Monday, February 13, 2006

Heart shaped vegan shortbread!




(design and craving are directly inspired by Webly)

I tried to fight the urge, but I made cookies for Valentine's Day. First off, we're having cake tommorow at work for my coworker's birthday that I'm opting out of. My boss still thinks it's nuts bakeries don't carry vegan cakes, which is sweet. Truthfully, many supermarket and bakeries carry vegan cakes in Portland, but not hers. Regardless, I'm not upset, I prefer to bake anyway.
Secondly, my boyfriend I have conflicting schedules tommorow and will not see each other - woe is us, but we're 'celebrating' this weekend, going out to a new vegetarian restaurant.

I decorated them with melted dark and the last of my vegan white chocolates (dyed pink!)

Vegan shortbread:
Ingredients:
  • 1 cup of margarine
  • 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 cups flour (I used whole wheat pastry)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1. Preheat oven to 350F and lightly grease a baking sheet.
2. Cream margarine and sugar very, very well.
3. Add vanilla.
4. Add flour and salt, slowly.
5. When well incorporated and forming a light brown dough, roll into a ball and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes, to overnight. I refrigerated for 25 minutes, and it was absolutely fine to use. 6. Flour surface and rolling pin, and roll out a 1/4 of the dough out a time, to the best of your surface's length. Cut out using cookie cutters of choice. I shifted my round biscuit cutter (aw) into an attempt at a heart~
7. Bake until the edges begin to brown, 6-10 minutes. Keep an eye on it, depending on how thick you roll the dough. I baked mine for about 8-10 minutes.

I made ganaches of 1/8-1/4 cup soymilk, scalded and then added 1/2 cup of chips (two separate pots, same actions) and stirred constantly on medium and then scatter-decorated the cookies after they came out of the oven. Do this one at a time if logical need be! I did pink-'white' chocolate, then dark chocolate, and then more pink.
I also wasn't patient enough to do more than one pan of hearts and put the rest in an 8 inch cake pan, covered with coconut and baked for 12-15 minutes, covered in leftover chocolate and chocolate sprinkles. I then sliced it~

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

yummm. what kind of white choco did you use? i just got some white chocolate chips from vegan essentials and i can't wait to us them!

jess (of Get Sconed!) said...

I used the vegansweets white chocolate from pangea. I've had it hanging out in my freezer.

Anonymous said...

ooh! I am inspiring! I was wish I had white chocolate when I made these because I thought the two would look good. But you made them look even better with pink and brown!
-webly

Julie said...

Oh my, those look good! Thanks for sharing the recipe!

Harmonia said...

Oh God! Yum. To die for!

Thanks for the potato tip!

Crunchy Domestic Goddess said...

those look beautiful and delicious. happy v'day to you! bummer that your bf has to work, but the dinner out to the new veggie restaurant sounds great. :)

Merce said...

oh, these are beautiful! Unfortunately, I'm one of those anti-valentine's day people so I can't revel in their true glory, but I'll just pretend it's another day =)

Love 'em.

Julie said...

I wouldn't say the coconut cupcakes were heavy at all...just VERY coconuty--I love coconut, so it wasn't a problem for me!

Julie said...

p.s.~I have a hard time finding time to cook w/ all this college nonsense in the way...but, sometimes you gotta give up a little homework time for cupcakes!

Crunchy Domestic Goddess said...

you inspired me. i made a heart-shaped pizza tonight. ;)

SDGvegan said...

mmmmm those cookies look delicious!

Harmonia said...

I'll keep you - no worries! Thanks for starting the comments though. I bought some Bulgur today for the first time...got any recipes with that in it? Ow what else can I make with Tahini other than hummus, spreads, and add to some soups! Do tell!

Thanks again!

Elizabeth said...

Was it The Bay Leaf that you went to, the new veg restaurant? I saw it on Division while driving around today, and it had "Grand Opening" on it. Was it good?

Danielle said...

I was looking for this. I have extra lemon icing from after I made the lemon cupcakes in Vegan with a Vengeance, and now I can make shortbread. I'm also thinking of adding a little lemon peel or such to the batter. Would that work, do you think?

Anonymous said...

Nice recipe - am trying to make these - I live in eastern Tibet at 2,400 metres above sea level, and will use peanut oil instead of margarine and a bit of rice flour added to the wheat flour.