….or “I’ve Got Mad Skill(et)s…” (and I’m appeasing them with cookies 😉 ).
Oh the noble cookie, capable of being the most decadent and fru fru of the confectionery realm (I really decided to embrace the snobbery in this sentence), but also able to be the simplest and most nostalgic (at least in my opinion) of all the desserts. Bite-sized or entire faced-sized, filled with nuts and fruit and other textures beyond your wildest dreams. Or simply consisting of 90% sugar and perhaps a soupçon of chocolate to…uh…balance out all that sugar? I don’t know and I don’t care, no matter what they look like, cookies all have one thing in common, one shared goal which unites them all in baked (or unbaked – see! So many possibilities!!) harmony: to be eaten and declared delicious.
With that goal in mind, our next single serve option should come as no surprise when I announce that it’s….the humble brownie 😉 . Obviously we’re really talking cookies (or “biscuits” as both the British and French call them. Isn’t that weird and awesome? Despite their dodgy historical relationship, even they can agree that we must all lay down arms and put aside our conflicts for deliciousness. It’s written up in both their charters (or whatever they’re called in their respective countries 😉 ).
For this one, I essentially took my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe, made a whole whack of changes to it (including downsizing it of course!), tossed it like the ball of ooey-gooey goodness that it is into my mini skillet (umm…have I mentioned how much I love using this absolutely adorable piece of kitchenware? Yes, I have? Hmmm…incessantly repeating myself? That doesn’t sound like me at all 😉 ) and baked it for a mere 8 minutes. Dangerous.
You know what this means here people right? A fresh baked cookie is at your finger tips in less than ten minutes! …maybe fifteen minutes if you can’t talk someone else into doing the clean up for you while you’re shoveling this baby into your pie hole (cookie hole?). I mean, even if you massively screw this up, it can be completely redone in TEN MORE MINUTES!!!! You could mess this up on an epic scale five or six times in less than an hour and still not have really wasted that many ingredients. Frugality for the win! (Speaking of which, not pictured here at all was the first one I made which I …ahem…epically screwed up *blush*. I thought the dough looked too dry, so I proceeded to add in way too much liquid and ended up with a soupy mess (which was still embarrassingly delicious. I mean…uh…what???!!! It was a soupy mess, didn’t you hear me say that?? Of COURSE I didn’t take a spoon and taste test it into oblivion just to make sure it wasn’t salvageable. Only a crazy person would do that. Or possibly one who was in desperate need of a sugar fix. That’s not me at all 😉 ).
I made two regular sized cookies with this recipe, but you could just make one legendarily huge cookie which you could then top with vegan ice cream…ooooooo….or vegan coconut whipped cream! (damn you Amber – opportunity lost! Why are you only telling other people to make these genius adaptations? Oh well…I guess you’ll just have to bake these again so you can test that out 😉 ).
In the interest of slightly mixing things up, and also wanting to include some serious chocolate oozingness to this, on my second cookie, I pressed a square (well…an octagon, but you get the gist) into the center of the cookie two minutes before it was done baking so it came out all melty and oozy and yum in my tum (I don’t know why I just said that. Prior to this moment, I don’t think I’ve used the word “tum” in my life. I’m clearly delirious and you can’t trust anything I say. Although trust that these cookies fulfilled their alliterative duty and were speedy and scrumptious).
I mean…I guess you could put them on a plate, but I don’t know how you can wait that long.
Now (skil)let your inner impatient-pants fly and get on this!
Yield: 1 large or 2 regular sized cookies
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons coconut oil, melted
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 2 teaspoon maple syrup
- 1/8 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/8 teaspoon maple extract
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
- large pinch baking soda
- tiny pinch salt
- optional add-ins (to make up not more than 5-6 teaspoons): I used – 2 teaspoons each chopped toasted pecans, chopped chocolate chunks and toasted coconut flakes (could use cranberries, raisins, chopped cashews…the possibilities are endless!)
Directions
- In a super small bowl, using a fork, whisk together coconut oil, brown sugar, maple syrup, vanilla and maple extracts.
- In a separate super small bowl, sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. Stir in optional adds-ins so they’re lightly flour coated. Stir into wet ingredient until dough forms. You want it to at least somewhat hold its shape if you try and roll it into a ball, so if it’s too dry, very slowly drizzle in more coconut oil until it forms a dough.
- Very light grease your cast iron skillet (I used a mini one because it’s so gosh darn adorable, but a full sized skillet should work just as well) and turn the heat to low/medium-low (I set mine to a 3/10 on my stovetop if that helps at all).
- Roll dough into one large ball for large cookie, or divide it into two for two small cookies. Place ball in center of skillet and press down either with your hand (carefully so you don’t burn yourself of course), or the bottom of a glass.
- Cover skilled (either with a lid if you have one, or just tinfoil is fine too) and bake for 8 minutes.
- Remove from heat and allow to set up for about 5-6 minutes before carefully removing from pan.
- Devour immediately 🙂 .
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