Vegan Treats for Two: Chocolate-Covered Shortbread-Style Cookies

Look, ma! No cakes!


As promised, here is a non-cake recipe. But I'll probably go back to cake tomorrow because cake and I goes together like peas and carrots. These cookies are "shortbread-style" cookies. They are made with oil instead of butter, which disqualifies them as traditional shortbread, but they are crispy and crumbly and delicious! They are topped with semi-sweet chocolate and sprinkled with nuts or coconut. No sprinkles! The sprinkles did not work on these because they were too hard and crunchy and it was kind of like eating sand-covered cookies. Mmmm. Yummy. You may have seen this recipe already if you subscribe to my YouTube channel, but I have only a handful of subscribers so I imagine most of you haven't seen it yet.


Chocolate Covered Shortbread-Style Cookies 

35 g vegetable oil
20 g powdered sugar
10 g water
1/4 tsp vanilla
70 g all purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
50 g semi-sweet chocolate chips
a small handful of finely chopped nuts and/or shredded coconut (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150 C) and line a small cookie sheet with parchment paper. See notes for parchment paper safety.*

2. In a small bowl combine powdered sugar and oil and whisk well until it looks smooth and creamy.

3. Add the water and the vanilla and whisk well.

4. Add the salt and the flour and stir until just combined. If before adding the flour and salt you notice that your water isn't blending with the oil and powdered sugar mixture, you can add about 15 grams of the flour to it and whisk it well, and then go ahead and stir in the rest of the flour and salt with a spoon.

5. Use a small 1 3/4 inch cookie cutter to shape the cookies directly onto the parchment paper. Check out the video below at the 1:47 mark to see how I do that using a small spoon and my little cookie cutter. If you don't have a small cookie cutter, you can divide the dough into six pieces and then shape each piece into a ball. Place each ball of cookie dough onto the parchment paper and flatten them slightly until they're a bit less than 1/3 inch tall.

6. Bake for 10 minutes, then rotate the cookie sheet and bake for 10 more minutes. .Now comes the hard part. You have to let them cool down to room temperature before putting the toppings on! Transfer them to a cooling rack and good luck to you not eating them all before they're cool enough to finish them.

7. Melt the chocolate chips in a small microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds, then gently stir the chocolate chips with a spoon, microwave for 15 more seconds, stir again, microwave for 15 seconds, stir again. Your chips should be melted by now, but keep nuking and stirring them in 15 second intervals if they're not looking smooth and creamy.

8. Spread the melted chocolate chips on top of each cookie (careful, that chocolate will be HOT!) and sprinkle chopped nuts or finely shredded coconut all over the chocolate. That's optional. You can skip the nuts and coconut and they will still be yummy. As you can see, I used sprinkles as a topping for a couple of the cookies. That... was not good. The sprinkles were too hard and crunchy and it was like eating sand! *FAIL*

9. Here comes another hard part. You have to let them cool down again to give the chocolate a chance to firm up! Ugh! But that's OK, you can stick them in the fridge for a few minutes to speed up the process. Now you're done! Enjoy!


IMPORTANT: I bake these in my toaster oven. Most parchment papers come with a warning that says something like "not for use in toaster ovens", because parchment paper is flammable and the heating elements inside toaster ovens could potentially start a fire. The instruction manual/recipe booklet that came with my toaster oven calls for the use of parchment paper in some of the recipes, therefore I have assumed that it's safe to use parchment paper in my toaster oven, but you should do your own research and decide for yourself if you think it will be safe for you to use parchment paper in your little oven. If you can't find the info in your manual, contact the manufacturer and ask them if it is safe to use parchment paper in your toaster oven!


GENERAL NOTES:

. All the ingredients are weighed, even the liquids, and I'm using the metric system. Grams are more convenient than ounces or cups when it comes to baking tiny batches of things. I use a digital scale which has a handy "tare" button that lets me reset the weight after I add each ingredient.Screw you, unreliable cups and tablespoons! Except for baking soda and salt and all those tiny pinches of things. For those I use my tiny 1/8 tsp from my set of Wilton measuring spoons.

. I bake everything in a Cuisinart TOB-60 toaster oven. You may need to experiment with your toaster oven to get the best result.



You can also use this recipe to make chocolate filled sandwich cookies. Just make smaller cookies so you'll have eight instead of six, and then sandwich them together with 60 grams of melted chocolate chips.

Or! Keep glamming up those sandwich cookies! Do 70 grams of melted chocolate chips instead of 60 grams so you'll have enough chocolate to spread all over the sides of the sandwiched cookies. Then roll them in about 20 grams of unsweetened shredded coconut. Like this:


Here is the video from my YouTube channel. It's meant to be slow-paced and relaxing but you can adjust the speed if you find it slow-paced and exasperating.

See you tomorrow! Cake! :)




Comments

  1. Looove shortbread cookies! While I'm sad the sprinkles couldn't work (sprinkles are supposed to make everything better... LIES! Hahaha), I love your delicious fix for that.

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    1. LIES!! :D

      Sprinkles sounded so good on paper. I can't believe they were such a let down! But at least we can always turn to the old trusty nuts. Nuts save the day!

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  2. Lovely cookies and great Forrest Gump reference to peas and carrots. Me and Jenny love cakes ;)

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    1. I wondered if anybody was going to catch that Forrest Gump reference! And you did! *geeky high-five* :D

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  3. Those look wonderful! I'm so into shortbread but I hadn't really considered making an oil based version. I'll definitely be trying these if my place in Japan has an oven.

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    Replies
    1. Oh, I hope your place in Japan has an oven, Jojo!! *fingers crossed for you*

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