Nutty Professor Cookies

It is starting to snow here and I am thinking about running away to Costa Rica because we are supposed to get anywhere from 6 inches to 2 feet from various reports I heard.

Snow and I do not get along PERIOD.

In preparation for the wintery hell we are about to experience, I went grocery shopping and bought enough food to feed an army and keep me busy while the snow tries to trap me in my apartment.

Today I started by inventing my own cookie and I named in the Nutty Professor cookie.  Why?  Because it has a lot of nuts in it, and I invented it so I can call it whatever I want.

I got the idea from a flourless chocolate tart I made for my boyfriend's birthday.  That recipe came from one of my awesome Christmas cookbooks I received titled The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick-Gourdreau and you can find it here.  The crust for that tart was so delicious it was my favorite part of the recipe.  So I thought, why not transform this into cookies?  And so I did!

You will need a food processor, or loads of time and patience with a knife.  Personally, I would go for the food processor so this takes about 15 minutes instead of 50.

Anyways, preheat your oven to 375 to get started.

Then process 1 cup pecans, 1 cup walnuts and 3/4 cup sugar.  I used Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Sugar from the local grocery store.

Once that is done add 4 tablespoons vegan butter.  I melted mine in the microwave just to make the process easier for mixing.

Add all the ingredients to a bowl and mix together.

My batter was not sticking together well so I added two more tablespoons of melted vegan butter.

Then I added chocolate chips and stirred it all together.  I probably used about 1/4 of a 10 ounce bag.  But you can make them as chocolatey, or chocolate-less as you want.

After I mixed it all together I put them on a baking pan - this made 12 cookies.

I baked them for about 8-10 minutes.   Now, here is where it becomes a cautionary tale; they smelled great and looked awful.

Seriously, how gross does that look?  So this is what I did.  I scooped them up with a spatula and put them in a cupcake tray so that they would harden into a set shape.  Now, if you don't want to wash an extra pan like I did, I would bake them right into the cupcake pan.

Once they dried they looked like this:

While they look really flakey, they actually stick together pretty well (crumbs still happen but it's not too bad).

According to my roommate they are very sweet so you might want to try with less sugar at first and see how it tastes.  Let me know if you try these out!

Check out this video so you can learn more about why "natural" is crap and organic is the way to go:
http://www.upworthy.com/a-funny-video-that-makes-you-never-want-to-fall-for-this-natural-lie-again?g=2