Back in my pre-vegan days, I used to love a good cookie swap party. Now that I’m vegan and don’t have many vegan friends close-by, I’m bringing the cookie swap party to Keepin’ It Kind! Each day, for 25 days, one of my favorite bloggers will visit and share one of their favorite holiday cookies! That’s 25 Days of Cookies, my friends! Happy Holidays!
How do I even begin to introduce Somer of the wonderful blog, Vedged Out? I’ve loved Somer since before she even started Vedged Out, when she was part of a different blog. Her spirit, her generosity, and her ability to make feeding your family healthy vegan food look easy and delicious are just a few of the things I admire about this woman. I can’t wait to see what she’s brought to share with us!
When you live in Northern Utah, sometimes the sun doesn’t shine for weeks on end in the wintertime. That makes recipe photography a bit tricky, especially if you’ve all ready got a fairly dark kitchen. I set this shoot up outside to get at least a little bit of natural light, but then it started snowing. Ah well, what’s a girl to do? Oh, and although these cookies are covered with chocolate a bit patch-ily (hey, I’m a novice). They still taste amazing.
Ingredients
- scant 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour or gluten free flour. (Level 1/2 cup of flour, then remove 2 tablespoons worth)
- 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon ground golden flax seed
- 1/4 t. baking powder
- pinch sea salt
- 1/3 cup agave
- 1/4 cup melted coconut oil (use refined if you don’t want these cookies tasting like coconut)
- 2-3 drops food grade peppermint essential oil or 1 teaspoon peppermint extract
- 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips, melted
- 1 teaspoon coconut oil
- 1-2 drops food grade peppermint essential oil or 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350º. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl with a wire whisk. Add the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. This mixture will look more like cake batter than cookie dough, that’s okay! Measure out cookie dough with a teaspoon to make about 30 cookies. If your cookie sheet is big enough, they may all fit on the same sheet! Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes. Let cool on wire cooling rack for 10-15 minutes, they will become firm and crisp up as they cool. With a small flexible spatula, “ice” the cookies top and bottom with the melted chocolate, trying to get the sides as well, I used about a teaspoon of the chocolate per cookie. Put the cookies on parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet and refrigerate or freeze for 10-15 minutes to let the chocolate set up before serving. These are best stored in the refrigerator as the chocolate can melt at room temp.
Annie
Patchy-smatchy! I'll take a few boxes, please!
Katie @ Produce on Parade
Oooo! My husband loves thin mints! I can't wait to try these out! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Richa
those are some thin thin pretty cookies! bring on the peppermint!
Anna {Herbivore Triathlete}
Thin mints are my favorite cookie! Lovely Somer, these look fantastic.
Kaylee
Thin Mints are my favorite Girl Scout cookies! Trying to talk myself out of going to the kitchen to make these!!
Kelli
Beautiful ~ I love Thin Mints!
Sasha
Yum! Chocolate and mint are always a great combo and I love how simple the recipe looks. These are going on my holiday baking list for sure!
Janine Medlin
These look fabulous and look pretty easy to make. Another one on my list! I love mint and chocolate!! Thank you!
V8 Mile
These are my favorite Girl Scout cookies! Since I found a vegan, gf baker in town, I've been able to get my fix, but homemade is even better. Thanks for posting this!
Natalia
These are amazing! At first I was worried about hem being so small but they spread out nicely when they cook. The peppermint flavor is just right, doesnt overpower the chocolat i dont know if they were supposed to get crispy but mine stayed chewy and everyone at my xmas party was commenting on how hey were even better than girl scouts cookies bc of that. They were a huge hit, several girls asked me for the recipe. Best of all, no one was a vegan =] love it when non vegans love vegan food. This recipe is a winner now stop reading and go bake some!
Heather
Somer has one of the best spirits I have come across in the blogging world! These look so so good!
Kathy's Kitchen
I LOVE chocolate and mint! I started my Christmas cookie making today and I had one of those Pinterest flops making these. (I did double the recipe and substituted honey for the agave.) I made them too large and they spread like the dickens—one pan ended up chewy and flexible and the other pan was crispy (go figure). I cut them into pieces and with the flexible ones I spread chocolate on top and rolled them up into a log-like cookie and then topped again with chocolate and dusted with white sprinkles. The crispy ones (that looked like one giant cookie in the pan) were cut into squares and then topped with chocolate. They tasted great!
Kev
I just made these today. They are okay. I probably won't try again, but I think they're worth making if you avoid making the same mistakes(?) as I did:
I substituted 2 ingredients (whole "graham" flour instead of whole wheat flour & vegetable shortening instead of the coconut oil) because that's all I had on hand.
The cookies turned out good. Great texture (chewy) a bit bitter (might be due to the flour I used, although cocoa powder and peppermint extract both make things a bit bitter imo)
The frosting/coating was a failure. I'm not sure whether to blame the type of chocolate chips I used or the fact that I microwaved them instead of heating them over the stove, but it was too thick to really spread. All I could do was dollop it on top and kind of smush it down.
I did end up adding a lot of sugar to the melted chocolate to balance out the bitterness. This didn't make the texture any worse, but I don't know if it made it any better either. But they taste good, so that's good enough for me. Maybe you won't have this problem if you use the right kind of chocolate chips.