Tipper Gore Makes Strange Ginger Snaps: First Lady Cook-Off #2

Did you know that Tipper Gore makes really weird ginger snaps?
O.K., maybe they're not that weird. Maybe it's just me.

I've always made gingersnaps the same way. Cinnamon, ginger, allspice, a tiny amount of cloves, molasses, salt, and the usual cookie dough nuts-and-bolts (flour, fat, binder, etc.)

You can take a look at last week's post for a (slightly) more thorough explanation, but basically, once upon a time Hillary made a comment about baking cookies and "having teas", and why she didn't do it. Family Circle magazine then took it upon itself to have Hillary and her husband's opponent's first lady, Barbara Bush, submit cookie recipes to the magazine. The recipes were printed and rated by readers. The winner has correlated with the winner of the election four out of five times (probably because of the bias involved with tasting cookies made by the wife of an either loved or much-maligned political candidate.)

Why is Ms. Gore's recipe so weird to me? You'll see in a moment. Without further ado...

Tipper Gore's Ginger Snaps (lightly adapted from the recipe listed in the New York Times)

•  3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 3/4 cup butter-flavored Crisco
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 flax eggs (each flax egg is 1 T flax put in 3 T water and allowed to set for 10 minutes)
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 2 tsp. white vinegar

You know the drill. Preheat the oven to 325 F (not 350 F). Mix the dries. Mix the wets (sugar is a wet). Put the dries in the wets. Put it on the pan. Bake for 15-16 minutes.

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Why is this weird? She doesn't use allspice. She uses vinegar, which sort of makes sense because she doesn't want the metallic flavor of baking powder. But why does she need to avoid it? Because there's no freaking salt. Geez, Tipper. What were you thinking?

I shouldn't be so nasty--the cookies were actually pretty good. The lack of allspice was a little weird but brought the ginger taste to the forefront, which I sort of liked.

I also made a few cookies with lemon juice instead of vinegar (they have the same pH) and some lemon zest. I'm not too fond of lemon, but my mother and all of my lemon-loving friends really liked them. I thought the lemon and the molasses made a very dissonant, sloppy taste. Next time I'm going to leave out the molasses. There was a high note, and a low note, but not really anything in the middle, and it made it kind of weird. Also, molasses and lemon is just a really strange combination. I suppose sans-molasses it will be more like a ginger-sugar-lemon cookie, but I bet it'll taste awesome.

If Laura Bush Were A Vegan: First Lady Cook-Off #1

"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies."

I'm not going to go too much into the politics, because I don't understand it very well, but it was something like this: the at-that-time-former Governor of California Jerry Brown (who also happens to be the current Governor of California) asked Hillary why she was working at a law firm while her husband was the Governor of Arkansas. His accusation, I think (none of the sources seem to state too directly what was going on) had something to do with corruption (i.e. accusing the Clintons of coordinating their work to serve their own self-interests), but Hillary's response was the above quote. A lot of feminists and housewives as well as traditionalists got very angry with her--which probably helped Bill Clinton lose the 1992 election.

More importantly, the charade inspired Family Circle magazine to launch an actual bake between Hillary and Barbara Bush, the Republican nominee George H. W. Bush's wife. Each potential First Lady sent in a cookie recipe, which was printed in Family Circle. Readers could bake each recipe and vote for their favorites, and the cookie with the most votes at the end of the contest would win.

The magazine has run the contest five times since 1992, and amazingly (or not, considering that the sample size is small and that political preferences probably bias the taste buds), it correctly predicted the winner of the corresponding election four times.

Today, though, I will ask what I think is a profoundly interesting question: what if Laura Bush became a vegan? What would happen to her cookies?

My experiments lead me to believe it would be something very delicious

Unfortunately, I haven't made a control omnivore batch yet--this first round (there will be more) of presidential cookie manufacture was a pretty slapdash and spur-of-the-moment type thing. All I had in the way of dry sweetener was a half-empty bag of powdered sugar. I cranked out a quarter-batch of Laura Bush's "cowboy cookies". I ended up using a little less sugar, and eyeballing the dry ingredients because I didn't know I was low on sugar until I'd mixed the flour and baking soda and I was tired.

