S'mores Puppy Chow

It's crunch time! There's just a few more days left to get all those presents bought and wrapped for locals, and if you haven't gotten everything in the mail than you better overnight it to get there in time! In the craziness of the holidays, maybe you don't have time to bake anything super special but want a treat for an evening with friends or family. This s'mores puppy chow from Sally's Baking Addiction is easy peasy to veganize. Just grab a bag of Dandies mini marshmallows and everything else is pretty straight forward. You'll have your crunchy, sweet treat in less than 20 minutes.

S'mores Macarons

I have been having trouble letting go of summer. I keep going outside without enough layers to keep me warm. Pretending that a cardigan or a sweater will be enough. I am not ready for these short, short, short days and all the darkness. My bones shake at the thought of snow. Winter is always a rough time for me. I have the tendency to hide in my bedroom and ignore the encouragements of friends to go out. I just want to burrow under blankets and watch endless hours of TV and not come out of my sad stupor until the spring. I am fighting these early signs of seasonal anxiety. Walking around outside, even if if just for a few minutes, to try and soak up as much vitamin D as I can. Remembering to wear socks & a scarf, and tucking an extra layer in my bag even if I think I won't need it. Avoiding sad music and books and films. Reaching out to friends and holding myself accountable for keeping all the dates I schedule. Writing postcards and quick notes to all the friends I miss, scattered across the country, to let them know just how important they all are to me.


These s'mores macarons were a going away present from my former housemate Carrie. She moved to Brooklyn right before I left DC, and sent these during a really stressful time. It's always such a nice surprise to have a really thoughtful gift show up. I have been obsessed with Maresa's macarons for some time and have written about them before here. I gushed about them repeatedly and convinced Carrie to split at least one order from their shop with me. I didn't think the almond macaron could be topped, but this s'mac was quite possibly the best treat I have ever eaten. They are charcoal shells, filled with toasted marshmallow, dipped in chocolate, and then sprinkled with cinnamon & molasses infused graham crumble. Maresa isn't shipping these delicate babies, so you'll have to visit New Paltz or head out to a Vegan Shop-Up to be graced with this particular piece of heaven. However, you can order all sorts of other magical flavors of macarons on the Lagusta's Luscious website! Now that I'm a few hours closer to the shop, I am planning a trip as soon as I can. Probably on a Tuesday so I can snag an eclair too!

S'mores Cookies

The winter always seems to bring out the worst in me. It inflates all my fears and self doubts. It makes me less motivated, tired, less social. It's too cold to spend time outside and too dark to convince myself otherwise. I have been trying to fight the winter blues for a few weeks now. I'm trying to remind myself to keep my chin up. There's only a few more months until it will be warm again, and the days are already starting to get longer. I've been trying to convince myself that it's ok to stay in my bed on my days off and write letters and drink endless cups of tea. But it's hard to not get weighed down by a lack of "productivity" this time of year. This is a cookie that came about because I have drank too much hot chocolate and wanted to use the rest of my mini marshmallows in something new. These cookies came about because our house was too cold and I needed an excuse to keep the oven on for an hour or two. So I could stand in front of it and place my hands on the sides to finally warm them up without taking another bath. The overflowing plate of cookies was a good excuse to pile under blankets and watch a movie marathon. The empty plate was a good reason to go to sleep, comfy and happy. Sometimes winter isn't too terrible.



Vegan S'mores Cookies

1 tbl Ener-G powder
3 tbl water
1 cup Earth Balance margarine
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbl vegan "honey" syrup or brown rice syrup
1 1/4 cup graham flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup Dandies mini marshmallows

Preheat oven to 350. Combine Ener-G and water and allow to thicken. Cream Earth Balance and sugars. Add egg replacer, syrup & vanilla. Slowly mix in flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in chocolate chips & mini marshmallows. Scoop cookies, slightly flatten tops, and chill dough for at least two hours to keep from spreading. Bake 10-12 minutes, until edges of the cookies are slightly browned. Some of the marshmallows not fully inside the cookie dough might expand and get bubbly. They look a little silly, but still taste great.

Campfire Bars

The whole beginning of the week was a buzz of snow anticipation. There were all sorts of magical predictions. I heard everything from five inches to a foot of snow was going to settle down on DC. I was baking tons of extra loaves of bread to keep up with the demand at the grocery store. Even I, the winter humbug, was starting to get excited about this snow storm. I stocked up on library books & flour and even splurged on two new boxes of tea in anticipation of spending my day off bundled under blankets watching movies and playing games with my housemates. I could practically smell the cinnamon buns. Today was not a real snow day. It snowed a lot, but nothing stuck and everything went along just as normal. I begrudgingly put on my boots and grabbed an umbrella and walked to my tax appointment to find that the office was closed. And no one bothered to call or email. After I walked home I changed into my gym clothes, only to receive an email that all the classes had been canceled for the remainder of the day. At least they emailed? These campfire bars are a lot like my "snow day". I had pretty high expectations, but they turned out to be lackluster and frustrating. Browsing around on the internet it looks like they have worked for almost everyone else except me. I think the culprit is the vegan marshmallows. While delicious, they don't melt quite like their gelatin-based counterparts. Because their was no gooey marshmallow coating all the bits of graham crackers and granola, my jar mix never actually formed bars. In the height of my frustration I did eat all the bits of marshmallow and a few Earth Balance soaked chunks of graham cracker.


