How to Make Delicious Vegan Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

What hopes do you have for 2021? I'm imagining that they are less grandiose than we normally start the new year with. Covid-19 has been an incredibly sobering, frustrating and devastating illness but at times it has made many of us stop and reassess what we are doing with our lives.

I used to love spending every spare minute cooking. I pickled Piccalili, I stirred-up on Sunday, I glaced marons, I candied peel and I’m pretty sure I even brandied quinces. I did all this whilst working full-time and blogged about it every day too, hundreds of words at a time!

Where did I find the energy? Fourteen years ago, I was a housewife, working in a dull office, living in a tiny unrenovated terrace cottage, thinking all the time about cooking and baking. If I found a recipe at lunchtime I liked, I’d be cooking it by 7pm that night.

These days I’m a little more careful, a bit more considerate with my time and what I cook. I was known amongst the blogging community as an adventurous cook, and I made such interesting delicacies as pigs head, trotters, goat, laverbread. Anything weird (for the early 2000s at least) I could find, I would cook it. As most of you know, I am pretty much entirely plant-based now, although I do still eat the odd piece of cheese or milk chocolate. I like to cook food I know I’ll enjoy, I want to spend my time on yummy not weird.

Although my brain still conjures up crazy ideas apace, my medication is a timely reminder that I need to sometimes step back and assess things before I jump. Cooking is less impromptu for me now, and I find I need to plan more, and muster up a bit more energy than I did in those hedonistic pig-trotter days. My medication also reminds me that I don’t have to do everything at breakneck speed (although the idea that every minute needs to be utilised in a functional manner will never leave me), and that cooking is a hobby, a love: a love to be savoured and enjoyed.

These holidays I baked cookies. Nothing flashy, just Oatmeal Cookies, some chocolate, some raisin. Of course, I’ve photographed them (food is art too!), and will share the results with you. I baked some Linzer Cookies, which I love, and the texture is challenging for the vegan cook. I also made some Florentines, their delicious chewy, poshness woo everyone at Christmas or if you give them as a gift.

I have also been working on a very special vegan cookbook, just cookies, and just one dough. You will be able to subscribe to that shortly and, best of all, it's free! It's a thank you for everyone's ongoing support for this little foodie blog. For now, enjoy the photos that I spent some time on, but more importantly please: read on to see how to make delicious vegan chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.

My hope for 2021, (the C-word aside), is to work on my photography skills, and accept that my Instagram or blog or Pinterest will never be as perfectly curated as many of those beautiful, aspirational accounts I follow, but will instead be a reflection of me: eclectic, happy, sad, tired, energetic, excitable, changeable, bored, in love with life, out of love with life, inspired, expired. The feed (and food!) of a 40-something (ahem) year old who has lived and learnt to be herself.

Try my other delicious vegan cookies:

• The best Chocolate Chip Cookies, as large as saucers!
• E asy Vegan Shortbread
• Levain-style Cookies
• Tangy Lemon Cookies