Laura Bush's Texas Governor's Mansion Cowboy Cookies (adapted from the New York Times' recipe)

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ cups butter-flavored Crisco
• ~2 ½ cups granulated sugar (I actually used powdered sugar, which would be a different volume, but I did it by weight, so roughly 17.8 oz.)
• 5 tablespoon molasses (why is there molasses? Because I didn't have any brown sugar. 1 c white sugar + 2 T molasses = 1 c brown sugar)
• 3 flax eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 3 cups vegan chocolate chips (I recommend Guittard semi-sweet or extra dark, or Enjoy Life if you're allergic to dairy--otherwise, read the ingredient labels; some chocolates will be vegan without even advertising it)
• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 2 cups unsweetened flake coconut
• 2 cups chopped walnuts

You know the drill by now. Mix the dry ingredients. Beat the sugar, molasses, and Crisco. Add the flax eggs and vanilla. Gradually add the dry ingredients, then stir in chocolate chips, oats, etc. 

(I should add that, yes, they really are called Texas Governor's Mansion Cowboy Cookies. I cannot believe the NYTimes abbreviated the title. Why skimp on true art?)

The cookies were actually quite tasty. My mother and I both liked them; my sister said they weren't quite sweet enough but ate several anyway. I really wouldn't have guessed they were vegan--which was quite unexpected in this particular case, because usually cookies like this get most of their flavor from butter, and butter-flavored Crisco just ain't quite the same.

My best guess for what's going on is the shear volume of non-cookie stuff in the dough. There was so much delicious chocolate, oat, coconut and walnut in there that I couldn't really taste the actual cookie. Which was perfectly fine. Awesome, in fact.

Tune in next week for more presidential cookery shenanigans.

The Cookie Log #2: More Choco-Peanut Cookies

A few days ago, I posted a trial recipe for two kinds of vegan cookies. You can go back and read it, if you'd like, but the gist is, the maple ones were amazing and the chocolate peanut butter ones were really weird.

So here I am with the promised update.

Vegan Chocolate-Peanut Cookie

• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/4 cup unsalted peanut butter (crunchy if you want delicious peanuty bits in your cookies, smooth if you don't)
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 oz AP flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 Tbsp cocoa powder (I used dutched, but either should work fine)
• ~1/2 tsp salt (to taste--since there's no eggs, you can eat it straight from the bowl)
• ~1-2 T of  water (however much you need to turn it into a moist but still dough-y dough)

I used pretty much the same procedure as last time, except that I mixed half the sugar with the fats, and then added the other half with the dries + water. According to J. Kenji López-Alt, the more dissolved sugar you have, the more caramel flavor you get. Sugar, because it is hydrophillic, will dissolve readily in water but not in oils or fats (think of mixing sugar and water like mixing oil and water or (water-based) vinegar). And a grain of sugar's not dissolved, it can't melt into other grains of sugar and make all that awesome caramel flavor. But too much caramel would be weird, especially in a chocolate-peanut butter cookie, where it might be flavor overkill. (The sugar went in with a moderate amount of water in the previous version, but there was so much peanut butter in that one, you couldn't really taste anything else). I'll try more or less dissolved sugar one of these days.

In the meantime, these cookies were pretty tasty. I can't say they were anywhere near as good as those maple-cookies from earlier, and my mother, who is a chocolate-peanut fanatic, thought they were good but didn't seem especially thrilled. They certainly came out much better than the previous run, though--they felt more like a cookie than a rather soft rock, and they tasted more like a cookie than a heavily salted spoonful of peanut butter.

Tune in next week (or sooner) for another round of tests, and the return of the amazing vegan maple cookie.

The Cookie Log: Choco-Peanut and Maple Cookies

Vegan Chocolate-Peanut Cookie

• 1 Tbsp flax
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/4 cup unsalted peanut butter (crunchy if you want delicious peanuty bits in your cookies, smooth if you don't)
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 oz flour (I used spelt plus a little whole wheat; AP will do just fine, if not better)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3 Tbsp cocoa powder (I used dutched)
• ~1/2 tsp salt (to taste--since there's no eggs, you can eat it straight from the bowl actually, don't: apparently even flour can have E. coli hanging out on it)

I put 2.5 T of water in the bottom of a bowl with the flax and let it sit for around 5 minutes. Then I added the canola, peanut butter, sugars, and vanilla extract and mixed it up till it was all brown and batter-y (fully combined, they would say). Then I slowly incorporated the flour with the soda, powder, and salt. I would have added chocolate chips, but I didn't have any vegan ones on hand. (You'd be surprised to know that vegan chocolate chips are not radically expensive, and that, worse comes to worse, you can always chop up a dark chocolate bar, many of which are dairy-free anyway at higher percentages). Baked for around 9 minutes at 350F (I did more on the first round by mistake, and they were way too dry and dense).

