Hello people,
This is Pip's owner Janira, and todays post is going to be about vegan fig butter and pumpkin butter cookies (yum!). I am striving to be fully vegan this year and vegan cookies make it so much easier for me to bring to a party and not worry about if something is really vegan or not. I felt betrayed when I found out that my grandmother's refried beans weren't really vegan, after she repeatedly told me that they were (liar).Anyway, I find that the only way to really be certain if something is vegan or not is to make it yourself, or really dig up the evidence.
I brought these cookies to a secret santa party and to a family gathering for new years, and I got compliments on them from non-vegans which I owe to The Minimalist Baker . I have seen her pop-up a couple of times while searching for recipes, but never actually tried them out until now and I personally think that they are delicious. I didn't know she had vegan recipes, but now I will definitely give some of them a try. Her recipes are fairly simple and easy to follow and require minimal ingredients and equipment (ha minimal).
I made her vegan sugar cookie recipe and changed it a teeny bit. I didn't add vanilla extract because the one that I have isn't very good, I used water instead of non-dairy milk, and used Trader Joe's pumpkin butter instead of the pumpkin puree. The main ingredient in the pumpkin butter is pumpkin puree along with some other ingredients to enhance the flavor, so it shouldn't interfere too much with the recipe. The cookies turned out tasty, and slightly chewy. I guess I must have made them thick and didn't let them cook long enough to become a more firm sugar cookie consistency. Oh well, they were still really good especially with melted semi-sweet chocolate on top.
Although I do want to place a DISCLAIMER: the pumpkin butter is not vegan, since it does contain honey, I hadn't realized this until I had already made the cookies and double checked the label (darn). HOWEVER, their fig butter is vegan (yay!), and I had tried this before the whole ambush of pumpkin flavored stuff hit the store and it tastes better than a fig newton. These fruit spreads are called butters because they contain more fruit than another ingredient, so they are perfect for this recipe. You can try any other flavor or try making your own fruit puree, there are so many possible combinations.
So I decided to redeem myself from the first non-vegan batch and make a vegan fig recipe for my family on New Year's Eve. In the end, I couldn't decide wether to make one batch or 2 batches, so I ended up making one of each (hehe). I wanted to make them smaller and thinner than my last batch, so I decided to use these egg shapers? as cookie cutters. You would usually use these in bento boxes by placing a hard boiled egg inside, and then closing it shut to make it shaped like a bear or a rabbit. I just used the outer part to cut out cookies, I don't know if thats how it supposed to be used but it does work well.
This is when I realized, that these where the exact same shapes that appear in the Sailor Moon SuperS movie! Sailor Moon makes bunny shaped cookies (of course), and Rini makes all sorts of shapes but I do remember her holding up a bear shaped cookie. I loved this scene, when Serena's cookies are all perfect and she rubs it in Rini's face when her cookies look burnt. I think this is what made this movie my favorite among the other 2 Sailor Moon movies so I just had to recreate them.
So, after making a batch of pumpkin and fig cookie dough, me and my sister decided to make the pumpkin cookies into Rini's bear cookies, and the fig cookies into Serena's bunny cookies.
My sister, Joanna, rolled out and cut out the bunnies making sure to flour the surface as well as the rolling pin and the "cookie cutter" itself.
This is Pip's owner Janira, and todays post is going to be about vegan fig butter and pumpkin butter cookies (yum!). I am striving to be fully vegan this year and vegan cookies make it so much easier for me to bring to a party and not worry about if something is really vegan or not. I felt betrayed when I found out that my grandmother's refried beans weren't really vegan, after she repeatedly told me that they were (liar).Anyway, I find that the only way to really be certain if something is vegan or not is to make it yourself, or really dig up the evidence.
I brought these cookies to a secret santa party and to a family gathering for new years, and I got compliments on them from non-vegans which I owe to The Minimalist Baker . I have seen her pop-up a couple of times while searching for recipes, but never actually tried them out until now and I personally think that they are delicious. I didn't know she had vegan recipes, but now I will definitely give some of them a try. Her recipes are fairly simple and easy to follow and require minimal ingredients and equipment (ha minimal).
