Vegan Martha

In case anybody missed it, baked goods are a vital part of life around these parts. Most of the time, we go for good. As in, it may not have eggs, or dairy, or even vegan margarine (there's someone, a friend, who is trying to take me over to the dark side with Earth Balance margarine and shortening, and oh boy, does the margarine make a tasty buttercream icing, so yes, I confess to trying it, and yes, it still continues to freak me out and will not be part of our fridge family except for weddings, which I don't see coming around again anytime soon...anyway...)

Where was I? Oh yes, none of the above right? But it still has to make me weak in the knees, or else what's the point? But besides perusing the vegan blogs and reading "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" like it's some kind of food bible/porn, the baking daring has remained for others.

But what to do about Martha? Because it's sad, so sad, to leaf through my "Cookie" magazines and know that there's nary a vegan cookie in there and that Martha's arteries, which by now must be made of butter, are so much stronger than mine, which are merely human.

I couldn't take it anymore. Knowing that my ultimate goal was Chewy Chocolate Ginger Cookies (which will be my undoing someday in a spectacular they-found-her-on-an-apartment-rooftop-naked-covered
-in-nothing-but-crumbs-from-a-batch-of-these-cookies kind of way), I started with another recipe, the Classic Oatmeal Cookie recipe, so that if it was a disaster it wouldn't be too hard to bear.

(See those? That's my cookie nirvana. And that's from the Martha website - my cookies never look like that)

Subbed 2/3 cup canola oil for the 1 cup butter. Subbed 2 Tbsp flax meal + 3 Tbsp hot water (mix and let sit a couple minutes until gooey) for every egg. Subbed chocolate chips for whatever they thought would be a good idea to add, obviously. Found that the dough wasn't sticky enough to make cookies (unless packing them into shape like little flat snowballs or something), so instead spread the dough between two pans to make bar cookies. Baked for 18 minutes.

Dear-goodness-on-what-the? Oh, they were good. Very, very good. I am now a brazen substituting queen and no recipe is safe, now (except maybe shortbread).

And yes, I realise that this post could have been written: made cookies. substituted these items. turned out good. ug.

Except that baked goods make me swoon. And the idea of vegan chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies may, in fact, inspire an entire novel...