Vegan Maple-Oat Semi-Snaps

• 1 Tbsp flax
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/3 cup brown sugar + around 3-1/2 Tbsp
• 1-1/2 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4 oz flour (a mix of whole wheat and AP)
• around 1 oz ground toasted oats (do 'em on a stove in the skillet or buy 'em pre-toasted)
• some toasted oats, unground
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• ~3/4 tsp salt (not really sure how much, but certainly to taste again; it's still egg--free)

I did essentially the same thing as with the other cookies: 2.5 T of water with the flax, let it sit, add the wets, slowly incorporate the dries. (actually, in both batches I mixed the common wet ingredients, separated them, and then added the unique ingredients + dry ingredients in half portions to each, but who's counting?). 350F for 9 minutes, as with the chocolates.

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Yesterday, I began work in earnest on developing a good vegan cookie recipe.

See, chocolate chip cookies are great, but they're awesomeness comes mainly from butter. And while you can certainly replicate many of butter's textural and chemical properties, it's very hard to get the flavor right. Butter flavored Crisco comes close, but it's just not the same, IMHO (although if you've always made cookies with Crisco anyway, kudos to you; to make them vegan just use flax eggs instead of normal eggs and, if applicable, your favorite non-dairy milk).

But what if we can make something else, something different, something which takes advantage of the creative restrictions created by veganism? I was reading a recipe for double chocolate vegan cookies the other day. I even made them, although I changed the recipe up a little. I used much less nut butter, because I didn't have much on hand. But I wondered: what if I added peanut butter? Would I create the Reese's Cup of vegan cookies? How cool would that be?

I looked online and developed the recipe above from this recipe. I thought they were a little dry and dense, but maybe that's just me. My mother said they weren't bad. I'm considering omitting the flax next time to make them spread a little more and be a little more airy--I like my cookies chewy, but this felt like it had the density of rubber.

The other batch I made (using the same base recipe) was maple flavored. I added oatmeal because a quick search yielded only oatmeal-accompanied maple cookie recipes (I should have searched for "maple cookies" instead of "vegan maple cookies), and I thought a breakfast theme would be amusing. I almost added cranberries, but I decided the dough didn't taste very good with them.

Sadly, I only had a little maple syrup on hand, so I didn't quite get the effect I wanted, but my mom really liked them, though I thought they were certainly nothing special, and that the texture was a little off, somehow--like a gingersnap, but not quite snappy enough.

That was all for the day. I'll post the next iteration of the recipe in the next few days, and eventually, I'll have a final version which, hopefully, tastes awesome.

If you have a question or concern, need a recipe for your vegan grandmother's birthday cake or some cookies for your gluten and lactose free son, or something along those lines, or something I've written is wrong, mistaken, or offensive, or you just want to chat, feel free to post a reply in the comments or email me at my user at google mail (sorry, bots).

Why You Should Probably Be Using Flax Eggs (Almost) Every Time You Bake

Historically, I have never been one to sacrifice for flavor. This is part of the reason I struggle to be a full-time vegetarian (the other being my slightly hypochondriac fear of getting various nutrient deficiencies). So you may be surprised when I tell you that, for many baking applications, you should use ground flax seeds instead of eggs, even when you're baking for omnivores.

Now you may ask--why on Earth would anyone suggest such a thing? I bet flax seeds are super expensive and hard to find, you say. I don't want to go through any super complicated procedures--I just want some damn cookies, now. Plus, it probably tastes much worse. Right?

Well, you're wrong on all counts, dear reader. Allow me to explain.

