Cooking is a lot like labwork (almond cookies, chocolate pudding, mini hash browns)

You labfolk will agree that cooking can be just like labwork, except the laboratory notebook is not critical in the kitchen. As I find more time to play with food, I'm realizing that I need to include negative controls for my nut yogurt experiments. I had the great idea this morning of starting to approach my cooking experiments more like lab experiments, and I'm really excited! It probably won't materialize for a little while, but it's a good thought.

I just ordered a vegan yogurt cookbook and a new gluten-free baking book, so those will be on my experiment list once they get here. I have to find a sandwich bread Maya likes, and how to make nondairy cheese.

Since I plan on posting many failures, today I wanted to share some recent successes:

Almond meal and coconut cookies! BOTH TM and Q like these! Miraculous.

July 13, 2013 update: I've tried these so many various ways now. Originally, I used almond meal left over from making almond milk. That's labor intensive, and no-one likes the almond milk I make. So I tried just soaking the almonds and grinding them and using that. It had too much of a (unnoticable to me) bitter taste and no-one ate them. So it's back to extracting the water from soaked almonds. I'm guessing that some bitter compounds end up in the aqueous extract...

Chocolate pudding (dairy and egg free) using my homemade almond milk left over from making almond meal for the cookies. I didn't cook it long enough and it's too rich for TM. I've eaten half the batch already. Yikes. Pretty creamy.

AND...little mini-hash browns. I've only recently discovered hash browns, believe it or not. I baked the potatoes a few days ago, then shredded them this morning, added salt and pepper, and fried them! I know, I know, everyone but me knows how to make them. I'm just happy that both TM and CH like them! Yay!