Vegan Animal Crackers

As an only child, searching for your Easter basket is a quick and boring adventure. But, when you have a new baby, or in this case, a practicing toddler, you forget to think like a participant and become a planner. I had dreams of an Easter egg hunt with her cousins. But, this year, we thought we would start with a tiny, little basket. I had grand plans to make one from woven paper, but instead I got so focused on the contents of the basket. Belle can't eat chocolate because she is too young for cocoa and sensitive to dairy. So, I decided to fulfill some of her desires.

The other day at school, she saw a little girl eating animal crackers. She had never even heard of crackers, let alone cookies. I have been attempting to profit from her myopic view of the world. Bananas are dessert in her mind. Mangoes are a treat. It is not that she hasn't had baked goods, but I used little or no sugar in her desserts. But, for my husband, Easter was filled with sugar-hazed memories. How could I keep her in the dark forever? I wasn't ready to give up and purchase crackers. I would rather wear flats and curlers in Nordstrom than chemical-laden cookies. Won't it be funny in 1 year when I read this while watching my daughter eat Spaghetti O's, Cheeto's, and Animal Crackers?

So, I looked around for a recipe. Animal crackers at home, vegan-style, seemed to me to be an easy adventure. All I could find was regular recipes, so I sat down to veganize. The recipe was easy to convert as it didn't have egg as a binder. The result was animal crackers, but not quite as good as the ones from the little circus box. I mean they weren’t bad, but the lack chemicals or maybe the recipe meant that these just didn’t hit the spot. Luckily, Belle has never even seen a box of animal crackers, let alone ingested whatever chemicals and dairy derived whey lurks within those amorphous creatures.

If I made this recipe again, I would add nutritional yeast to made them savory or else add a tablespoon of cane sugar to add some sweetness. As the recipe stood, they had a sad in-betweenness of flavor. Next to the Linzer cookies, they were sort of that plain girl who was friends with the popular girl, physically present but not remarkable or even memorable.

In the end, the basket of cookies were an enormous hit. Together they served as enough fuel to help Belle wear out 6 adults and still have time to harass the dogs. (As I was reading Is My Blog Burning, I found that this whole thing fit into the theme for Sugar High Fridays. And, what is a week without a blog event, really?)

Recipe:
Vegan Animal Crackers
Pulse in a food processor until you get a fine powder
1/2 cup oatmeal

Add to the food processor and pulse the following until the mixture looks grainy:
3 t agave nectar
1/4 to 1/8 tsp salt
3/4 cup flour
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 cup vegan margarine, softened
4 T soymilk
1 T apple cider vinegar

Using your hand, knead the mixture together into a small ball.

Chill for one hour. Roll out thin. And cut with cookie cutters. This dough works better with mini-cutters rather than large ones.

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Vegan Bunny Cake ( Vegan Pistachio Spice Cake )

I got a Bunny cake for my wedding shower many years ago now. Actually we registered for all sorts of stuff they said we would never use, and most of those things have come in handy now. (Cherry pitter—great clafoutis. French Onion soup container—pot pie vessels.) The bunny cake mold had yet to be used. So today, I tried to make a vegan bunny cake. What the Hell do Vegans Eat Anyway had a nice one that stood up but didn’t have a recipe. So, I decided to make my own. This cake was TASTY, but it didn’t have enough structural integrity to stand up. Herein the issue might be that I hate to read the directions. Apparently the best way to do these molds to make a cake that rises so much it fills both sides rather than cooking both sides separately. So, what we got was a cake that stood for a scant thirty seconds. And, even when supported with a lattice of toothpicks, still fell in the wind. So, our bunny became instead a bunny recumbent upon the grass (in this case crushed pistachios.) But, a tasty bit of sleeping rabbit she was.

There was a daunting challenge at A Slice of Cherry Pie for one's Easter cakes. While my cake did not stand up, it did take wonderful. Many, many family members were convinced it was too good (cakey, moist, tasty) to be vegan. So, I thought, why not join the Easter Cake Bake party.

Recipe:
Vegan Bunny Cake ( Vegan Pistachio Spice Cake )
Preseason your bunny mold in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes

In a large bowl, mix the following:
2 2/3 cup unbleached flour
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup finely ground pistachios
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp fine sea salt

In a second bowl, mix the follow:
1 1/3 cup soy milk
1/3 cup water
2/3 cup canola oil
1 cup pure lys syrup
2 T cider vinegar
2 t vanilla extract
1 T pistachio flavoring

Mix the wet with the dry.

Grease and flour each half the bunny. Fill each with the batter. Bake at 350 degree for 20 minutes (in a convection oven.)

Vegan Saffron Pistachio Buttercream
(adapted from the Cookies and Cream Buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)
In a stand mixer whip the following
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated shortening
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated margarine
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoons pistachio flavoring
1 T saffron dissolved in 2 T hot water
1/4 cup plain soy milk or soy creamer

Use this to glue the bunny together and then pipe it over the bunny. If you wish your bunny to stand up, I suggest a couple dowels.

Vegan Linzer Cookies

We made preserves and pickles on Saturday night, and eventually, I will get it together to post the pictures and recipes. The next morning, Easter, I decided to sort out Belle’s Easter Basket. She doesn’t eat chocolate and everything has to be dairy-free. So, we decided to make vegan cookies. The better of the cookies were the Linzer cookies. I chose these so that I could make use of our lovely preserves. I also went with this option because Easter paraphernalia was on sale all over and I felt the compunction to purchase the Linzer Cookie cutter—tiny cut-outs of bunnies, come on.

We used store bought raspberry jam and homemade kumquat –ginger marmalade to fill them. The cookies were Pistachio-Rose Water Cookies from my beloved Veganomicon. OH, were these cookies heavenly. They were just exceptional.