Vegan Chocolate Salty Peanut Butter Balls

Before you read any further, I'd like to tell you something really, really important. I've been lauding the delightfulness of my vegan chocolate salty peanut butter balls for literally tens of minutes. I don't know if you think (you probably don't, amateur) but tens of minutes is SO MANY minutes to express love for vegan chocolate salty peanut butter balls. Especially aloud. Espcially to your mother. Especially to your extremely judgmental kitchen cabinets.

When will I live up to your standards?!

Anyways, I know Chef was the original purveyor of chocolate salty balls and I know the addition of "peanut butter" to "chocolate salty balls" makes you immediately think "creamy venereal disease" (no? how about now? that's what I thought. yummzville.) but that's just absurd. Just about everything in the world can and will benefit from the addition of peanut butter.

Example: Shampoo? Work a dollop of PB into your locks, neither wash no rinse, and voila! your hair is a tasty snack for mid shower hunger pangs. (You're allowed to called them "hunger bangs" if you're really clever.)

Example: Feeling chilly? Nothing says "boy am I comfy cozy" like a thin (or thick) layer of PB under your clothes. It also says "I'm friends with both bees and people who walk around with celery stalks and raisins!" but who couldn't use more friends? Amiright?

Those examples were exhausting. Less exhausting? These vegan chocolate salty peanut butter balls. They took about 20 minutes or so to make, including bake time. I've had eybrow waxing appointments take longer than that. And these balls makes you cry less too! (This whole post is one giant that's-what-she-said joke. Sigh. Such is life.)

"Hey baby, I wonder if you can fit all of me in your mouth?" - Vegan Chocolate Salty Peanut Butter Ball 2011 Predator of the Year

Oh yeah. Here's some of the nitty gritty. This recipe came from my new vegan baking cookbook, The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes: Amazing Cookies, Cakes, Muffins, Pies, Brownies, and Breads by Kris Holecheck. Although completely void of pictures, it's a pretty lovely little cookbook. Although the snickerdoodle recipe is more like a snickerdoody recipe if you catch my drift. (It's like poop.)

I'd like one of those hot stone massages but with
Vegan Chocolate Salty Peanut Butter Balls.
Everywhere.

RATE ME!

TASTE: 5/5 - The salty balls can do no wrong.
EASE: 5/5 - My dog could make these cookies if he wasn't such a gluttonous tramp who had no sense of self control. But I'm also willing to say a life size cardboard cutout picture of my dog could also manage this recipe. If the cardboard Frank wanted it bad enough.
FILTH OF KITCHEN: 1/5 - My cleanup process was included in my 20ish minute questimate of total time spent in the kitchen. No egg mess (thanks vegans!), no melting chocolate (thanks society!), and my peanut butter wasn't even terribly sticky (thanks advances in Peter Pan peanut butter air whipping technology!). My goodness. This recipe is starting to look dangerously perfect.
DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH: The dog was too busy trying to eat the cat. That boy needs to get his priorities straight.
IMPRESS-O-METER: 3/5 - See, I have this dilemma. I want to make a balls joke here so bad. So so bad. What if you just lolz as you would lolz had I told a really great balls deep joke involving my vegan chocolate salty peanut butter balls right here without me having to make a balls deep joke? Because if I make an honest to goodness balls deep joke here, I'll have to explain the term "balls deep" to my mom. Or I want have to. Honestly, I'm not sure which would be worse.

Do you see what I did here?
It's a face!

The Great Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Showdown

Ok "The Great" might be a bit much. And "Showdown" is maybe a little unrealistic. It wasn't like I drew a line in the flour a la that scene in the movie Hook and told the cookies that they can either be delicious or delicious-er a la the movies in my head. That would be weird because cookies making choices and my mind movies and whatever. But it's a moot point. Because that's exactly how this showdown went...down?

In this corner of my flour dusted counter, weighing in at a modest 133 calories and making the world an animal friendlier place, one block of firm tofu at a time is The Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookie.

"I make my own clothes out of synthetic fabrics!"
-Vegan Oatmeal Cookie's Senior Quote

Because I think Vegan cookies are interesting (I wanted to say exotic like in the same way the elderly refer to everyone not white as "exotic" but it's too soon or something?), I'm going to share the recipe with you.

*many hyphens were harmed in the making of this book

I lifted this recipe from Tofu 1-2-3: 125 East-to-Prepare Cholesterol-Free Recipes because if you know anything about me, you know I have a tofu-centric cook book in my possession. Duh.