The Cost

Believe it or not, when used as an egg substitute, flax seed is actually slightly cheaper than eggs. In fact, depending on where you get your eggs, it could be drastically cheaper. It should never be substantially more expensive.

According to this webpage from the American Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Grade A eggs can cost anywhere from around $1.20-$2.10, depending on the location and time of year. That means, if we assume conservatively (and for the sake of nice numbers) that eggs cost $1.20 a dozen, one egg will cost you around $0.10, at the least.

(If you live in the UK or somewhere else, I encourage you to do your own research; I may make an update of this post for the UK and/or Australia soon. If you would like to know the information for your country, you're welcome to request it in the comments or email me, and I'd be more than happy to help, although you might find the information more quickly just by googling around a little.)

I couldn't find any official government data on the price of flax seeds, but fortunately flax seeds are freely available for sale on the internet. They can cost as little as $0.22 per ounce on Amazon, in bulk, and as much as $0.51 per ounce in smaller quantities. Now, according to our handy dandy nutrition label, 2 tablespoons of ground flax weighs around 13 grams. In most applications, one flax egg (explained below) uses 1 T of flax, which should be 13/2 = 6.5g. Six and a half grams is around .23 oz. And .23 oz of flax seed, depending on where you get it, will cost anywhere between $0.05 to $.12. So, in the vast majority of cases, recalling that our estimate of $0.10 per egg was extremely conservative, flax is cheaper per use in baking than eggs are.

The Shelf Life

Now, you may be wondering: "Sure, it may technically be cheaper, Mr. Math person, but I'm never going to use flax seed. Even if it really does taste better in baked goods, (which by the way you haven't argued at all yet), I'm not going to use it for anything else. On the other hand, I typically have an omelet/frittata/5 dozen raw eggs in a glass for breakfast. If I only bake eventually, that flax seed will go bad long before I'm done with it, whereas the eggs will be gone before they've even started to get comfy in my fridge."

It may be the case, dear reader, that you don't have any other use for flax seed. You scoff at the people who put it on their yogurt or oatmeal. Why would you ruin a perfectly good breakfast with flax? I'm inclined to agree with you, but there's really no reason to worry.

Flax seed has a really long shelf life. It's probably even worth it to buy it at the wonderfully low $0.05 an egg in bulk, because, as long as you have room in your fridge or freezer, it'll last basically forever (about six months; though I've had mine for at least that time and am still using it with no issues or funny smells whatsoever.) A single bag takes up like half the space of a carton of 12 eggs and contains about 70 eggs' worth of flax. Talk about space-saving. There's practically no resource you're not saving now.

The Baking

 "Okay, smartypants," you say, laughing, "Maybe flax eggs are cheaper. And maybe they will make my life easier. I can take less last-minute trips to the grocery store and not worry about drinking all the eggs in the fridge from a cold glass for breakfast. But, honestly, are these things actually going to work?"

Well, dear reader, they actually will. Mind you, they won't work for everything: I've never tried it with pate-a-choux (which I can't even make omnivore-style, let alone egg and dairy free), cakes, or ice cream, although ice cream doesn't require eggs and there's some great cake recipes that just happen not to call for eggs anyway. But if you're like me, and the vast majority of your bakescapades involve either cookies or brownies, you're in luck.

I've tested many cookie and brownie recipes with flax eggs instead of real eggs, and, although I have yet to compare the two side-by-side, no one I've offered the treats to has been able to tell the difference. When it comes to binding--which is most of what eggs do in most cookie and brownie recipes--flax seed does a damn good job with a very neutral-tasting flavor.

And, finally, flax seed is very easy to use--just put a tablespoon of flax in 2-3 tablespoons of water, let it sit on the counter for five to ten minutes, and add it to the rest of your ingredients.

The Benefits

"Right, but, I'm not a cheapskate, I usually have eggs around anyway, and frankly, I don't want to be considered a crazy hippie. Why should I use flax seed? It only costs a few cents and a few more cubic inches of fridge space to use real eggs. And I can use them in cake, and pancakes. Really, what's the point?"

Well, dear reader, there are two: health benefits and humane and environmental benefits.

It so happens that flax seed is pretty much hands down better for you than eggs. Per 1 tablespoon (the amount in a flax egg), it has half as many calories. It also has 0mg cholesterol (compared to 65% DV in eggs, 0g saturated fat, and is rich in healthy omega-3 fatty acids.

