Brown - Very Vegan Christmas Cookies

E veryone loves a good cookie, at any time of the year. But if Thanksgiving is the holiday that owns pies, then Christmas is the one most closely associated with cookies. Cookies in fanciful shapes frosted with colored icing and candies along with gingerbread people take center stage, but theres a whole pantheon of luscious treats that are the supporting players. There are cookies rolled in confectioners sugar to look like the snowballs of winter, and rich brownies too.

However, two of the key ingredients in most cookie recipesbutter and eggsare inconsistent with the vegan lifestyle. Very Vegan Christmas Cookies is here to come to your rescue. First and foremost, these cookies are yummy. Theyre filled with flavorful ingredients, aromatic with spices and citrus zests, and truly decadently delicious. Everyone, regardless of their dietary prohibitions, can eat them!

The choice of a vegan lifestyle, which eschews all animal products in all aspects of life, has been frequently incorrectly described in the popular media as a religion. There is no such thing as vegan theology, although there are strongly held ethical beliefs. There are no metaphysical beliefs or creeds exposed by those choosing to not eat animal products or use animal products in their clothing or other aspects of their life. There are no vegan places of worship, nor are there vegan holidays to celebrate.

There are probably as many unique reasons why people choose a vegan lifestyle as there are vegans in North America. Vegans, now numbering 1 million, are a growing subset of the 7.3 million people who describe themselves as vegetarians, according to a 2008 study conducted by Harris Interactive for The Vegetarian Times . Most of the reasons can be categorized into health, animal rights, and concern about the planets future resources.

Being a vegan is all about conforming to an ethical lifestyle, and about a third of vegans are also practicing Christians. Veganism is another manifestation of spirituality, but they overlay those beliefs onto the tenets of the religion.

While we tend to think of vegetarianism in general and veganism in particular as modern, it has actually been around longer than Christianity. Kerry S. Walters and Lisa Portmess wrote in their book Ethical Vegetarianism that the Greek philosopher Pythagoras was a believer in the transmigration of souls and warned that eating an animal might actually involve the eating of a human soul and should be avoided.

It was during the nineteenth century that vegetarianism as a way of life really established a beachhead in the West, although followers of some sects of Buddhism and Hinduism advocated vegetarianism for centuries because they believed that humans should not inflict pain on other animals.

The first vegetarian society was formed in 1847 in England, and in 1850 Rev. Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister and inventor of the graham cracker, founded the American Vegetarian Society. It was almost a full century later that Donald Watson, a British woodworker, coined the term vegan . In 1944 he wrote that while many vegetarians ate dairy and eggs, vegans would not. In 1951 the British Vegan Society defined veganism as the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals. When the American Vegan Society was formed in 1960, its founder, H. Jay Dinshah, linked veganism to the Jain concept of ahimsa , the avoidance of violence against living things.

The most common misconception regarding the vegan diet is that there are such strict limits on what can be eaten that a vegan diet is not nutritionally sound. Both the American Dietetic Association and its Canadian equivalent, as well as the World Health Organization, have endorsed veganism for people of all age groups. After all, the vegan diet includes whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes. All of these foods are now emphasized around the world as ones that should be the foundation of a healthy diet.

Plant foods contain eight amino acids, similar to what is found in animal foods but in different amounts. Nuts and soy foods contain complete proteins, which is why so many of the recipes in this book list them as ingredients. Soy and dried figs are also excellent sources of calcium, as are other soy products. The recipes in Very Vegan Christmas Cookies were formulated for their flavor, but particular attention was paid to ensuring that these tempting treats are not only strictly vegan but add nutrients to the diet too.

So feel good about baking these cookies, because everyone you bake them for will thank you.

Happy baking!

Ellen Brown

Providence, Rhode Island

W hile cooking is an art, its science class that takes precedence when it comes to baking. In fact, learning about the properties of ingredients is called food chemistry in any number of culinary schools. Each ingredient in a recipe fulfills a role and functions in a different way. When making vegan baked goods, even cookies, these ingredients change, and knowing the whys and hows of ingredients leads to more delicious results.

In this chapter youll learn all about vegan ingredients and get some pointers on baking in general and cookies in particular. The chapter ends with some easy icing recipes to dress up your very vegan Christmas cookies.

The two categories of ingredients that must be avoided in vegan baking are dairy products and eggs. Then there are some minor ingredients such as honey that must be substituted in vegan recipes. Here is a guide to vegan versions of ingredients found in traditional cookie recipes:

Butter: This is perhaps the easiest substitution because there are many soy margarines on the market. Margarine will give the cookies a traditional buttery flavor. But if the butter is to be melted to make the cookie dough you may consider using vegetable oil. Oil is also very good in cookie recipes that contain a lot of spices. When using oil in place of melted butter, reduce the amount by 10 percent to compensate for the air churned into butter or margarine.

Milk, cream, and buttermilk: I find that plain, full-fat soy milk is the best substitute for cows milk, and an alternative is rice milk. I tend to shy away from almond milk or coconut milk unless I want that flavor in the cookie. If a recipe calls for heavy cream, use plain soy milk and substitute 3 tablespoons of melted soy margarine for 3 tablespoons of the milk to replicate the butter fat content. To make a soy version of buttermilk, add 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice to each cup of soy milk. Allow the mixture to sit for 10 minutes.

Honey: Honey is a natural sweetener with a distinctive flavor, and I found that pure maple syrup accomplishes the same goal in recipes. Other thick liquids on the list approved for vegans are corn syrup and agave nectar. Corn syrup can be used as it comes from the bottle, but I recommend reducing maple syrup and agave nectar by one-fourth to replicate the viscosity of honey.

There are not one or two substitutes for eggs in vegan baking, there are many because eggs play different roles in baked goods. Eggs add moisture to doughs and batters; each egg is 1/4 cup of liquid. But eggs do more than moisten. They also act as a binding agent that holds cookies together as the proteins in them solidify during the baking process, and they act as natural leavening agents that help food to rise.