Vegan Style Cookies

I keep thinking about how I would like to try Vegan Cookies. So I searched and found a video that told me exactly what I want to try.



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Just got back from the store. All the stuff that I need to buy for these cookies cost me $31.58. Vegans are so expensive.

Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies

Any vegans missing that classic homemade chocolate chip cookie indulgence? Well, now you can indulge without need for the dairy, eggs, white sugar, or even refined flour if you choose. These cookies can even be made wheat-free substituting spelt flour for wheat flour. One other bonus: these are super-easy to make!

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (see note)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄4 cup unrefined sugar
1⁄4 teaspoon sea salt
1⁄3 cup pure maple syrup
1⁄4 teaspoon blackstrap molasses
1 – 1 1⁄2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1⁄4 cup canola oil (a little generous)
1⁄3 cup non-dairy chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F (176°C). In a bowl, sift in the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add the sugar and salt, and stir until well combined. In a separate bowl, combine the maple syrup with the molasses and vanilla, then stir in the oil until well combined. Add the wet mixture to the dry, along with the chocolate chips, and stir through until just well combined (do not over-mix). Place large spoonfuls of the batter on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and flatten a little. Bake for 11 minutes, until just golden (if you bake for much longer, they will dry out). Let cool on the sheet for no more than 1 minute (again, to prevent drying), then transfer to a cooling rack.

Note: Unbleached all-purpose flour or spelt flour produces a more classic cookie taste and texture, but you can use whole-wheat pastry flour and still get a delicious cookie. For a wheat-free version, use spelt flour, but add an extra 2-4 tablespoons of the spelt flour to the dry mix (the amount needed varies with brand of spelt flour and whether you are using a refined spelt flour versus a less processed spelt flour).

Note: If, as you are mixing together your batter it appears quite floury and thick, simply mix together a couple of teaspoons more canola and maple syrup and incorporate it into the batter. Sometimes humidity, type of flour used, and other factors can affect the density of the batter and so a touch more liquid may be needed.

Makes 9-12 large to average sized cookies

© Copyright 2005 Dreena Burton

Theme Ending Up Sideways

My theme that I have been thinking about a lot of lately is Rotoscoping.

I really enjoy seeing live video look like animation. Like in the movie, "A Scanner Darkly". Along with, "A Scanner Darkly", a movie came out that was made by the same people called, "Waking Life". Both of these movies use rotoscoping to outline areas to put their own art style in. 

This is a project that will take me a while. I plan on finishing it by the end of the summer. However, I would like to share with you what I want to do with Rotoscoping.

What I want to do is make a 2 - 3 min rotoscoped animation that has a beginning, middle, and end. I have come up with my story and I'm working with a friend who is creating a song for it.

How I'm going to do it is by taking live video and editing it to the way I want to see it flow in the animation. I will then export the video out as pictures and take them into photoshop or flash. At this point I will put the pictures through a process to create a style just like they did in these examples.

Bliss: Seeing Sideways

Yesterday, for my seeing sideways class, I was to do something fun (or blissful). I decided that, since my buddy was in town, we should go to dinner. We ended up getting four people to come out and eat with use.

Excited to Go Eat

After dinner we went to one place that I go to relax and have fun…Starbucks.

At Starbucks with a Barista

I went over to my buddy Jay’s house and listened to a new song his working on. I spent the rest of the time playing video games with him. We played Super Smash Bro. on the Wii. I love playing as Kirby or Pikachu.

Buddy Jay and I At the Restaurant

I ended up going home and falling asleep. I was really tired after all my fun.

Sad That My Bliss Was Done

Wedding Seeing Sideways Style

For the past 4 days I have been in Chicago visiting. First night I went to help some friends’ setup at a convention. However, the next three days were all about a wedding. My buddy Matt was getting married and I was an usher for him. It was a blast and I had a great time. I would be willing to say that it was the best wedding I have gone to yet.

On the first night staying in Chicago, I was thinking about what we were saying in my Seeing Sideways class. We talked about time and how we use it. So for my project I wanted to show how I spent 24 hours of my life in a minute of video. I also messed with the time inside of the video. Not only are you seeing a whole day go by, but you’re seeing it at different moments in time.

1 for 24

Birthday & Seeing Sideways

It was my birthday yesterday. I didn’t make any plans and I didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to see how many people would remember. I only had about 3 of my friends that called and didn’t realize it was my birthday. One of them even realized a couple of hours later and called me back. So I think my experiment worked. This made me think a lot about what happen in class. After we got the assignment for time, I kept thinking about what makes time so important. I came up with this.

It’s not enough to just exist, so we create time to give ourselves structure.

I understand the whole aging and past, present and future part. However, to really have a clock messes me up. Would we really care about being places at a certain time if we didn’t have a clock? We have been using clocks for only 700 years. What was it like without them? I know that it has been a long time, but really having a world that doesn’t have clocks seems crazy.

I enjoy talking about this subject, so I’m looking forward to doing more with this.

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About what we watched in class:

I enjoyed the way the guy’s mind was working. He really was creating stuff that he saw in a different way. However, the stuff he was creating, I really wasn’t getting into it. I’m not the biggest sports fan like he seemed, so it was hard for me to appreciate the subject. It was his explanation that helped me like his artwork. The sun project was, I think, his best work. I look forward to seeing more of that show.

Egg Abortion: Seeing Sideways

My professor for my Seeing Sideways class gave me an egg to do anything I want with it.

I hate eggs. Why do I hate eggs? That is the question I asked myself.

When I was younger I would eat eggs. However, I quit eating them when I found out that eggs were unfertilized chickens. So every time I would eat an egg, I felt that I was eating a baby chicken. For some reason that thought would just bug me. I don’t eat eggs anymore.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no vegetarian (but I have tried it). I will eat foods that have eggs cooked inside (like cake). However, straight eggs are a no go with me.

After thinking about why I hate eggs, I started to think about the task at hand. What should I do with this egg? What, in my mind, relates to this egg? I came up with this:

Eggs are like aborted fetuses. Both are stopped before they are fertilized.

Side Note: I don’t have a very strong opinion on abortion since I am a man.

My Egg Quest

I wanted to have my egg be an advocate against eating babies. I got him a sign so he could picket outside an abortion clinic. I thought that it would be really hard to find an abortion clinic, however, it was easy. For a joke, I looked it up in the yellow book. It was that easy. To my surprise, there was one down the street from my work. I took my egg to the abortion clinic and he made his statement.