This weekend I had the honour of being the head leader on a Venturer Scout camp for the first time in my life. Being a leader with Scouts is massively rewarding and so much fun. Occasionally there are a few challenges, like trying to cater for tricky diets on camps. Luckily, I love cooking so this is usually a great excuse to try new recipes. I also love how excited Scouts get when you give them food that fits their dietary requirements and still tastes good.
This weekend we had a vegan along with us, so obviously I needed cookies for morning and afternoon tea. Last week I tried some absolutely fabulous vegan peanut choc chip cookies at a talk by the Outstanding Sophie Labelle, author and artist of Assigned Male Comics.
I adore this comic series for its fantastic insight into various trans issues and social situations.
Anyway, the cookies took my breath away so I decided to try replicate them. I didn't have half the ingredients the original recipe wanted, so I improvised and combined a few other recipes I found online.
All of these ingredients other than the chocolate and marg and can be found package free, so these are close to zero waste! I'm going to try them with just oil next time so that packaging should be minimised even more.
Here it is -
1 1/4 cup flour
1 cup chocolate (I diced some Whitaker's dark chocolate, which is in recyclable paper)
1/2 cup peanut butter (Wellingtonians can find this package free at Bin Inn)
1/4 cup sunflower oil (waste free at Common Sense Organics)
1/4 cup vegan spread (I used a plant based marg that I found at the back of the fridge)
1/2 cup sugar (CSO, Moshims or Bin Inn)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup plant-based milk (I used my home made coconut milk - which I make with bulk package free coconut pieces)
1 tsp vanilla (you can make this realy easily if you can't find it package free!)
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking power
1/2 tsp salt
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.
Mix together the oil, marg, peanut butter, vanilla, sugars and plant milk in a bowl. In another bowl mix the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder.
Combine your peanut mixture with the dry ingredients, then add your chocolate chunks.
Depending how lazy you are feeling you can either make 2 inch diameter balls and place them on a lined baking tray -
- or you can do what I did half way through and just make a sheet and cut it into squares later.
Bake for 14 minutes - the cookies will start looking a wee bit golden but still be super soft when you pull them out. Let them cool for at least 10 minutes so they solidify- if you can wait that long!
These are better than most of the non-vegan peanut butter cookies I've tried, so I was pretty stoked with them. My fantastic vegan Scout loved them too and managed to finish the whole batch in 3 days!
On a completely different note, I was also awarded my Woodbadge Award this weekend, which I am super proud of. It's the highest award that is available in Scouts at the moment, so I am very privileged to have had the opportunity to do the training and be supported in my efforts.
Here's me getting my Gilwell Scarf!
Sales pitch - become a Scout leader - It'll change your life. :)
xo Cait
Labels: cruelty free, recipe, vegan, vegetarianism, zero waste, zerowaste