.Ingredients.
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup rice milk
1/4 cup silken tofu
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup of raisins

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line cookies sheet with parchment paper.
2. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl with a wire whisk. Add oats and sugar and stir more. In a food process, combine oil, maple syrup, rice milk, tofu, and vanilla and puree til smooth. Pour liquids into the dry stuff and stir. Add raisins. Chill.
3. Bake for 15 minutes. Transfer to rack. Profit.

How exotic!

Shit was crazy easy to make, by the way. And they came out insanely perfect. I added a little extra sprinkle of cinnamon because I like to jazz things up/I wanted my kitchen to smell better/I think adding things to recipes makes me seem mad knowledgeable. Taste wise - not too shabby. I was surprised with both the consistency and the fact that I didn't notice the missing butter and eggs. Way to go, Vegans. I still think yall are batshit crazy but you know, your cookies can be okay.

I expected vegan oatmeal raisin batter to look much more resentful.

But this wouldn't be a showdown if there wasn't some competition.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this is a done deal, yo. Other dude shouldn't even show up. You're also thinking I am the perfect height to be an arm rest for most full grown men. There you are correct. The former, however, is what I like to call "jumping to cookie conclusions before giving the animal product using cookies a chance." Yeah. I like to call it that.

So let me introduce the challenger...

Continuing with the overdone, cliche at best use of boxing terminology, weighing in at you-don't-want-to-know and sporting a mean chunky salt topping is The Salty Oatmeal Raisin Cookie.

"I rob animals of their goods on the regular!"
-Salted Oatmeal Raisin Cookie's Senior Quote

I first had a salted oatmeal raisin cookie when I was a carefree youth on the mean streets of NW Washington D.C. I had stopped off at Marvelous Market (thug life) after school with my mom to pick up my favorite Caprese Sandwich (hood shit, yo) and maybe a nice challah or some french bread with olive dip and a Perrier (I've run out of impressive street lingo) when a cookie by the register caught my eye. A monster salted oatmeal raisin beauty. It was probably one of the top 10 single things I've ever eaten. So I sought out to recreate it.

I settled up my debt at Williams-Sonoma the old-fashioned way,
with an IOU note for my firstborn son.

This recipe came from the Williams-Sonoma baking book I just purchased. It was a little different that other recipes I've come across as it asked you to melt the butter in a skillet first. Then you proceed by mixing in the remaining ingredients by hand. The not so obvious differences from the Vegan cookie included the use of nutmeg and brown sugar instead of white.

Common misconception: The Vegan substitute for butter is sand.

These smelled hands down 100x better than the Vegan cookies. Like, if you're into that sorta thing. To give them that little extra salty kick, I topped them with this fancy pants finishing salt I bought at Williams-Sonoma (I only spent a million dollars there is what I'm getting at). Popped those bitches in the oven and BOOM. Incredz.

Common misconception #2: Oatmeal Raisin Cookie batter
can replace your every daily need.

But to compare the two is pretty hard. The regular cookies flatted a bit more than I wanted while the Vegan ones kept a really lovely shape. They look just about perfect. The regular cookies are much more home-made in appearance. But man. The salt. I added extra salt to half of the Vegan cookies too and it just makes such an incredible difference. I highly suggest topping your oatmeal raisin cookies with chunky salt. Shit is unreeeeeeeeeal.


THE SHOWDOWN PART OF THE PROMISED SHOWDOWN!

TASTE: Salted Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. The vegan cookies are surprisingly good but the consistency is a little spongier than I'm used to. The salted cookies are really delicious. So salty. So wonderfully spiced.
EASE: Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. I've found that any cookie recipe that involves a food processor is way easier than any cookie recipe that does not. I don't really know how to justify this argument but it's my blog, not yours, and beat it.
FILTH OF KITCHEN: Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. It helped that they had like 9 more ingredients to deal with. And sloppy ingredients at that.
DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH: It's official. My dog does not like to hang out in this kitchen while I bake. It's a real drag because it means I have to mop the floor now.
IMPRESS-O-METER: It's almost a toss up here. On one hand, Vegan Cookies are pretentious and the Impress-O-Meter was birthed from pretension. But on the other hand, I topped those other guys with finishing salt. Finishing salt. What can I say, I'm 100% impressive 80-93% of the time.