Ginger Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ginger Orange Booze Cookies, that is.  While I had real ginger in the house, and could have coloured them orange with real turmeric root, I followed TC's suggestion and made a ginger liqueur and triple sec chocolate chip cookie.  Sweetened with agave, vegan, gluten-free, slow-food, housemade, local... No, I'm not trying to up my SEO. I'm being ironic.

   



My blog apparently had a huge spike of activity around the wedding in June, whence I wrote one post, but I did force everyone to get event information from my blog.  Because blogs you can update; invitations you can't (you may also read into that statement that things came together at the last minute, i.e., only a few months in advance, instead of a year.  I'm still bummed out that I didn't get a Star Wars wedding in a graveyard at midnight.  I guess that's what renewing vows are for.  #spinsteratheart).

Goth darn it, whenever I read too much internet, I lapse into the fragmented, staccato, strident, hyperbolic pattern of many a pop culture Tumblr or Instagram of my peers (people my age group, not people I know, thank goodness).

[caption id="attachment_4331" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Someone got into these already...[/caption]

The alcohol that inspired this recipe was Stirrings Ginger Liqueur, which as I found out mere seconds ago, is made with vodka and caramel colour and "natural flavours."  Well, fudge.  It's probably not GF, is it, either from the vodka or the coluring?  Barnivore has nothing on it, when testing for veganism, either.  Sigh.  See, it's so much easier just not to care for or about alcohol at all when vegan and gluten-free.  You could easily make your own ginger liqueur by leaving some chunks of ginger to hang out in a bottle of potato vodka for a while; that's pretty much what Stirrings did, except on an industrial scale.  And with caramel colour.

[caption id="attachment_4328" align="aligncenter" width="199"] Where are you going with those cookies, Wriggle Bun?[/caption]

Ginger Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

Modified from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

• 1/2 cup agave nectar


• 1/2 cup canola oil


• 2 tablespoons ginger liqueur


• 2 tablespoons triple sec or other orange liqueur


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• 1 tablespoon tapioca starch


• 1 cup GF oat flour


• 1 cup GF sorghum flour


• 1/4 cup coconut flour


• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum


• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt


• 1 cup chocolate chips (I used Guittard, for once)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.


2. Line two baking sheet with parchment or Silpats and set aside.


3. In a large measuring cup, whisk together agave, oil, liqueurs, vanilla, and tapioca until uniformly combined and the oil is incorporated.


4. In a large bowl, sift then whisk together the flours, xanthan gum, baking soda, and salt.


5. Add wet to dry and mix well.  Depending on attitude or humidity, you may need to add more liquid or flour.


6. Stir in the chocolate chips.


7. Scoop the cookie dough in 2-tablespoon balls onto the cookie sheet.


8. Flatten slightly with a wet fork (they won't spread much).


9. Bake for 12 minutes or until cookies have browned on the edges and spring back a little in the centre.


10. Let cool on the pans for 10 minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely.

The buns and cats tried to make off with a whole tray!



 

In Lucky's Market ("Organic for the 99%"--love it!) once we got back to Wrongmont, I was singing along to CAKE--clearly I should have worked (and did) at an "alternative" grocery store in my lifetime because I know many of the lyrics to popular Cake, U2, and The Decemberists songs. Never mind that working in retail sucks the life out of you.

When checking out, I was kvetching with this model of good customer service of a cashier.  She has done all the right things and I have never seen her energy flag in smiling and being cordial to customers, if she's working during our weekly shopping trips. That's draining. I should write her a commendation (edit: I did). Anyway--I was telling her about going to the Boulder Whole Foods after she thanked me for bagging. How I watched this woman--who said she had to go back to Denver, so, like, was she in a hurry to drive home at 20:00?--stand and twiddle with her phone while the cashier rang up and bagged her groceries.  It was a regular-sized register with easily accessible (duh) bags and the little shelf to load them.  She was even stretching, doing hip-flexor stretches in the really wide lanes between registers (difference between a city and a suburban store--space!).  I mean, how frickin' entitled can you get?  Able-bodied people should bag their own groceries!  Period!  I resisted the urge to ask the young male cashier how many entitled bitches for whom he had to bag groceries each day.  He was white (well, this is Colorado), and the intersections of race, Whole Foods Market, organic foods, class, and entitlement are an entirely other conversation which needs to be had.

Anyway, I got a huge bruise on my upper thigh from running into a very dimly-lit planter in front of the WFM liquor store next door that night, so I guess I got my "divine" message not to set foot in a Whole Foods anytime soon.  (TC enjoyed his plum wine, though.)  There's nothing they have that I can't buy at Lucky's, Sprouts, or Natural Grocers anyway--and I can walk down Pearl Street to get all the smug I can handle regardless.

 

Stuff I ate:

This Nutiva O'Coconut macaroon thing was a really lame snack after cycling to Lucky's today.  Seventy-nine cents for a coconut flour-coconut oil-tapioca syrup macaroon, so at least it was cheap, as far as organic snacks go.  I could make (and have made) better.