Recipe: Vegan oatmeal, walnut and date cookies

These Grandma-approved vegan cookies are sure to please even the most ardent butter purists

This recipe is from Alicia Silverstone’s book The Kind Diet, a great resource for anyone wanting to try a vegan diet. Her recipe for these cookies uses dried plums and maple sugar, but we used dates and brown sugar instead. They have a wonderful “buttery” rich texture and are Grandma-approved!

>> Find more vegan holiday baking recipes from The Vegan Project

Ingredients

1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup brown vegan sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp fine sea salt
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup safflower oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp molasses
1/4 cup chopped dates (or other dried fruit)
1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine oats, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bow, combine syrup, oil, vanilla extract and molasses. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and stir to combine. Fold in the dried plums and nuts.

Using your hands, roll tablespoon-sized scoops of dough into balls. Place the balls onto the prepared cookie sheet, and press down slightly to flatten. Bake for 8–12 minutes or until lightly browned. Transfer cookies to a baking rack to cool completely.

The Vegan Project’s Jessica Grajcyzk and Bridget Burns are passionate about health, the environment and the treatment of animals, and are learning about what it means to be vegan while documenting their experiences on their blog. The Vegan Project website is in development and will be a resource for people who want to try veganism in Vancouver. Email The Vegan Project if you’d like to learn more about what they do and/or going vegan.