Strawberries are one of the many foods which are only worth my while fresh when they’re in season and local. Call me a snob, but these a fruit that do not ripen properly when picked early; this means those which come from a distance rarely make the cut when it comes to flavour. I’ll take a local British strawberry any day, even if it means the supplies are limited to just a couple of months of the year. These cookies were made from some of my first strawberry purchases of the season.

I often like to over-complicate my food. When it comes to strawberries, however, I’m firmly of the opinion that some things deserve to be simple. These strawberry and chocolate cookies are far from complicated and are dead easy. Try serving them with a dollop of soy whipped cream!

This is a simple and wholesome banana cookie bar, a perfect on the go morning snack (as much as I hate the concept of food on the go). These dairy free banana bars are thin and light, with minimal fat (especially if you avoid the peanut butter icing) and have a texture which is chewy but still fairly light.

A sideline: Bananas were always one of those fruits which were very neutral in my mind; a take them or leave them sort of attitude prevailed. That is, until I visited Southeast Asia for the first time. This had two opposing effects on me: I realised how divine a banana could be and I came to understand I’d never again appreciate a banana at home the way I could in a native environment. So I pretty much gave up eating bananas, saving them for cooking and the occasional smoothie.

Recipe Notes

I’m a big fan of getting creative in the kitchen, whether it’s with a recipe of my own or an already composed winner from a favourite cook book. The same rule applies to this bonbon recipe, so I encourage you to use your imagination with these cute cookies, to go crazy with colour combinations, fillings, and toppings. Dried fruits, candied ginger, chocolate chunks, anything you think would make an agreeable centre. And who said there was anything wrong with an electric blue cookie with hot pink icing? Topped with almond slivers and chocolate chips?

Achieve a marbled effect with the dough by waiting until everything is mixed before adding the colouring, mixing it in last until your dough acquires the desire look. Heck, why not try multiple colours?

Yes, these cookies would be great for children. This I know, because I am one. A children, that is. Not a cookie.

Perfect for party snacks and easy enough for even the most unskilled amateur kitchenista, these vegan crackers are perfect with drinks and light food. Guests will be impressed you made crackers from scratch (hey, you don’t have to tell them the ridiculous simplicity factor). Try sprinkling with toasted sesame seeds for added flair.

I made a variation of these for a vegan cheese and wine party I attended a few weeks ago (along with this blue cheese dip, both of which seemed to go down fairly well.

When I discussed making anatomically correct cookies last week, anise cutouts were truly the base of the inspiration. Another annual mother-daughter(s) event, decorating these cookies was one of the highlights of my year and, despite no longer celebrating Christmas, I cannot help but continue this seasonal tradition on my own. Unfortunately with age the patience to make body part cookies has worn ever so slightly thin. Must regress again to childhood.

Recipe Notes

Based on a classic family recipe, everyone in mine seems to have a preference for how these cookies are made. Some like them burnt, some don’t like sugar sprinkles and others express size preferences. Here are a few tips to get what you want out of your cookie:

• To obtain a crisp and slightly burnt cookie roll the dough out very thinly and/or use smaller cookie cutters and/or increase baking time by a minute or three.
• If you prefer a softer end result, don’t go thinner than 1/8 inch and err on the side lesser cooking.
• To piss off your uncle, put a tonne of coloured sugar on as decoration. Of course I don’t know this out of experience or anything.
• For evenness in cooking, try to make sure all the cookies in the oven at one time are of uniform size and thickness.

Recipe Notes

The concept for these mini tarts is one which lends itself to a variety of fillings, so if you’ve got oodles of frozen fruit from the summer and autumn in your freezer like I do, then go crazy!

If you’d rather make slightly large snack pies, simply use a normal sized cupcake or muffin tin and make slightly larger pastry circles with which to fill them. If you’re feeling extra decadent, try topping these large tarts with Angel Food’s vegan merginue cookies. Similarly, you can upside to a full scale 9 inch pie.

I have a lot of sickly sweet memories from childhood, ones which, when recalled in my mind, are glamour shot affected images complete with a cheesy vignette frame. Baking Christmas cookies with my mother can’t be excluded from these precious recollections of my childhood, despite the fact that the older I got the fainter the sugary vignette effect became. That is, my cookies began to resemble male anatomy as opposed to cheerful holiday snowmen and stars.

But one thing remained the same: the terra cotta cookie presses which had a pre-design in mind. No willies would come out of these all too cute shapes, which ranged from kittens and owls to snowflakes and holly. When I was visiting my parents earlier this month I went shopping in the basement and rediscovered these lovelies and, with my mother’s permission, relocated them to England.

Recipe Notes

If you don’t have any cookie stamps, never fear! You can roll and cut these into rounds or squares if you prefer, or even use a proper shortcake mould.

You can get creative with flavours too. For instance if you’d like to add a seasonal touch, throw in some cinnamon and mixed spice with the dry mix and substitute brown sugar.

I’ve been really into pies and tarts lately (my mother-in-law gave me boat loads of frozen fruit), and the perfect pie has to have an even more perfect crust. After experimenting with a few different methods, this is the recipe on which I’ve settled.

The last time I visited my family in the U.S. my mother passed along an old German baking manual and I recently got around to taking a look at its inspiring if somewhat dated recipes. A German book printed in the early 1970s at a guess, there’s no such thing as a vegan recipe in its contents. It’s a good thing veganising most (imagine me sighing in memory of macarons) cookies is pretty straightforward!

When I bake cookies, I have all sorts of good intentions. I tell myself things like “just have 2 or 3 a day and they will last” or “maybe if you only make a dozen you’ll be more likely to savour them so they last until the weekend.” Sometimes I even tell myself I should save some for my hard-working husband.

