I don’t just want to replace the butter with some kind of butter substitute. For one thing, most margarines still contain dairy and for another, most of margarines have whatever kind of hydrogenated is bad for humanity. I want to add recipes to my repertoire that don’t rely on dairy at all.

That means vegan. Stay with me here: if there wasn’t vegan food that tasted good, only true martyrs would stay vegan very long. So I checked Veganomicon out of my library.* And then I made Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies.

So. Good.

Try them. You’ll be shocked by the dense chocolaty goodness. SHOCKED.

Put the oven on 350F and put this stuff in a bowl and mix it up:

• 1/2 c. raspberry preserves (we used blackberry freezer jam: the freezer is full of it since the blackberries did really well last summer)
• 1 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. canola oil
• 1 t. vanilla (we left out the 1 t. of almond extract: blech)

The next ingredients are supposed to be sifted in another bowl. That was too fancy for us. Dump in and mix up:

• 1/2 c. + 2 T. cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 c. AP flour
• 3/4 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt (that’s double what it called for: chocolate requires salt)

The dough is really thick, so you either need some upper body strength or willing toddler hands to get it all combined. Then we used the scoop and smush method (medium ice cream scoop and the bottom of a glass) to arrange them on a parchment lined baking sheet. They don’t spread much so you can do a lot at one time. Ellie sprinkled kosher salt on top. If you missed it: chocolate requires salt.
Bake them 10 minutes. They’ll get dry and cracked on top. If you don’t want oval cookies, wait a minute before you move them to a cooling rack. They taste just as good oval.

Next, eat them all in two days. Ellie and I did this and we are not ashamed. If you want to negate the lack of dairy: 2 cookies + microwave for 12 seconds + vanilla ice cream = swoon. The goal for 2010 is to reduce, not eliminate.

*I am just as surprised as you are. And it was at my personal branch.