Dairy Free

I’m not a fan of the usual banana split because raw bananas taste too—how do I say this?—healthy for a sundae surrounded by all that other sweet chaos. So I add a little love and caramelize the bananas, which transforms them into a richly textured miracle and brings a buttery taste not available in your garden-variety banana split.

You’ll notice in a minute that this recipe does not call for the Sugar-Sweetened Chocolate Dipping Sauce (page 123), even though it might harden up in the freezer a little better than the alternative. Instead, I turn to the agave-sweetened version because, to my mind, there’s no sense in rolling a perfectly nutritious snack in vegan sugar when an agave-sweetened option offers an equally excellent alternative.

Like bubble-gum ice cream, Sno Balls were one of those grocery-store items I coveted as a very young girl. All I knew was that they looked like Barbie food and that was precisely what I wanted and needed. And then I tried one. Absolutely awful. Like, terrible. I wondered how something so pretty could taste so wretched. And then, when it came time to write this book, I decided, No, something so adorable need not be so incredibly foul-tasting. So I reworked them. In the process, I stumbled on a new bakery favorite. What’s more, you get two recipes in the process of making a batch of these; head over to the recipe for Bread Pudding (page 102) and see just one idea for what you can do with the unused part of a cupcake.

I take my graham crackers extremely buttery and very crunchy, so that’s what you’re getting with this recipe. In fact, this graham cracker is so decadent, you may want to double the recipe so you can deliberately have leftovers. There’s tons of mileage to be gained out of these. Like piecrust, for one! Or donut toppings, for two!

When I lived in San Francisco, my friend Mark introduced me to the city’s greatest contribution to the dessert course: It’s-It frozen cookie sandwiches. These little numbers are practically perfect—two oatmeal cookies with a thick scoop of ice cream in between, all thinly coated with semisweet chocolate. Mark preferred the kind with mint-flavored ice cream and so do I, but you can nix the mint in this recipe if you must. To sweeten this with agave, replace the natural cane sugar with 2/3 cup agave nectar, add an extra 1/4 cup all-purpose gluten-free flour, remove the chocolate chips, and use Agave-Sweetened Chocolate Glaze (page 124).

I often turn to unrefined sugar to sweeten my cookies because I love the crunchy texture it provides. But when it comes to whoopie pies, agave nectar works much better. The reason is simple: Traditionally, whoopie pies are built with cookies that are fairly squishy and cake-like by comparison—way more so than a typical cookie sandwich. For the filling I prefer Ricemellow Crème, the marshmallow concoction made by Suzanne’s Specialties (see page 17), but you can fill it with the Vanilla Icing (page 127) for equally wonderful results.

Heads up, beginners and cheapskates! This recipe is so easy you don’t even have to turn on the stove (melt the coconut oil in the microwave!), which makes it ideal to make with kids or frugal old folks. If you want to reduce the fat in this recipe, you can omit the coconut oil, but be warned that the blocks won’t be as buttery. All the ordinary tricks you learned from your mom as a child apply: Chocolate can be added on the top or throughout, colored rice cereals are in play, even dried fruit or nuts can be tossed in to frighten or entice your young ones.

I don’t think I’m alone in my ever-so-slight embarrassment about being a fan of the Nilla Wafer. They are like the frozen burritos of cookies: You don’t particularly crave them, yet every time you’re checking out at the grocery store, there they are. They get eaten. And not because they’re the only things available; it’s because they are sneakily delicious. This is a tried-and-true cookie icon, no matter what anyone says.

I grew up as that weird kid who disliked frosting and cake in general. But if it meant I could get one of those massive Valentine’s Day cookies in the window at Mrs. Fields, I was willing to endure any amount of frosting, icing, or similar childhood misery. You can use any cookie recipe in this book to make this fantastical creation, obviously, but I went ahead and developed a third chocolate chip version (in addition to the bakery standard in the first book and the Chips Ahoy! in this one) to mimic what is found in Mrs. Fields’s venerable kitchens. It’s big and it’s bold and it’s buttery. It’s practically a Toll House cookie, if that helps you imagine.

Until Bob’s Red Mill came up with a totally affordable gluten-free oat, you would never have seen these in the bakery. Thank all that is holy—once again—for Bob’s! Today these cookies are a best seller in both New York and Los Angeles. If you hate raisins (I do . . . sorry, raisins!), try subbing in chocolate chips or dried cherries instead. If you’re some sort of oat maniac, you can dump in as much as another 1/3 cup of oats and be just fine.

Ah, the Stevie Nicks of cookies—all spun around, precious, and ethereal! A couple tips for making this recipe all your own: Try cutting back on the flour sometimes and ramping up the sugar at other times. In doing so you’ll learn what proportions make a soft cookie and what proportions give you a chewy version. You’ll also perfect the fine art of the crispy edge. If you’re a brave soul—and surely by now you are—try to assemble a few cookie sandwiches with your favorite glaze or icing in the middle.