I'm no nutritionist. I can guess that if you're watching your waistline, that's probably all a plus, although it honestly won't make that much of a difference if you're eating a sugar-loaded cookie.

But flax eggs are monumentally better for chickens, other humans, and the environment. For a full run down on both the ethical and environmental issues surrounding egg farming (as well as meat farming), I'd suggest Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. To sum it up: egg farming causes immediate pollution which can be a danger to surrounding humans and horribly mistreats the chickens involved (they usually have less than 88 square inches of space, less than a standard-sized sheet of paper, even when they are advertised as "cage-free"). I couldn't find definitive data on the climate impact of flax seeds, but according to this chart eggs are, while below meat, well above all featured plant products in their total life-cycle CO2 emissions per kilogram.

Plus, honestly, most of my family doesn't eat eggs, and I don't eat them very often, so it's nice to have something for baking that lasts a lot longer. If you have a similar circumstance, or live somewhere with a communal fridge from which eggs will disappear the moment you take your eyes off of them, or something else like that--it might just be more convenient to use these little ground-up seeds to make that next batch of Christmas cookies.

Questions or comments? Leave a comment in the comments section! (that's what it's there for, silly)

Optionally Vegan Chocolate Tea

A couple of months ago, I discovered a big box of German "Aztec Tea" in the bottom of my dad's drawer (he is an avid tea-hoarder and goes to Germany a lot on business.) I was intrigued because I'd been meaning to put together some sort of xocolatl-esqe drink, both out of curiosity and to satisfy my chocolate cravings when I didn't want all the fat and sugar.

The tea was bitter, with notes of vanilla and cinnamon--and being a dark chocolate person and a cinnamon lover, I was hooked. Pretty soon the entire box of tea was gone. And there was no going to Germany to get more anytime soon... so what was I to do?

I googled "chocolate tea recipe", wondering if I could make something like this at home. Luckily enough, this recipe (on which the recipe below is based) was the first to come up. I tried making it with a little heated milk (non-dairy because practically everyone in my family is dairy-free and that's what we have in the house), a square of dark chocolate, cocoa powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It wasn't quite as fantabulous as that fancy German stuff, but it was very good... and it satisfied that bitter-chocolate craving I'd been going after.

One other interesting thing happened. I've been making this tea pretty often in the last couple of weeks, and a couple of nights ago, I made a mistake. I poured my milk straight into the cocoa powder without heating it up. Fortunately, it was only three tablespoons or so. I mixed very vigorously until the cocoa powder was mixed in (it took awhile--the more liquid you have, the harder it is to mix in the cocoa), and then I poured some boiling water from the tea kettle over it. Lo and behold, the milk foamed up! There was a pleasant layer of bubbles on the surface of the tea--almost like an espresso, but not nearly as foamy or white. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I would hypothesize that it has something to do with the sudden heat of the boiling water denaturing the milk proteins and causing them to form (small and weak) bubbles around the air which is no doubt being jostled into the milk mixture by the falling water (this is similar to what happens when you beat egg whites, with the mechanical action of the beaters denaturing proteins and aerating the liquid instead of hot water.)

Recipe: Optionally Vegan Chocolate Tea
(makes 1 serving)

~1-2 heaping spoonfuls of cocoa powder (to taste)
1 square dark, semisweet, or bittersweet chocolate (optional--if you're vegan, bittersweet is probably your best bet)
ground cinnamon (to taste)
nutmeg
allspice, cloves, ginger, etc. (optional--add all three and a touch of molasses for gingerbread flavored cocoa)
vanilla or other extract (optional)
~2-8 T of your preferred milk (cow's, almond, soy, etc.)
whipped cream (optional--here's a great vegan coconut cream version)
extra chocolate, cinnamon sticks, and/or fresh nutmeg for garnish (optional)

1.  Place cocoa powder and dry spices in a mug. Add just enough milk to wet the dry powder and stir vigorously until it forms a smooth paste, adding more milk if necessary. If using extracts, add them and stir a little more.
2. Add the rest of your milk (if there's any left) and stir until the paste is fully incorporated. If your mug is not yet half-full, add enough boiling water so that it's half full and stir until uniformly combined (this is to ensure the cocoa powder gets fully emulsified in the liquid).
3. Add the rest of the boiling water. Top with whipped cream, insert cinnamon stick, and add some chocolate shavings, grated nutmeg, and extra cinnamon if desired. Serve immediately.

