Mountain Climber Cookies

This recipe is a vegan adaptation of a New York Times recipe called Cowboy Cookies. Since vegans aren’t cowboys and we often take these cookies on hiking and backpacking trips in the mountains, we call ours Mountain Climber Cookies. They’re our son’s favorite.

In addition to veganizing the recipe, we also added Jamaican Allspice, used less chocolate chips, added walnuts, and adjusted the ratio of sugars to be heavier on brown (turbinado) than regular turbinado. And we don’t use white sugar because it’s not vegan.

Tools Needed:
Large bowl (wet ingredients & mixing dough)
Medium Bowl (dry ingredients)
Wooden Spoon
Measuring cups and spoons
Sheet Trays
Spatula
Cooling rack

Dry Ingredients:
Organic Unbleached All Purpose Flour (gluten free if desired) – 3 cups
Rolled Oats – 3 cups
Semi-sweet chocolate chips – 12 oz bag
Unsweetened Coconut Flakes – 2 cups
Chopped Pecans – 1 cup
Chopped Walnuts – 1 cup
Ground cinnamon – 1 Tablespoon
Jamaican Allspice – ¼ teaspoon
1 teaspoon Himalayan pink salt
Baking Powder – 1 Tablespoon
Baking Soda – 1 Tablespoon
*Sunflower Seeds – ½ cup (optional/not added to this batch)

Wet Ingredients:
Brown Turbinado Sugar – 2 cups
Turbinado Sugar – 1 cup
Vegan butter – 3 sticks (1 ½ Cups)
Vanilla – 1 Tablespoon (get good organic stuff)

Flax Eggs (3) Ingredients:
Flax Meal – 3 Tablespoons (I grind whole seeds in a coffee grinder)
Filtered Water (whatever you drink at home) – 9 Tablespoons

Directions:  Put butter out at room temperature at least 2 hours before you’re ready to start mixing. Mix water and flax in a bowl and let sit for 20 minutes.

In large bowl, cream butter with your wooden spoon. Once the butter is creamed and fluffy add the brown and turbinado sugars and stir until just combined.  I mix the cookies by hand (what mountain climber wouldn’t want the extra hand and forearm strength?). Also, it’s a little big for my Kitchen Aide mixer.  The main reason I do this is because it allows me to make the flakiest cookies. If you overmix you will get tough cookies.  I am totally down for all of the toughness I can get, but not in my cookies.  Slowly add in flax eggs and vanilla while stirring, just until combined.

Add dry ingredients to medium bowl and combine thoroughly. Add combined dry ingredients 1 cup at a time to the large bowl with the creamed butter, sugar, and egg mixture, mixing to combine each time.

Once the dough is complete, add it to an airtight bowl or gallon size freezer bag and allow to rest in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.  This is a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (177 C).  Use ¼ cup measuring cup (not a small portion but they’re called mountain climber cookies for a reason) to measure cookies onto a sheet tray, leaving 3 inches between cookies.  Once all cookies are measured out flatten slightly with palm of hand and reshape to even circles.

Bake for 13 – 15 minutes or desired level of crispiness. Let sit at room temperature for a minute or two before transferring onto cooling rack with spatula.

I only bake what my family is going to eat immediately, so that we always have fresh cookies and there aren’t cookies in the cabinet tempting me to eat them because, “hey, they’re just going to go stale if I don’t, right?” If you make them to order you have to wait for the oven to heat up and the cookies to bake, BUT they are vegan, so you could just have a “small” scoop of the cookie dough while you wait….it’s really good.

Making them to order means you also get to enjoy ooey gooey deliciousness like this: