Marshmallow Madness

My dad’s out of town right now so I’m taking care of my sister. Dad likes to give me a hard time about him not being able to leave us alone without us killing each other, so we like to prove him wrong by getting along. That being said, today I managed to subsist on leftovers, but toward the end of the day I figured I whip up something sweet for Kara.

I was in D.C. over Christmas and did my best to spend as much time at Sticky Fingers as possible where I encountered chocolate covered Dandies marshmallows on a stick being sold for 3$. I realized anyone could easily recreate them at home for a very small fraction of the price, and being that Dandies has (finally!) made its way to the Santa Monica Co-op, I decided I’d give it a try.

Simple stuff. I stuck three marshmallows on a toothpick leaving about an inch for a handle. Melted a cup of chocolate chips in the microwave and used a spoon to help cover the marshmallows. After dipping I sprinkled rice crispies on all sides (I wanted to do crushed graham cracker, but couldn’t find any. However, it was later agreed that the puffed rice was a superior choice) and laid them out on aluminum foil to harden.

My main tip would be a little chocolate goes a long way with these, try to keep the coating as light as possible while still being all encompassing.

I made ten, seven of which Kara devoured in a matter of hours. I asked her to help me think of a name for them and her best one was Marshmallow Madness, which won because it was more catchy than my title of ‘Crispy Chocolate Marshmallow Sticks’, but you can just call them delicious.

The Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookie

So. This is my first post. My name’s Kendal, I’m seventeen years old, I live in Los Angeles and go to Santa Monica College. I took a test that California has mainly for actors, and it gave me the equivalent of my high school diploma. Since then I’ve been working on a political science major. In my free time I do whatever I want to do when I want to do it, while that sounds wild and crazy it mostly consists of biking, knitting, reading, and eating, but in between all that hell raising I always manage to find time to cook my pants off (literally, I love cooking without pants).

That being said, I am starting a blog because I can.

Well, there’s a little more to it. As a personal mission statement I want this blog to give an insight into the life of a “high school dropout,” leaving school was a really positive thing I did for my life, and I want to show kids that they have opportunities available to them other than wasting away in “mandatory” schooling. I think that there’s something incredibly radical and empowering in living your life exactly as you want it to be without making any sacrifices, and I’m here to show the benefits of that lifestyle to the world with its direct product: lots of time for food. Also, I cook all the time and everyone really enjoys it, I figure why not share all that joy with the internet?

That’s my shpeil and now I don’t have to talk about it again. On to the meat of this article (or to be cutesy, the tempeh), The Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookie.

I am constantly trying to find the best vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe, and I come across all these recipes on the interweb saying “gr8test vegan cookie evrr” and I try them and they’re totally mediocre or they use a cup of earth balance in trying to recreate the toll house feel but instead  you get a dough that tastes like frosting (btw, cookie dough frosting would be the greatest idea ever) and I’m always very let down. Recently my very loving chocolate chip cookie enthusiast father bought me Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I have been having the greatest time with this book. I had high expectations for the chocolate chip cookie recipe, mostly because I knew everyone else would–screw your fancyshmancy cookies, any critic will want to judge the entire book based off it’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I can wholeheatedly tell you that they have exceeded above and beyond any expectations, and are the greatest vegan chocolate chip cookies, or even, greatest chocolate chip cookies, period.

Enough baiting, here’s the ingredients:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1 tbsp tapioca flour

1/4 cup soy milk

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1) Preheat oven to 350. Mix sugars, tapioca flour, soy milk, and oil in a bowl with a fork. Apparently, this sets off some sort of chemical reaction between the oil and the sugar, and it’s really important that you mix it hard for about two minutes until it resembles a dark caramel-y syrup. Then mix in the extract until it’s combined.

2) Add 1 cup of flour, the baking soda, and the salt to the same bowl. This recipe keeps everything in the same bowl, and I use the same fork to do all the mixing, which is nice and convenient. Mix until well combined, mix in the last 1/2 cup of flour.

3) The resulting dough is not typical cookie dough. It tastes alright, but it’s drippy and loose. The recipe says that it makes around 16 3inch cookies, but I’ve had it make 12 and I’ve had it make 18. I would say that the most efficent way would be to use a small trigger ice cream scoop, or a tablespoon to scoop it, but I use my hands (always looking for an excuse to cover myself in cookie dough, some things you never grow out of)

4) Bake for 8 minutes. The recipe says no more then 9 minutes, and it means SRS BZNS. They don’t really look very done, some of them will have barely browned around the edges and once cooled will still have that greasy doughy center, but that’s what makes them awesome.

Here’s two of my pans out of the oven

Here’s one I was eating with some apple juice while writing this post.

And this is my best girl Diana modeling what it’s like to eat one.