I received a request to bake more egg-less dessert. So I went ahead and made one without eggs, sugar, flour, or butter…the four pillars of baking. Of course I had help from other cooks who travelled down this road before. Thanks to Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks and her first cookbook Super Natural Cooking, I made a batch of these vegan Carnival Cookies to share.
When you take away eggs, sugar, flour, and butter from a cookie recipe, are you left with a lesser cookie? Seriously, what CAN you use? Apparently, quite a lot of good stuff. How does this list of ingredients sound: oats, ground almond, banana, coconut oil, dark chocolate, cacao nibs, peanuts, popcorn, cinnamon, and vanilla. It is not about what you cannot use but rather all the wonderful things you can add.
The recipe from the book is a variation of her previously published Nikki’s Healthy Cookies. The carnival theme came from the combination of popcorn, chocolate, and peanuts. I was actually going to take a pass on this recipe because I do not own a popcorn maker nor did I want to pop some on the stove. Besides, when was the last time anyone pop only a cup and a half of popcorn? Thankfully, I came up with a brilliant idea just in time.
That is my microwave rice cooker (similar to this one). For a small household, I cannot emphasize enough the convenience of cooking one cup of rice in under 10 minutes without supervision. It now also moonlights as popcorn maker. The clasps tightly fasten the lid even at the height of popping action. The vents allow steam to escape. For a handful of kernels, my rice cooker is perfectly sized. I can make fluffy popcorn without oil by simply microwaving the container at one minute intervals.
The cookies were easy enough for a child to make. Like Swanson wrote, the batter was loose and I recommend following her direction of making small tablespoon-size cookies. They baked to a soft chewy texture with so much going on. One bite may be full of dark chocolate and chewy oats, the other with crunchy popcorn and peanuts.
This is the kind of treat I do not mind keeping at the house, like those Laraballs (teeheehee) I often make. The cookies are packed with wholesome ingredients that I would gladly eat on its own. But of course, combining them all into bite size cookies is so much more appealing. Another recipe to go on the regular rotation!
