Monday Breakfast Series: Vegan Quinoa Breakfast Cookies

True life: I have always been a little bit skeptical of the vegan thing.

Even though I grew up in a dairy-conscious household (having a severely lactose intolerant father will do that) and I have recently had my own slew of digestive issues to face, I have always been a huge fan of all things dairy. The idea of giving up my milk on my cereal? Preposterous. Never having cheese (CHEESE!) again? Positively ludicrous. And how the heck am I expected to bake without using eggs? The mind reels.

But, then again, there was a time when I swore I could never be a vegetarian and I now find myself making vegetarian meals and searching for vegetarian recipes more often than not.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I have no plans to fully convert to a vegetarian lifestyle, if only because the idea of not having lamb at Easter causes me more mental anguish than trying to convey to the heavily-accented customer service representative at the cable company that I do not wish to pay for On-Demand, and that as long as I have Food Network I am happy so just please provide me with cheaper cable! (Phew, guess I needed to get that one off my chest.)

With that being said, it is hard to argue the benefits of a well-balanced vegan or vegetarian diet. (Emphasis on well-balanced, here; simply turning into a rabbit is not good for your health. Unless you are actually a rabbit.) And so, I am going to make a more concerted effort to branch out and include more vegan recipes here on the blog. You should all also know that I am making an effort to cut back on dairy milk in my own personal diet; again, I do not plan to cut it out entirely, but I do recognize that, for a number of reasons, I could benefit from consuming less of it. I have recently started buying almond milk and actually like how it tastes (not something I was expecting), so we will see how this goes.

For now, I bring you a double-duty recipe: the second Monday Breakfast Series recipe AND my first adventure into vegan baking! (As a side note, thank you all for your positive response to my first Monday Breakfast Series post. It is encouraging to get such great feedback. Keep it coming, and feel free to send me requests or suggestions of things you would like to see on here!)

The original recipe for these quinoa breakfast cookies was not vegan, so I had some substituting to do. The biggest swap was the eggs. What was I going to use as a binder if I couldn’t use eggs?

While there are a few different vegan options, it would seem that the most popular is using flax eggs. Using ground flax and water, you can create a sort of “goo” (don’t think about it too much) that closely resembles the consistency of an egg and will serve as your binder. Remember! This is a substitution for baking, not general cooking, and is apparently best suited for heartier baked goods such as dense cookies, muffins, quick breads, etc., as opposed to more delicate ones such as cupcakes.

Of course, you do not have to make these cookies vegan. They are still full of good things for you: protein-packed quinoa, whole wheat flour, oats and dried cranberries all play a role here. And they are low-calorie, with each cookie containing just under 150 calories (I calculated the vegan version to contain around 130 calories each). The one downside is that they do contain a fair amount of sugar, something I might consider playing with in the future but will leave as-is for now.

I personally think these dense, chewy cookies are delicious. They keep wonderfully in the freezer – in fact, they taste almost as good straight from the freezer as they do straight from the oven – and are perfect to pair with a quick smoothie or cup of yogurt in the morning. Or take them to work for a mid-morning snack! The possibilities are endless.