Vegan Buddha’s Hand Cookies – Junk Food Post #4

Well according to my plan for this month, post #4 was supposed to be another savory comfort food dish, but something extraordinary happened.  Yesterday, I was busying typing away on my laptop when my son suddenly jumps up off the floor,  turns off the TV and announces.  “We are going to cook as a FAM-WEE.”  (Those not hip to 3 year old lingo may not realize that’s E talk for “family.”)

I immediately save my file, call my wife into the kitchen, and we get down to cooking.

At this stage in what can only be a distinguished culinary career, my son makes a mean breading for fried chicken.  We give him a cup or two of whole wheat flour and his very own spices (usually whatever is on sale at the supermarket for ninety-nine cents) and he stirs like a mad man.  It’s nice because it gives us a chance to chat about cooking or Thomas or race cars.

Anyhoo, normally I would take this opportunity to make something healthy we could all enjoy for a mid-afternoon snack, but given that this is unResolution month, I thought I had better bake cookies.  Besides, I had some Buddha’s Hand sitting around that I wanted to use up.  (Buddha’s Hand being the crazy Cthulhu looking thing up top.  It’s a citrus fruit with basically no meat.  The zest, however, is wonderfully fragrant and sort of lemony.)

Here’s what we did.

First, we used a family favorite recipe.  My wife found this recipe for Lemon Cookies on RachelRayMag.com a long time ago and we have been making them ever since.  However, in this case, I wanted to veganize them so that my vegan readers could enjoy them (non-vegans, they’re still good!).  This is the recipe I used.

You will need:

  • 1 stick vegan margarine
  • 1 1/4 cup vegan sugar (divided)
  • 4 tablespoons Buddha Hand zest (divided)
  • 1 egg’s worth egg replacer
  • 1 1/2 All-Purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon table salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Put the vegan margarine and 1 cup of the vegan sugar in a bowl and mix with a fork.  Add 3 tablespoons of zest and the egg replacer and stir gently.

Once the ingredients are combined, add the flour, baking soda, and the salt.  Stir to incorporate the flour.  You may need to add just a bit of very cold water.  We added about a 1/2 teaspoon to get the dough to come together right.

Once the dough is ready, divide into 16 pieces and use your hands to roll each piece in a ball.

Put the rest of the sugar and the final tablespoon of zest into a bowl.  Roll each ball in the sugar/zest mix and put on a greased cookie sheet.

Bake for fifteen minutes or until the cookies look almost ready.  Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack.

Notes:

  1. When you are mixing, try not to overmix or you will start to form gluten and you will get harder cookies.
  2. Remember, if a cookie is still in the oven and it looks like it is done baking, it is over cooked already.  Cookies continue to bake once they are out of the oven (called carryover cooking.)
  3. My son, who inspired me to bake these here cookies, of course, did not like them because they lacked the essential chocolate chips.  Ingrate! 🙂

Oh yeah, did I mention, “Enjoy!”? 🙂

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