On Friday, it was rainy and gross, so I was left with no choice but to make raspberry truffle brownies from my favorite vegan baking site Post Punk Kitchen! These brownies are supposed to be healthier and relatively speaking they are—one brownie only has five weight watchers points. The recipe calls for whole wheat flour, maple syrup, and apple sauce, making them “healthier.” They don’t taste chocolatey, which was a little disappointing, but expected because you use unsweetened chocolate. I also have trouble baking with whole wheat flour because I find it gives baked goods a grainy texture. I am considering using some other, healthier, flour substitutes to see if I can find one I like better!

Saturday brought sunshine and a ton of wind. I decided that a cold blustery day like that called for even more chocolate and this time I wasn’t messing around with anything healthy! I made peanut butter chocolate pillows from the Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar book. Now these cookies went against all my instincts, because the outside is supposed to be a little crispy (and I HATE crispy cookies…I’m a chewy cookie girl), but I let them crisp and it was perfect. The crunchier chocolate outside contrasted perfectly with the gooey peanut butter center and made the perfect bite! Of course these were bad for you and everyone really enjoyed them (doesn't it always work that way)!

Did I mention that my Aunt and I had made plans to make cookies on Sunday? That’s right folks, day three of my three-day weekend brought more cookies! We decided on the Oo La La's from the Vegan Cookies book because 1) the name is awesome and sounds delicious and 2) we weren’t trying to go the healthy route. We didn’t have all the vegany ingredients so we substituted with some of the real stuff. Oh sweet butter how wonderful you are! These cookies were cakey outside and had the perfect creamy center of an Oreo without all the processed plasticy taste! The wonderfully staged photos are courtesy of my Aunt and the little hand belongs to the Peanut himself (my Aunt is much more creative with the photos than I am).

Man I am exhausted just writing about all this baking. I may or may not be shooting myself in the foot with this whole training for a ten-miler thing because I am using it as an excuse to carb load on baked goods! Don’t judge me :)