I made her vegan sugar cookie recipe and changed it a teeny bit. I didn't add vanilla extract because the one that I have isn't very good, I used water instead of non-dairy milk, and used Trader Joe's pumpkin butter instead of the pumpkin puree. The main ingredient in the pumpkin butter is pumpkin puree along with some other ingredients to enhance the flavor, so it shouldn't interfere too much with the recipe. The cookies turned out tasty, and slightly chewy. I guess I must have made them thick and didn't let them cook long enough to become a more firm sugar cookie consistency. Oh well, they were still really good especially with melted semi-sweet chocolate on top.
Although I do want to place a DISCLAIMER: the pumpkin butter is not vegan, since it does contain honey, I hadn't realized this until I had already made the cookies and double checked the label (darn). HOWEVER, their fig butter is vegan (yay!), and I had tried this before the whole ambush of pumpkin flavored stuff hit the store and it tastes better than a fig newton. These fruit spreads are called butters because they contain more fruit than another ingredient, so they are perfect for this recipe. You can try any other flavor or try making your own fruit puree, there are so many possible combinations.
So I decided to redeem myself from the first non-vegan batch and make a vegan fig recipe for my family on New Year's Eve. In the end, I couldn't decide wether to make one batch or 2 batches, so I ended up making one of each (hehe). I wanted to make them smaller and thinner than my last batch, so I decided to use these egg shapers? as cookie cutters. You would usually use these in bento boxes by placing a hard boiled egg inside, and then closing it shut to make it shaped like a bear or a rabbit. I just used the outer part to cut out cookies, I don't know if thats how it supposed to be used but it does work well.
This is when I realized, that these where the exact same shapes that appear in the Sailor Moon SuperS movie! Sailor Moon makes bunny shaped cookies (of course), and Rini makes all sorts of shapes but I do remember her holding up a bear shaped cookie. I loved this scene, when Serena's cookies are all perfect and she rubs it in Rini's face when her cookies look burnt. I think this is what made this movie my favorite among the other 2 Sailor Moon movies so I just had to recreate them.
So, after making a batch of pumpkin and fig cookie dough, me and my sister decided to make the pumpkin cookies into Rini's bear cookies, and the fig cookies into Serena's bunny cookies.
My sister, Joanna, rolled out and cut out the bunnies making sure to flour the surface as well as the rolling pin and the "cookie cutter" itself.
The fig cookie dough had little specks of the fig in it, as you can see in the picture below.
After they were cut out, we lined up the bunnies on the largest tray we had, which was a pizza tray.
We still had some left over fig dough that we used in a heart shaped baking pan to go with the heart shaped cookies that Sailor Moon made. Joanna traced the shape of the heart from the bottom of the pan with a knife and then placed it inside snuggly.
I cut out the bears from the pumpkin dough by placing the dough between wax paper to roll it out. I cut out the bears and put them on a separate baking sheet. I placed the cookies in the fridge, just until my oven preheated, and then placed the bunnies on top, and the bears and heart right underneath them. I baked them for 15 minutes, since the first time I made these cookies they took 15 minutes to bake which is longer than 10 minutes as was described in the recipe instructions. Umm... yea don't do that.
As you may be able to tell from the bottom picture, the bunnies came out fine although they were more firm than the first batch I made. However, the bears got a bit burnt, no they were burnt. These were the ones that we salvaged and they still look dark. My cousin even remarked that those must be chocolate cookies! The heart cookie was a bit brown but it was not burnt like the teddy bears because it was bigger and thicker.
Unfortunately, these cookies faced the same fate as the ones in the Sailor Moon movie, The bunny cookies came out perfect like Sailor Moon's and the teddy bears looked like Rini's cookies. The cookies tasted good though and they were all gone pretty quickly, and everyone pretty much avoided the teddy bears which I had to eat.
But if you ever try these or any other sugar cookie, just remember to put them into the oven at 10 minutes, don't place them close to the bottom, and check on them! Don't get impatient like we were and but both in at the same time, unless you trust your oven not to burn the cookies on the rack closets to the bottom. New year, new lessons learned and more time to bake other cute pastries.
Until next time,
Janira.
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