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Usually when it comes to birthdays in my closest family, I ask those what they would like me to make for them. Usually it’s cake but recently my wife asked for banana pudding for her birthday. When we first got married, I didn’t think she would like the vegan version of that so I used to make for her the kind with all of the animal products in it: milk, butter, & eggs. For the record, my wife is not vegan (but she is a good sport when it comes to eating vegan food and will come with me to vegan food festivals). Since then I have perfected a vegan pastry cream that can be used for most pudding bases, including banana, so I made her a vegan banana pudding for her most recent birthday with vegan butter & soy milk . Recipe for that is here:
Anywho, in my brain, a bowl of pudding is not very fancy so of course I had to do it up for her birthday. I decided to make coconut milk whipped cream and homemade vanilla wafers. Please note, when making these if you decide to store & then serve them with the pudding, the moisture from the pudding will make them soften up pretty quickly so for best results, place them on or next to the pudding when serving (unless you want your cookies to be soft instead of crunchy (you do you, boo!). These are a great alternative to the Nabisco Nilla wafers we know and love but with a homemade spin (and with better alternative ingredients, imo!)
Vegan Very Vanilla Wafers
Ingredients
- 55 g Earth Balance Buttery Spread (room temperature)
- 30 g powdered sugar
- 25 g evaporated cane sugar
- 95 g all purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp Himalayan pink sea salt
- ½ Tbsp vanilla bean paste (sub vanilla extract for less of a punch)
- 30 g soy milk (sub unswt. almond milk or coconut milk if desired)
Instructions
- Prepare large sheet pan with a silicone liner or parchment paper. Combine your buttery spread, powdered sugar and evaporated cane sugar in a mixer with a paddle attachment on medium power until sugar is fully incorporated with the butter.
- Add vanilla bean paste & milk to bowl with butter/sugar mixture. Combine until you've mixed for about 2 minutes. It might still look soupy after a couple minutes, that's okay as it will come together in the next step.!
- Add your dry ingredients to the bowl and combine until it becomes one cohesive dough (about 30 seconds of mixing). Combine into a ball, flatten into a disc on a sheet of parchment or plastic wrap. Refrigerate until it firms up a bit (about 1 hour or overnight if you have the time).
- When firm, remove from fridge, portion out 1 1/2 teaspoons (or 1/2 Tablespoon) of dough onto a cookie tray, roll each piece of dough into a round and flatten slightly. Place each cookie dough ball about 1 1/2 inches from each other. Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes or until desired golden brown color is achieved.
- Let cool completely on the pan as the texture of the cookies will go from freshly baked soft cookie to a crunchy cookie in a short period of time. Once cookies have crisped up a bit, store in an airtight container or use for a recipe substitute of your non-vegan store-bought vanilla wafer-style cookies.
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