Bonus application: Chocolate Iced Tea
Follow steps 1-2 without using any water or the chocolate square. Pour it into a blender and add enough ice cubes to fill the rest of your drinking vessel of choice (if you used 8T of milk this is probably around 10 ice cubes). Alternatively, you can mix the dry ingredients with warm water (still omitting the chocolate square) and pour it all over ice in a glass. I haven’t actually tried this one, so it might be kinda gross--but it’s worth a shot! The Aztecs supposedly enjoyed their xocolatl cold.

Butterfingers: Old artificial vs new "real"

When I heard Nestle was replacing all the artificial colors and flavors in its products with natural ingredients, I got excited. Not because I think that natural is automatically "better" than "chemical" flavors--but because there was an obvious opportunity for science (and an excuse for eating candy). So I went out as soon as I could and bought an artificial-flavor-filled, now discontinued Butterfinger bar, and put it in my dresser drawer for safe keeping.

Last week I went to the CVS and picked up a new, artificial-free Butterfinger bar. This weekend I recruited my mother, my mother's friend, and her two kids (one 10, one 5) to see if I could make a determination about whether there was any difference in the taste of the two bars.

Now, I would have loved to do a fully scientific procedure--triple-encrypted double blind, isolated tasting, quantitative scorecards, blindfolds, the whole shebang--but the kids really wanted to eat their candy, so the best I could do was a single-encryption double blind. I shooed everyone from the kitchen, unwrapped the candy bars, put them on two plates, one marked "A" and one marked "B", and recorded the position of each bar. Then I had the kids and their mom come in and decide whether to switch the bars or not, then to record their decision. Then I went back in the room and cut the bars up, and we sat down in the dining room to eat them.

Visually, there was a pretty obvious difference between the two. Bar A was a dull brown-orange color on the inside, where as Bar B was a startlingly bright orange. Sadly, it didn't occur to me to take pictures, but Bar B looked pretty much exactly like this:

My mother thought that Bar B was artificial and that it tasted better. My mother's friend thought that Bar A was artificial, but that Bar B tasted better. I forget which bar I thought was more artificial, but Bar B definitely tasted better to me, too. It was rich, nutty, and buttery, just like a Butterfinger is supposed to be. Bar A tasted like milk chocolate on nondescript cookie filler. The kids were too busy getting-sugar high to have any opinions, or at least any they were willing to waste time stuffing their faces to tell us about.

Bar A was natural, and Bar B was artificial. I think I am going to have to mourn the artificial Butterfinger's discontinuation, or hope that the folks at Nestle come up with a better-tasting formula. It was basically my favorite candy bar--but it's lost it's privileged place, now, because it's not the same. RIP, Butterfingers.

Master Brownies

So brownies are really, really simple as baked things go. What bothers me is that I can't find anywhere a sort of "master recipe" for brownies--just various individual recipes. By investigating some of these and doing some testing I've come up with a flexible brownie framework (never typed that phrase before) for making brownies on the fly, to your individual taste.

The really important ratio is 2 parts sugar:1 part cocoa:1 part fat:1 "egg-like"

Two eggs is roughly half a cup, for reference to the dry ingredients. So a brownie recipe might call for 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup of oil or butter and 2 eggs (or 2 flax eggs, or the equivalent for your favorite egg substitute).

Chemical leaveners

Unlike in cakes, chemical leaveners are totally optional. If you like cakier brownies, you should add around 1/2 tsp per cup of sugar (and up to 1 tsp if you like even cakier brownies). If you're a fudge brownie fan, you shouldn't bother unless you're using a non-leavening egg substitute (like a flax egg), in which case you should add around 1/2 tsp per cup of sugar.

To Dutch or not to Dutch?

I was going to make a pun about that, because I misremembered and thought Hamlet was from the Netherlands, but anyway...

