I wanted to bake something for book club this week, and since one of our members is vegan, I always like to make something she can eat. I found this recipe on the Three Little Chickpeas blog, and since I love peanut butter desserts, I thought this was worth trying.
Ingredients
- ½ cup (120 g) unsweetened natural peanut butter (with salt) (measure after stirring)
- ¾ cup (130 g) granulated sugar
- ½ cup (125 ml) dairy-free milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups (180 g) whole-wheat flour, spooned and leveled
- ½ cup (90 g) vegan chocolate chips
- 2 tablespoons (13 g) ground flax seed
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- Pinch of salt (if your peanut butter doesn't contain salt use ¼ teaspoon)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C).
- Line an 8x8 inch glass baking dish with parchment paper.
- Mix together the peanut butter and sugar with the back of a fork until the sugar is mixed into the peanut butter.
- Then to peanut butter mixture, whisk in the dairy-free milk and vanilla extract until smooth (a balloon whisk works well here). Make sure there are no large clumps, a few tiny lumps are fine.
- In a large bowl whisk together the whole-wheat flour, chocolate chips, ground flaxseed, baking powder, and salt.
- Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and mix together with a rubber or silicone spatula. The dough will be thick.
- Press the cookie dough into the glass baking dish and spread it out to the corners. Use a silicone spatula to help spread the dough out (Use damp hands to pat down and smooth out the top).
- Bake for 16-18 minutes. To test lightly press the top of the cookie dough (careful it's hot), if your fingerprint stays, cook for another 1-2 minutes. The top should look set, puffed up, and spring back slightly when touched.
- The cookie bars need to cool completely to set, if you cut the bars while they're too warm they'll crumble. I let them cool for around 15 minutes in the dish, then lift them out with the sides of the parchment paper to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Store in the refrigerator and they'll firm up more once chilled.
As usual, I didn't stick to the ingredient list as written. I didn't bother trying to find vegan chocolate chips, so I just went without (same with the flaxseed). I used regular flour, and my non-dairy milk of choice was plain soy milk.
At first mixing the peanut butter and sugar was a little tricky, but eventually the peanut butter did absorb all the sugar. And it wasn't too hard making sure the wet mixture wasn't clumpy. I appreciated the tips about using a fork for mixing and damp hands for pressing the dough into the pan. Speaking of which, I don't have a glass square pan, so I used a metal one; when making this switch, you always want to shorten the bake time (I did 12 minutes and maybe could have gone a minute or two longer).
I think I've made both better peanut butter desserts and vegan desserts before, but this one isn't bad. These bars are quite dense and rich, so a small square is plenty! These probably would be better with the chocolate chips to add a little change in the texture. I'll remember that if I make them again!
