Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake.  My husband asked for me to invent this, so I happily obliged.  We had a hot charcoal grill at the ready after grilling our broccoli & seitan steaks, so I whipped up this cake to throw in there while the grill was still hot.  I made it once or twice last year, but didn't write down the recipe.

It's crunchy yet chewy, sweet and loaded with chocolate chips.

 You can see how crispy the bottom crust is.  The bottom caramelized from the hot temp of the grill and the sugar and the oil in the cake.  A delicious result.  I still have to nail the exact baking time, but in a charcoal grill that's almost impossible, the heat is just super dry and super hot (and declines rapidly if the temp outside is cold).  It's much easier (but less fun) to calibrate temperature and baking time with an oven (which I will approximate below).

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

1 cup organic sugar

½ cup brown sugar (organic, TJ’s)

3/4 to 1 cup olive oil 

3 tablespoons apple sauce (4 if you use 3/4 cup oil)

2 tsp EnerG replacer powder (just the powder)

2 1/3 cups flour (white whole wheat, which is a whole grain!!)

1 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

½ to 1 tsp salt (1 tsp really brings out the flavor, but might be too salty for you)

2 cups chocolate chips

½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Mix the wet ingredients (sugar through the EnerG powder) in a large bowl with a hand mixer or whisk.  It will become kinda like a gel in consistency, and won't look liquidy at all.  You could add non-dairy milk if you wanted, tablespoon by tablespoon if you want the dough a little wetter (don't know how that would turn out yet as I haven't tried it myself).  So, take the dough and press it into your buttered loaf pan:

Bake the sucker.  I'd guess 30-40 minutes in a 375 oven, until a toothpick comes out clean and the edges have begun to brown and pull away form the pan, or however long you'd like to try in your grill.  I'm getting a lot better at grilling with charcoal, so may have more specific advice soon.

And, I'm craving this like mad:

Guesses?

Answer:

Home Made Pizza with: Roasted Eggplant, Fresh Tomatoes, Red Peppers, Cashew Ricotta and Home Made Vegan Pepperoni.  Amazing.  Made it a while ago, but could really go for it right now!

What are you guys making this weekend?

Pepperoni & Meatball Stromboli

Holy Stromboli!

Home Made Almost Everything: Organic Bucket Dough, Vegan Pepperoni, Grandma Margie's "Meat"balls, Marinara and Daiya Mozzarella

Oh MAN.  I've been on a roll (haha) with making this "five minute" bread, so I had some in my fridge tonight from my second batch. 

AND, I HAD to have vegan pepperoni last night, so after getting so many lovely recipe suggestions for it from my friends on FB (thanks, guys!) I made a batch, and here it is:

I could have cut it much thinner, but I was hungry! It was stupendous.  I used sort of a combo of recipes, but check out Vegan Dad's Pepperoni recipe for a good approximation.  I have like six other recipes from my friends to try for vegan pepperoni, so I'm psyched!! 

So, vegan pepperoni, fresh bread dough, leftover GM's meatballs, marinara and Daiya mozz? Yeah, that equaled stromboli to me.

 Me, photographing the stromboli rising in the oven.

 Baked Stromboli. 

Sliced Stromboli. 

I used the stromboli recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and just filled it with my custom, vegan filling.  It's so much fun to have access to fresh bread in your fridge!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!