Dutch process cocoa gives an earthier flavor to brownies which many people prefer to the flavor of "natural" cocoa. Note that if you're using an actual brownie recipe, you can usually substitute one for the other, unless the recipe calls for any amount of baking soda. This is because dutch process cocoa is alkalized so that it has a neutral pH. Natural cocoa is acidic (pH ~= 5), so it's used to help activate baking soda in some recipes. If you really want the dutched-process flavor you can replace any baking soda in the recipe with 2-3 times the amount of baking powder, and it should work fine.

Melted chocolate?

If you like your brownies extra chewy and fudgey, it sometimes helps to add melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder. You'll just need to reduce the oil to make up for the cocoa solids found in baking chocolate. You also might want to reduce the sugar, if the chocolate has added sugar in it. The nutrition label is very helpful for this:

Here is a random photo of the nutritional label for a bar of baking chocolate:

This chocolate bar has 22g of fat and 0g of sugar per 42g. So we can assume that 20g of this is cocoa solids. One cup of cocoa powder is around 118g, so if we're supposed to use half a cup we need 59g. That means around 1.5 servings, or 4.5 sections, of chocolate.

Now we have to reduce the fat. From our 1.5 servings we have 22g*1.5=33g of fat. According to my nutrition label, vegetable oil is 100% fat, and weighs in at around 4.5g per teaspoon. 33/4.5 = 7.3, so we have 7.3 tsp = 2.5 tbs of fat. Subtract that from 1/2 a cup, and we only need 5.5 tbs of oil.

Butter vs Shortening or oil

Butter brings a more--well, buttery--flavor to your brownies. However, it tends to make them denser/less cakey. If you like fudgey brownies (I salute you!) then you can use oil or butter and it should come out okay. If you need them extra cakey, use shortening. (I haven't tested any of this, but there's a great article on it at The Kitchn)

Another thing to keep in mind is that while shortening and oil are 100% fat, butter is only 80% fat--so you might need a little more butter, and in shortening or oil recipes you might need a little more water.

Baking time

I'm going to make another post on baking time calculations soon, but in the meantime, I have some general guidelines. Usually brownies should bake at around 350F (around 175C). A recipe with 2 cups of sugar will take around 40 minutes in the oven. It's done when the knife comes out clean.

If using a smaller recipe, a flatter pan, or making brownie muffins/cupcakes, you should reduce the baking time and check on them more often. Especially for the cupcakes. See the square-cube law.

Lunch for the Lazy Plant-Eater

Here's a sort of master recipe for a nutritious, inexpensive, and tasty meal that I make for myself all the time when I'm lazy and tired (usually for lunch on a weekend, but this could definitely be dinner or breakfast as well). If you're cooking for other people you can serve it with nice bread or pasta and they won't care that it only took you twenty minutes...

Ingredients (all optional)

• ~1/2 cup of chickpeas, white beans, black beans, or others. 
• an egg or two (if you eat eggs)
• tempeh
• some salsa or tomato sauce or simmer sauce of some kind (these are henceforth referred to as "saucey stuff")
• basil, rosemary, or other herbs of choice
• cumin (actually a really good source of iron!), coriander, tumeric (also a really good source of iron), cayenne, or other spices of choice
• spinach, peppers, potatoes, and/or other veggies
• chopped onions and finely chopped garlic
• olive, canola, or other good cooking oil
• salt and pepper 
• your favorite starchy thing (bread, pasta, etc.)

Procedure

1. Get out some kind of skillet or pan.
2. Warm oil until shimmery. Throw in the onions, then the garlic. Saute until they just start to turn translucent.
3. After steps 1 and 2, which are pretty loose anyway, the rest is just guidelines...
4. Add the peppers and cook until they're a little soft.
5. Add the spices.
6. Add the saucey stuff and the beans.
7. Add the rest of your vegetables. If you're doing tempeh, add that.
8. If you aren't putting in an egg, just simmer and stir occasionally for like 10 minutes or until it seems done.
9. If you ARE having an egg, put it in now. You might want to add more saucey stuff; there should still be a significant layer of liquid covering the bottom of the pan. Crack the egg(s) into the pan and cook until they're done as you like, probably ten to fifteen minutes. Covering the pan might help.
10. Slide everything onto a plate, on top of your starchy thing if you have one of those. You're done!