Who can resist a madeleine? They are so charming, so fair—so impossibly French. These Proustian delights have always appealed to the buttery fringes of my soul, and they’ve always acted as the perfect foil to the rebellious and messy attitude of my first love, the American chocolate chip cookie. Plus I get to whip out my handy madeleine tray, which I cherish wholly and completely. Get yourself one and be the envy of your baby girl’s bake sale.

This is a perfect example of using the exalted Sugar Cookie as a launching pad. Once you’ve fussed around with it enough, you begin to understand its dormant qualities. What if you asked your brain what would happen if you had the foresight to roll a butter-taste-based batter around in a cinnamon-sugar mixture before baking? If your brain, schooled in the ways of the Sugar Cookie, answered that you’d get a wonderfully wrinkly explosion of the Snickerdoodle variety, you and your brain are well on your way to total cookie enlightenment.

For the longest time, I might have been the only person in the tristate area completely oblivious to the beautiful oversize black-and-white cookies found in every bodega from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Have you had one? Me, I was never allowed because of my food sensitivities, of course. So when I went to the kitchen and started brainstorming ideas for iconic cookies, this was one of the first ones I tackled. Prepare to be bathed in the sweet comfort of vanilla-chocolate overload.

I’m a lady who unabashedly prefers her cookies thin, chewy, and intoxicatingly buttery. If I want a hunk of cake, I go for the cake section. This isn’t to say, however, that the preeminent cookie of my youth was not the mighty and comparatively meaty Chips Ahoy! And not those late-issue, M&M–flecked monstrosities, either. I’m talking the real-deal original flavor, in all their dry and crumbly wonder. This is my version of that wonderfully named cookie.

I’m Catholic by birth. Winter to us means Lent, which, to be honest, is about all I remember beyond the school uniforms. Anytime winter/Lent rolled around, the only thing we could count on was the house-wide hostility that would mount as we spent several weeks avoiding sweets and desserts in all their overindulgent forms. The colder months, you might recall, make up Girl Scout cookie season. In a unique show of torture, rather than simply not placing an order with the Scouts, our family bought a bunch, tossed them into the freezer, and stored them until Easter—about two months later. This recipe is for all you lifetime gluten-free folks who have never been able to enjoy a winter of Girl Scout Thin Mints—and for all you weak-willed kids who can’t help but break the Lenten period of atonement. Bless your hearts!

Not everyone has time to sit down to a plate of waffles or crepes made from scratch every morning. Before you ask who would even want to do such a thing, I will go ahead and say that I would, actually. But I hear what you’re saying. Granola is a wonderful alternative to a proper sit-down breakfast—a naturally light and easy choice that is as satisfying as any other baked breakfast item. When traveling, I pack this in a little baggie so I don’t starve to death when the flight attendants clink down the aisles offering sodium-soaked chips or dried-up cookies.

So you went and invited everyone over for brunch one fateful Sunday morning. Sunday! The day you ordinarily sleep until eleven, don’t bother to wash your hair or change out of your pajamas, and end up watching TV upside down on the couch with newspapers and gossip mags strewn all over the floor. Tsk-tsk—it doesn’t sound to me like you’re quite ready for that hostess habit you picked up somewhere along the way. And yet here we are! Thank God there is this brunch-ready recipe you can prep the night before without even the most obnoxious of your foodie friends being any the wiser. Just get your dough and vegetables all set up and let them chill in the refrigerator overnight. Come morning, simply follow the quick baking instructions. If sweet potatoes sound too mushy for you, swap them out for 3/4 cup sautéed mushrooms.

Are you the type that religiously grabs whatever savory dinner leftover is in the refrigerator the following morning? Or maybe you’re the sort who is just as inclined to pull together a little salad as you are to devour a donut the second you roll out of bed. How about this: Do you prefer pancakes for dinner? I get it and I am right there with you. There’s no real rhyme or reason to what I eat and when, and some mornings I just can’t cope with the thought of an indulgent sweet, no matter how perfectly prepared. To this end, we need to give the savory breakfast back its gluten-free dignity. So I made some crepes. These guys are unimaginably easy to whip up, and it will take you no longer than fifteen minutes to have a hot, cheese-dripping meal set out before you. Plus they are pretty fancy-sounding, no? If you are too sleepy to caramelize the onion, these are just as good without it.

I know, I know: Honey is on the “absolutely not, you jerk” list for most vegans. And that’s fair enough. But what to do in such situations? Naturally I turn to agave nectar, my not-at-all secret weapon. EZ-PZ! The Honey Buns recipe is essentially a meddled-with Wonder Bun recipe that has been given the honey concoction and spruced up with vegan sugar for added texture. The extra sweetness we pick up from the honey-agave makes for a perfect day-starter for when you’re not feeling at all like paying attention to your alarm clock.