I generally eat all the cookies by myself, quickly. Paul, if he’s lucky, might manage to scavenge a couple.

Recipe Notes

Raise your hand if you’ve already thought, “but wait a minutes! Those aren’t black and white cookies!” What you might traditionally think of as black and white cookies are coated with split black and white fondant frosting, apparently quite a favourite in New York. These cookies, however, resemble a shortbread with a mild cocoa rum twist.

I use a couple of teaspoons of rum in the recipe. Its impact on the overall flavour isn’t huge, but it does add a mellow extra something. If you don’t have any though, I don’t think the world will end if you leave it out.

Get creative with the dough! You’ve got two different colours on your hands, so twist and twirl it to your heart’s content and make some cool designs! The easiest is to make two small balls of dough and press together. Other options include mixing the dough together a bit so you get a swirled effect. You can also roll the dough into thin snakes for spiral effects.

German cookies tend to use far less sugar than American and British counterparts. This of course means they are less sweet, but it doesn’t mean they’re less good! Besides, it means it’s more acceptable that I eat virtually the entire batch by myself.

Right?

Here’s the problem: I love baking

Why is that a problem, you say?

Baking, despite what people think, is not easy. I gawp at those who claim to be incapable of cooking yet can create never-fail cakes, cookies with perfectly moist centres and crisp edges, breads which were exquisitely crafted. I try to craft my own baking recipes but success is intermittant. Yes, baking is a science I’m afraid, and I’m still learning. Alas here is a recipe that worked, and worked well to boot.

Let’s not mention the excessive sugar content in most baked goods, an ingredient for which my brain and heart cry out. The chompers and my dentist, however, are in cahoots and believe it’s better to stick to other munchables.

A garden overflow

I’m late on this post, I know. The summer months leave gardeners awash with heaps of this delicious vegetable, and by the end of these days everyone’s desperate to finish the crop and move on. Courgette bread (that’s zucchini bread to Americans) is a perfect way to use some of the overflow, and it’s an easy bread which most everyone enjoys. Using about 1 courgette (zucchini) per loaf, you could easily bake a dozen on a lazy Sunday and hand them out at the office on Monday morning! These zucchini bread loaves are also ideal for those summer bake sales.

Recipe Notes

Something I’ve noticed since moving to the UK eight and a half years ago is the difference in cake consistency, and it became clear the reason American cakes just taste so much better is because of their use of ridiculous amounts of oil in recipes. Great for taste, but not so great for the gut, I opted to replace some of the oil content here with apple sauce. This makes a good substitution for oil, but I’m afraid some is still necessary to keep that moist texture (don’t worry, this zucchini bread recipe still yields a loaf which has the soft, almost gooey, texture you’d associate with zucchini bread).

The banana and arrowroot work as a non-egg binder, and work really well flavour-wise in here. The use of banana also, coupled with the apple sauce, merits using a little less sugar overall. If you browse a lot of other recipes you’ll see this one uses, on average, 25% less processed sugar.

I like cookies. A lot. I mean, seriously, a whole lot. Remember how, as a child, you would say how much you loved something and someone would say “why don’t you marry it then”? Well, I would marry cookies.

Aside from glancing at a few favourite recipes to remind myself of basic baking necessities (like flour – yeah, I’m dingy), my number one method of recipe concocting came into play here. It’s a deep and distant family secret, but I shall share anyway:

Gotta use stuff up.

Browsing through the fridge I encountered many a green vegetable on its last leg, but in the end decided on an already-open bag of dried cranberries and a container of oatmeal that hasn’t been touched in weeks (come on, a cranberry oatmeal cookie versus kale and courgette cookies… what would you choose).

Recipe Notes

In case anyone’s curious as to why someone would only want to make less than a dozen cookies, it’s because I’m a sugar fiend. These aren’t the sweetest of sweet when it comes to cookies, but I will still devour them Cookie Monster style.

If you’re not keen on dried cranberries, feel free to try any other dried fruit. Nuts would also be good, and the addition of chocolate chips ups the luxurious factor (because, come on, sadly no one sees oatmeal as luxurious these days. A real shame).

These vegan treats are almost like mini cakes, and are a lovely afternoon snack with a cup of your favourite hot bevvie!

I was on a flight once, one where I’d requested a vegan meal. They served me my inedible “meal” (which, naturally, consisted of lettuce and rice since that’s all vegans eat), accompanied by a vegan brownie.

“Right, okay, I’ll give this a go,” I thought, and it was good. I’d even go as far as to say it was great. The texture was all smooshy and moist, and I was left wanting more. Please do not get me wrong because I am in no way complimenting airline food. I am merely using this one instance to illustrate what got me interested in the concept of vegan baking.

I tried a few other vegan baked goods after that, from cookies to cupcakes, and I was never dissapointed with any of them. So I was browsing the good old internets the other day because work just wasn’t going to happen, and I suddenly thought “hey! why don’t I try baking some vegan cupcakes or muffins or whatever the correct British term is for cakes in little cases!” Plus I was pretty anxious to try out my new silicone muffin mould thingies since they are pretty and stuff.

Recipe Notes

I found a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for chocolate cupcakes and decided to make a few changes to achieve one of my favourite flavour combination discoveries of last year: chocolate and chili. Please forgive any inconsistencies as this truly is my first attempt at vegan baking, if you don’t count bread.

Also, cat hair bakes well. Yes, born to be vegan.

This tasty Syrian bread is easy to make and tastes delicious if eaten straight out of the belly of your oven. The onion topping is optional, of course, but it adds a slight extra flavour and it looks really, really pretty. This recipe makes 8 round breads, and takes around two hours total to make.

These breads are great on their own (my husband and I are fresh bread fiends), or to accompany almost any meal (think soups and stews).

From the World Encyclopedia of Bread and Breadmaking