Vegan chocolate cookies

Mmmm chocolate... is there anything better? 

During Paulo's elimination period I spent a lot of time learning to cook and bake bread allergen free.  I honestly didn't worry too much about desserts and cookies.  It was summer, fresh fruit was abundant and we had coconut milk ice cream, so what more did we need?

Chocolate, we needed chocolate!  Well, at least I needed chocolate!  As luck would have it, Paulo's got my sweet tooth so he wholeheartedly agrees with my chocolate cookie baking and gave this recipe two happy thumbs up.





One of the blogs I frequent for cooking inspiration is Manifest Vegan.  By nature of the vegan part I'm guaranteed to find recipes that do not include eggs of dairy and many of them are also wheat free as an added bonus.  Before Halloween there was a recipe for chocolate brownie bats.  I knew right away I wanted to make them.  As luck would have it I had everything I needed already.  I finally got around to baking them on Halloween. 



I made two batches of the cookies in Halloween shapes, bats, skulls and pumpkins and then, then I got lazy.  I got tired of chilling and re rolling the dough.  Not wanting to waste all that chocolatey goodness I created the lovely morsel pictured below.  Thumbprint raspberry cookies.  I rolled bits of dough into a ball, smashed my thumb in there, dropped in a couple of dark chocolate chips and perched a fresh raspberry on top.  Into the oven they went and out came deliciousness!  



Pretty isn't it?

I will admit to some hesitation about learning to cook allergen free.  I grew up on eggs and milk in my cookies and the usual gluten filled flour.  Baking without those things can be tricky, some of my experiments have turned out great and some....well, they were nothing to write home about.  These cookies turned out great, crispy on the edges, chewy in the middle and full of chocolate flavor.  I will definately make them again and if you're close enough to dine with me over the holidays you just might end up eating them yourself!