Hey guys! I have a really fun recipe to share with you today. How do chocolate-covered slice ‘n’ bake pecan cookies sound??

Have you ever made slice ‘n’ bakes before? I hadn’t, but when I saw this post by Sally’s Baking Addiction, I knew I had to try it! However, Sally’s Baking Addiction isn’t a vegan blog at all. So, I used her recipe as a base and tweaked a few things, such as:

1. Replacing the chicken’s egg with a flax egg
2. Replacing the dairy butter with Earth Balance
3. Replacing the hazelnuts with pecans

The pecans are toasted before making the cookie dough, which makes them so flavorful. I chopped mine medium-size before putting them in the oven. 

Then, when I added the pecan pieces to the cookie dough, my Kitchen Aid mixer broke them up even more, so that in the end, you have pretty small pieces of pecan in the cookies.

When first mixed up, the dough is just like your average cookie dough. It’s sticky and soft and almost oily (and super yummy. Obviously). But, once I rolled up the two logs of dough in some plastic wrap and let it chill for four hours, it was perfectly manageable. It makes sense that the original recipe says chilling is mandatory!

Then, I just sliced the cookie logs so that they were a size that made sense to me. I ended up with 30 fairly small cookies.

Slice ‘n’ Bake Pecan Cookies

adapted from Toasted Hazelnut Slice ‘n’ Bake Cookies with Milk Chocolate by Sally’s Baking Addiction

Ingredients:

3/4 cup Earth Balance, cold

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 flax egg (1 tablespoon flax meal, 3 tablespoons warm water)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup roughly chopped pecans, divided

1 cup chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate, if that’s what you have)

Process:

In an oven preheated to 300º F, toast the chopped pecans for 10 minutes. Mix together the flax meal and warm water for the flax egg and let stand for 5 minutes, or until thickened. Meanwhile, beat the Earth Balance for 1 minute in a Kitchen Aid mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or until completely smooth and creamy. Add the brown sugar and beat until fluffy and light, with no chunks of sugar or Earth Balance. Add the thickened flax egg and the vanilla extract and beat until incorporated.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, salt, and cinnamon. Then, add the dry ingredients in small increments to the Earth Balance mixture. Finally, add 3/4 cup of the toasted pecan chunks to the dough, reserving the last 1/4 cup of pecan chunks for later.

Scoop out the cookie dough onto a floured surface. If the dough seems too sticky, you may add a bit more flour. I added about 1/4 cup. Divide in half, and tightly roll into two logs of cookie dough. Mine were about 2 inches in diameter. Wrap each log in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. They will seem really soft and sticky until the end of the refrigeration period, and then they will suddenly firm up and become much more manageable.

Preheat the oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Unwrap one log of cookie dough and slice into 15 or so cookies. Bake for 16 minutes, or until the edges are very lightly browned. Take the tray out of the oven, allow to cool for five minutes, then place the cookies on a cooling rack. Repeat the process with the other log of cookie dough. You also may bake all of the cookie slices from both logs at once if you have two cookie sheets that fit in your oven at the same time.

Once all of the cookies are cool, melt the chocolate chips on the stove or in the microwave. I melted mine in the microwave by putting them in for 20 seconds, then stirring, then 20 more seconds, then stirring again, and so on until they were completely melted and smooth. Dip one end of each cookie in the chocolate – I think generally about 1/3 or 1/4 of each cookie getting dipped in the chocolate is good. Place the dipped cookies on a sheet of parchment paper to allow the chocolate to set, and use the last 1/4 cup of toasted pecan pieces to press into the melted chocolate on each cookie. Allow the chocolate to set for a few hours, and then they are ready to eat! All uneaten cookies should be stored in a airtight container.