After trying to finagle the two new flavors into my stash, I have also come to the brutal realization that I might have too much tea. I think I am close to 30 or 40 boxes & a few bags of loose tea. At one point this afternoon their was an avalanche from the cabinet when I removed a box (no, I was never good at Jenga). I am always itching to try a lot of new varieties, but end up with many boxes that I will never finish. So if anyone is ever interested in a tea swap, I am all ears! You probably shouldn't enable me, but I am also always open to tea suggestions! I am largely a black tea fan. But I also love rooibos, white, & all sorts of herbal tea. I will drink green tea occasionally, but it's towards the bottom of the list. What are your favorites?

S'mores Stuffed Cookies

I remember seeing a picture of a s'more stuffed chocolate chip cookie for the first time. My first thought was that's TOO much. But the longer I thought about it, the more that I realized that it's perfect. If I can put vegan nutella or chick-o-sticks in a cookie, than a s'more really isn't that different. People put oreos in cookies all the time, right?! And I know that I have made s'mores cookies before, but these are so different. A girl can't ever have too many marshmallows.



S'mores Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes approximately 8 large cookies

1 cup Earth Balance
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tbl Ener-G (beat with 1/4 cup water)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups unsifted flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
heaping one cup chocolate chips
2 whole graham crackers (Nabisco brand are honey free)
4-6 vegan marshmallows (I used Sweet & Sara, which are slightly larger than Dandies)
1/2 bar dark chocolate

Make your cookie dough first. Break each of your graham crackers into quarters. Cut your marshmallows in halves or leave whole, depending on the amount of gooeyness you want in your cookie. I made mini s'mores similar to the pictures here. Now it's time to wrap those s'mores in cookie dough! I found it easiest to use a large scoop to portion out sixteen pieces of dough on a sheet of parchment. I flattened all of those with my palm, set the mini s'more on top, and set another piece of flattened cookie dough on top. pinch all the edges together, and bake for 12-18 minutes at 350. The baking can be pretty variable depending on how thick your s'mores are.
Be sure to give these cookies plenty of room! They spread like nobody's business. I baked 4 per cookie sheet. I tried to make my cookies a little smaller than the 6-8" ones I had previously seen, but they were still at least 4-6".
Make sure you have plenty of almond milk handy to wash them down.

I'm gonna be honest here. I didn't find these cookies to be near as revolutionary as I expected them to be. I thought they were gonna alter my perspective on baked goods, and I was just a little underwhelmed. If I were going to do this again, I would probably use a sugar cookie dough like I did with the nutella cookies. The piece of chocolate along with all the chocolate chips in the cookies was just not my thing(I know. I can't believe I am saying it either). I also think that the taste & texture of the graham cracker get a little lost in the cookie dough. The texture gets a little moist during the baking, and the brown sugar in the dough sort of covers up the graham taste. So I think that if you used a sugar cookie dough and rolled it in graham cracker crumbs before you baked it, then you would have the real deal. Maybe someone will try it & let me know how it goes?

S'mores Thumbprint Cookies

My grand plans for the rest of the Sweet & Sara marshmallows and Smuckers marshmallow topping, were these s'mores thumbprint cookies. I had seen the idea on a non-vegan blog called How Sweet It Is, and wanted to veganize them so, so badly. I started with the chocolate thumbprint cookie recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance. I used a mixture of regular and dark cocoa powders. I also subbed vegetable oil and almond milk for the peanut oil and soy milk, and added extra flour to make the dough a little thicker since I didn't have time to chill it.
I rolled the dough in small balls, slightly smaller than a quarter. Half of the balls I coated in crushed graham crackers prior to baking. After 6 minutes in the oven, I either pushed in half a marshmallow or made a large thumbprint. I baked them for another five minutes. While still warm, I filled the thumbprints with marshmallow topping. I also dusted the tops of all uncoated cookies with graham cracker crumbs (and even a few that I did roll, because I am overzealous like that). The marshmallows do get quite puffy in the oven and expand. Let them cool on their own, because if you squish them down with your hand, you will get large craters in your cookie. They will deflate quite a bit.


Personally, my favorite cookies were the ones with half a marshmallow in them and rolled in graham cracker prior to baking. However, none of them were disappointing. I attempted to broil the cookies to make them appear more s'more like, however my oven was uncooperative. You could try that, or use a kitchen torch if you happen to own one. The slight brown color I did get on the edges of the marshmallows is so similar to the color of the graham crackers, that it's difficult to differentiate.
I wonder what recipe I will get obsessed with next? I have a long to bake list, but am leaving town tonight to visit my home in Tennessee for a week. Does everyone else have huge folders of potential baking projects? It's normal to dream about cookies too, right?


I also just heard about this site called Spencer's Market. It's basically a Vegan Cuts or Living Social type site that it is specific to vegan food! I mean, who doesn't want to know about new vegan snacks, right?!