Almost vegan ginger cookies and some mistakes

I was having a very bad baking day today. Last night, too. Last night I made sugar cookies, but I made the terrible mistake of cooking them for too long. Tragic. Some were salvigable, though.
Then today I tried to make lemon bars by making a crust out of browned butter and the crushed up cookies. Not a good idea. The 'bars' probably taste good, but they're not so much bars as a sloppy ugly mess... not cool :/
I also tried making caramel sauce stuff out of canned condensed milk. It turned out ok but I decided not to use it, I wasn't sure how it'd taste with the cookies.
Then, after having no eggs left, a huge mess in the kitchen, and no idea what to make, I found this recipe. It's originally a vegan recipe but I used regular milk instead of soy milk because that's what I had.
I also made some really yummy tomato white bean soup the other night, and I'll post that recipe later. I might post the sugar cookie recipe later, and maybe the lemon bar recipe but I'm not sure about that. I'm sure the awful-ness of the lemon bars is my fault, but still.
Sorry if this post is all over the place, I'm sickish and tired so I'm out of it xD


The soup that I made. Yuuummy :)

Ugh... awful, awful lemon bars. Complete with splotches of cooked eggs because I really cannot bake today.

Sugar cookies. The soft ones were pretty good, actually.

Very good! I love ginger cookies, as you can tell :P


Almost vegan ginger cookies
Adapted from Ryan's Baking Blog
Makes about 33-35

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon all spice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup milk
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract
White sugar for rolling**


Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Wisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. In a separate large bowl, mix together oil, molasses, milk, brown sugar, lemon extract, and vanilla.

Stir in dry ingredients and mix until well combined. I actually kneaded the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients at the very end because I found it easier to combine that way. I know that's strange and you're not suppose to over mix but I've done that with the other ginger recipe that I make a lot and I like the texture it gives the cookies.

Roll into balls and flatten slightly, place top into sugar, put dough sugar side up on cookie sheet.

Note: I also crushed some cristalized ginger and put that in the sugar that I rolled them in, too.
I added an extra 1/2 cup of flour because I wanted them thicker instead of chewy. I'm not sure why but I prefer ginger/mollases cookies this way.

Bake 5-7 minutes. I baked one batch 5 minutes and the other 6. I think 6 is a pretty good time. They're very soft ad delicious :D