Vegan Cookie Success!

This lovely recipe was given to me by fellow SI member, Larua Frank. We have had so many requests for vegan cookies. The public asked, and they will receive. I give you the Oatmeal Peanut Butter cookie, which happens to be vegan friendly. Ta-da!

Star player - soy milk. No butter or eggs here. I was a bit skeptical at first, but after tasting the end result, all is good; very, very good.

Yum yum dough. Oats and peanut butter. I would have never thought to put them together.

I divided the dough in half; put chocolate in one half and left the other half plain.

Testing flavors at home gives me relief from scooping out hundreds after hundreds of miniature dough balls. Only regular sized dough balls for my taste testers.

Look at it. Crunchy outside, chewy inside, perfect.

These are just like the vegan cookies in my dreams. They are delicious as cookies, just plain cookies, let alone vegan friendly cookies. I am pleased. I still want to have another variety of vegan cookie. More on that later. We will eventually have gluten free cookies. (Those are even harder to hone.... meh.) More cookie blogs and testing soon!

Retail Packaging

The Hot Cookie is very excited to be entering our first retailer this afternoon. You will now be able to purchase boxes of a dozen assorted cookies at Good Earth in Broad Ripple. Our assortments come in Nut Lovers (peanut butter uglies, honey almond drops and the antioxidant) Chocolate Lovers (double fudge drops, double chocolate chunk, toffee shortbread bites with chocolate drizzle and peanut butter cups) and the Classic Assortment (St. Louis specials, oatmeal raisin, Thumbelinas and white chocolate & cranberry). Stop by Good Earth at 6350 Guilford Ave for a box of your own. They come packaged in a recycled paperboard boxed, tied with a red ribbon and stamped with The Hot Cookie logo.


Here are the boxes awaiting delivery to Good Earth.

Woo Hoo Publicity!

Karli and I have been really lucky this month with gaining publicity for The Hot Cookie. We had the fortune to have been asked by three, count 'em three, different media venues.

-Oseye Boyd interviewed us on Friday for an article that will run in the Muncie Star Press newspaper. If you get that paper, look for the article later this month. -Fellow SI member, Jennifer Litz asked us to do a video blog for Nuvo. It will air on Wednesday. Please ignore how camera shy we are. :)-We will also be mentioned on AroundCarmel, an online publication that shares info about what's going on in Carmel. Freelance writer, Jeremy Glowacki, interviewed us and his article will air on Wednesday as well.

We are so excited and thankful for being recognized. Thanks go out to Jennifer Litz, Jeremy Glowacki, Oseye Boyde, Debra Dragoo, and everyone else who has helped propel our little business forward. Thanks so much!

Whoopie Pies

I read an article in The New York Times about how whoopie pies were the new "it" dessert. Apparently they originated from the Amish and were named because when the men saw one in their lunch they would yell "Whoopie!" I decided to try out making my own whoopie pie to see if it was something The Hot Cookie could sell as a special or seasonal item. I also wanted to try out my new Kitchen Aid mixer. Teehee!Whoopie pies are composed of two parts - the chocolate tops and bottoms and the cream filling. You start out making the tops and bottoms. First cream butter and brown sugar.

Then add the egg and vanilla.
Next mix together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl including the flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa.Then add in the dry ingredients in 3 parts alternating with the buttermilk and make sure it is incorporated before adding more.
Once the batter is fully mixed use an ice cream scoop to lay out the batter on parchment lined baking sheet. Note: the recipe I used made 12 HUGE tops and bottoms or a total of six pies. If you have a smaller scoop you could use that to get more appropriately sized pies.

Bake the tops and bottoms for 12-14 minutes. When the are finished the should look like this:

While the chocolate parts are baking you can begin mixing together the buttercream filling. In a double boiler mix together egg whites and sugar just until the sugar is dissolved.

Once the sugar is dissolved transfer the liquid to your mixer bowl and use the whisk attachment. You want to whisk the liquid on high until it doubles in size and is white and shiny.

Then add the vanilla and butter about 1/2 a tablespoon at a time until fully blended and smooth.


Once the cream is mixed use an ice cream scoop to place cream on top of a chocolate bottom and use a knife to spread the cream to the edges.

Finally place another chocolate cookie on top and you have a whoopie pie.

Here is my husband, Travis, enjoying one!

I present to you, Thumbelinas!

Thumbelina, Thumbelina, tiny little thing.
Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing.
Very few of you will know what the heck I'm singing about. Back in the day, in my weird childhood, I was obsessed with the late, great Danny Kaye. In his movie, Hans Christian Andersen, he sings a song about Thumbelina, and it was awesome - or it was for a 10 year old me.
Karli blogged about these thumbprint cookies about a month ago. I had to try them out too, but with a different secret ingredient. We named them Thumbelinas.

These little beauties are pink peppercorns. They are a strange ingredient for cookies, but a fancy one, adding a tiny kick at the end of every bite. FYI - Pink peppercorns aren't even of the pepper family, but somehow they have a peppery taste.

Look at the pretty pink specks, very cute and dainty.

Sometimes the dough likes to stick to the spoon when you're making the little holes where the jam/jelly goes. I just dip the spoon in the jam/jelly juice and then press on. Hole after hole after hole after hole...

Plopping in the filling. We are making these for our shop with made-in-Indiana raspberry jam. But I didn't have any of that good stuff on hand, so plain 'ol grape jelly went on top of these.

Ready for the oven.

Thumbelina, you never looked so tasty. PS - Our shop will have these with a nice drizzle of icing on top, but I was lazy this evening. Cry.

Thumbelinas a plenty. Yums! These cookies have been roommate approved.

Gluten Free Cornmeal Cookies

I've had a few requests for gluten free cookies, so I'm going to try out a few recipes. My gluten free cookies will be just as tasty as my regular ones. I will not let taste and texture slide just so that they can be gluten free. Taste and texture will prevail!

I had to get rid of the wheat flour to make this batch gluten free. I decided to use brown rice flour instead. This recipe is called Cornmeal Cookies, so the cornmeal is ultra present.

Here are some salvaged eggs. The bagboy at the grocery store decided to put my brand new carton of eggs in the same bag as two liters of juice. Awesome.

I do love the color and fluffiness of creamed sugar, butter, and eggs.

Zee dry ingredients: the colored flecks are freshly grated nutmeg and cinnamon.

I had to break the shell of the nutmeg with a hammer to get to the center. This may be my favorite spice. It's so cool!

These are refrigerator cookies, so they must be chilled.

I rolled them into a log shape and put them in the freezer. I think the refrigerator would have been better though. Next time.

After a sufficient amount of chilling, slice, slice, slice.

These will spread quite a bit because they have LOTS of butter.

So here they are. They look good enough, but what about the taste?! The verdict: crisp, sweet, gritty. I will use a finer grind of cornmeal next time - easier on the teeth.

The "Log" Method

Karli and I were very busy today baking cookies for our first market: The Binford Farmer's Market. We were doubling batches and scooping away when...

...our scoop pooped out on us. Many a swear words were shouted. I began "eye balling" the correct amount of dough and started making each ball by hand. And after losing loads of precious time, I only had a few dough balls made.I had to come up with a solution so...

...the log method ensued. The log method: roll out some dough into a log shape.

Slice the log into small pieces.

Roll the pieces into a ball form.

Yay, mostly-same-sized dough balls!
Come and check out our booth at the Binford Farmer's Market from 8-12 on Saturday (the 4th). The market is located in the Fellowship Hall at the Divine Savior Lutheran Church, 7315 East 75th Street, just East of the fire station. Hope to see you there!