Hey everybody! Because I am such a selfless person, I ate vegan cookie dough for you! And let me tell you, purely scientifically speaking, Eat Pastry’s gluten-free, chocolate chip cookie dough (when baked) is absolutely scrumptious! I know gluten-free baked goods can sometimes be a little funky, with lingering odd tastes, but the geniuses behind Eat Pastry have figured out a formula that stands up to the rich and buttery Tollhouse* cookies of my former omni life. I’m a huge fan of this product! I also fed the cookies to my friend Britney and my roommate Dan, both to positive reactions. Dan is trying to cut gluten from his diet, and had bought some non-vegan chocolate chip cookie dough to bake for himself. He expressed disdain for the omni dough he bought and when fed one the Eat Pastry cookie his immediate response was “WHERE CAN I GET THOSE?”
The only thing, and I notice this when I make gluten-free pastries from scratch myself, is that gluten-free dough in it’s raw form is not so tasty. Unbaked, garbanzo bean flour really stands out. In my mind though, this is a good thing! This means that when it comes to raw cookie dough, there are cookies to bake after I open the container (as opposed to half of the raw dough sitting in my stomach like a brick).
When I bought the container of batter to try out, I wanted to do something really special with it. What goes with chocolate chip cookies better than anything? ICE CREAM AND CHOCOLATE SAUCE!
The ingredients were gathered — it was time to have some fun.
I decided to make an ice cream sandwich, with Luna and Larry’s Cappuccino coconut ice cream and home-made ganache!
HOW TO MAKE AN AMAZING VEGAN ICE CREAM SANDWICH:
COOKIES:
First I baked my cookies, and to be honest, I ran into a little trouble with the instructions on the Eat Pastry label. It read to heat the oven to 350 degrees and measure out teaspoons of dough onto a cookie sheet. I was unhappy with my first batch, as I thought the cookies were too thin, with the edges a very dark brown and raw centers. When I made my second batch, I measured out a tablespoon of dough and was much happier with the size and bake of my cookies. However in the future, I will probably only heat my oven up to 325 degrees, as the edges still got brown fast. A little bit of a disclaimer though: it is best to bake chocolate chip cookies when they are cold, because they tend to spread at room temperature. The label of Eat Pastry does say to bake them directly out of the fridge, and I had just taken my sweet time walking home from the grocery store, put the dough in the fridge for about 15 minutes, couldn’t wait any longer, and baked them.
The finished product!
GANACHE:
I made my ganache by putting together a homemade double boiler and melting down 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips with 5 Tbls coconut milk (any non-dairy milk would suffice). I brought my pot of water to a boil, put my metal bowl of chips and milk atop, turned the heat down to medium-low, and let the steam melt down my ganache.
SANDWICH ASSEMBLY:
To make my ice cream sandwich, I waited until my cookies were completely cool, put a couple spoonfuls of ice cream on the bottom cookie and then a placed another cookie on top. I immediately dipped the sandwich in ganache, sprinkled it with mini chocolate chips, took some pictures and stuck it in the freezer. Britney got to eat the final product, as I had eaten most of the cookies I baked that afternoon and couldn’t take anymore dessert food. She was ecstatic and now you know how I make and keep friends.
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In conclusion: Ice cream sandwiches and garbanzo bean flours aside, I LOVED the gluten-free Eat Pastry chocolate chip cookie dough and will definitely be buying it again in the future!
*Easiest recipe to veganize. Sub Earth Balance and egg replacer—that’s it. Most semi-sweet chocolate chips are already vegan. I have used so many vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes that call for such odd and unnecessary ingredients and fortunately for me, those days are now over.