Dairy Free Baking

My sister had a baby!  And we were planning on going to visit them at the end of January (which we did) and I wanted to do something special for my sister, who just had a baby and surgery and everything.  I know how much she loves her treats, but because of nursing she stopped eating most dairy products.  Well, this led me on a search through the World Wide Web to find out what other people do when they are in this situation and want a tasty treat.  I had already learned last year that rice milk is a great substitute for dairy milk.  The finished product tastes the same; for example, my  whoopie pies tasted awesome!  So I just needed to find a butter substitute and guess what!  Vegans have already figured it out.  There is a brand out there that makes "buttery sticks" and here is the proof.

With these buttery sticks, I was able to make my sister the coveted coffee cake of our childhood. To my great surprise, it tasted exactly the same as if I had used all dairy products.  Amazing!  You can compare the pictures yourself if you like; here's the dairy free cake.

Next on my dairy-free baking list was peanut butter oatmeal cookies.  I actually found this recipe online and they looked so good to me.  They were as good as they look, let me tell you.  About 5 years ago I decided to stop eating partially-hydrogenated oils, which are found in most mainstream peanut butters.  I started buying organic peanut butter and haven't gone back.  I found this peanut butter in my local grocery store for half the price of the organic stuff and the ingredients are still just peanuts and salt.  So there's another way to make your tasty treats healthier than the mainstream and store bought treats.

The cookies were delicious...you couldn't just eat one.