1 - I am not, nor do I think I could ever become, a vegan.
2 - I don't mess around with low-fat or fat-free baked goods. If you're going to treat yourself, treat yourself).
Now that you know that, I have to tell you I did something out of character. I baked vegan. This was partly due to the fact that I have vegan teacher friends and partly due to a lack of butter and eggs in the house. The result: phenomenal.
Here is my recipe for vegan peanut butter cookies, adapted from www.irocksowhat.com
What You'll Need
- 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar*
- 1/2 cup white sugar*
- 3/4 cup of peanut butter
- 1/2 cup of coconut oil
- 1 tsp of vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup of applesauce
- 1 cup of whole wheat flour**
- 1/2 cup of oats**
- 1 tsp of baking soda
*The original recipe called for 1 cup brown sugar. I prefer to go halfsies on my sugars, but you do whatever floats your sugary boat.
**The original recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of regular flour. I love adding oats into recipes, and I love whole wheat flour, but you do whatever floats your floury boat.
Side note: I used natural peanut butter (the only way to go, in my opinion), but if you're using a JIF or another PB with sugar in it, I would definitely cut down on the brown/ white sugar. In fact, the one flaw with this recipe was that it was a little too sugary-sweet, so you could probably stand to omit a little sugar as is.
What To Do
Mix the flour, oat, and baking soda together. Set aside.
Blend together sugar, peanut butter, and coconut oil. Add vanilla and applesauce. Add dry ingredients.
At this point you could also add chocolate chips, but you might be compromising the vegan-ness of the recipes (unless they're dark chocolate chips, which would be awesome!)
Drop rounded spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet then flatten with a fork (to get those quintessential peanut butter cookie grooves). Bake at 375 degrees for about 8 minutes.
These were 100% vegan and carnivore approved. The real kicker was the coconut oil. Bake them. You won't regret it.
