats
  • 1 + 1/2 cups puffed cereal 

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius which I have to use now. It’s just under 300 Fahrenheit. 
  2. In a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients together. If, like me, you store your nut butters in the fridge, you might need a generous splash of water to help blend that well. If your nut butters are runny, you’ll prob be okay. 
  3. Add the dry ingredients one by one, and mix everything with all your might. Save the oats and cereal for last. That’s why I wrote them last! 
  4. Drop onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and distribute evenly. It shouldn’t be one cohesive square like you’re making bars or anything, but keep big pieces together so you’ll have clusters.
  5. Bake for an hour! Check on it every so often to make sure it’s not burning. If it is, your oven is probably too hot. You might see in other recipes that you should toss your granola halfway through, but letting it lie untouched is the best way to get big clusters. 
  6. After an hour, turn off the oven and let it sit in there for another hour. This way, every time you check on it and steal bits, you get a wave of heat. 
  7. Cool completely and store in an airtight container. People love showing their granola stored in fancy oversized mason jars that have those swingy clips. If you’d like to see mine in such a container, please buy me one. 
  8. Wheee!!! 
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Nut butter plus syrups. So pretty
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It’s like an add for superfoods!
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It’s a veritable thing-with-a-lot-of-clusters-that-I’ve-decided-against-saying-because-I’m-a-lady!

New Orleans Inspirations: Cream of Root Beer & Cream of Almond Shaved Ice

September 8, 2014
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    One of my absolute favorite places in New Orleans was the old school (and regular type of old) shaved ice shoppe Hansen’s Sno-Bliz. Born in 1939, Hansen’s sells amazing snow cone treats that somehow have fluffy ice and sophisticated, absolutely delicious syrup flavors. I had many wonderful flavors there, but missed out on the cream flavors (because cream). So we are recreating them here with our trusty beloved Vitamix! (NB: You can participate with any method of creating shaved ice.)
        Husband had the most incredible sounding combination one day – cream of root beer and cream of almond. I was hella jealous and I swore that I would recreate an even better version myself. I believe I have done that, even though I never tried the original and so cannot compare. But mine’s better. And it doesn’t hurt cows.
CREAM OF ROOT BEER & CREAM OF ALMOND SHAVED ICE 
PART 1: ROOT BEER SYRUP
Ingredients:

  • 1/4 C plus 2T white sugar
  • 3/4 C water
  • 2T root beer extract (mine is a soda-making base and tends to be on the weaker side)

Directions:

  1. Boil all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat for about 8 minutes. 
  2. It should reduce somewhat but still be liquid and not be too sticky. 

PART 2: ALMOND SYRUP
Ingredients:

  • 1/4 C white sugar
  • 2/3 C water
  • 2t almond extract

Directions:

  1. Boil all in saucepan for about 8 minutes (as above) 

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The most interesting part of Hansen’s Sno-Bliz was that they first put the shaved ice in a cup, then poured in your syrups, and then put the whole thing in a machine that added more fluffed ice on top. After that, they’d put more syrup on top of the new ice! It was a multi-part process, so this is too. (Although I guess it doesn’t have to be, but you know what they say about easy things not being worth doing or something like that.)

PART 3: SHAVING THE ICE
Ingredients: 

  • 2/3 C plain almond milk
  • 3 C cubed ice 

Directions:

  1. Crush in your high-powered blender until completely slushified. 
PART 4: SYRUPING AND RESHAVING
Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 C cubed ice
  • about 2 C shaved ice (as made above)
  • 1 batch root beer syrup
  • 1 batch almond syrup

Directions:

  1. Divide the shaved ice evenly between two glasses or containers.
  2. Pour half the root beer syrup over one glass and mix it well..
  3. Pour half the almond syrup over the second glass and mix it well. 
  4. Now take the root beer glass and dump the entire contents into the blender with 3T more root beer syrup and 3/4 cup cubed ice. 
  5. Blend until slushified. 
  6. Empty root beer slushy back into glasses (1-3 depending on appetites). 
  7. Now take the almond glass and dump the contents into the blender with 3T more almond syrup and 3/4 cup cubed ice. 
  8. Blend until slushified.
  9. Empty almond slushy back into glasses.
  10. Enjoy!!!!

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My root beer slush, before the second ice blend, fell a little flat…because I forgot to cool the syrup.
And then of course mix the two flavors together if you want for a delicious combination! Enjoy !
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Pouring the syrup straight from the pan
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