End of school cookoff

When the kids come home with the letter that features the word "party" i start to panic! School parties mean milk, chocolate, and craziness.  Children hopped up on sugar tend to forget the rules that have been drummed into them over the last school year- that one of their classmates has a deadly allergy, and I (as the mother of the poor child with allergies) have to get creative, to make sure that my darling boy doesn't feel like he is missing out on this fun day!

It is 35 degrees C here today with no breeze and yet, here I am sleeves rolled up,baking up a storm!
On the menu today- chocolate covered cookie bites, mini iced cupcakes, and chocolate truffles :)

I took a basic cookie recipe: 2 cups flour, 2/3 cup sugar, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/2 cup soya milk (plus a few extra tablespoons to bind), 1 cup oats, 5 tablespoons of vegetable oil.
Mix flour, salt,sugar and oats together. Then add the 1/2 cup of soya milk, and the 5 tablespoons of oil. Mix. Now add soya milk tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together.
Press out your cookies ,the original recipe (which featured butter and real milk) reckons this makes 3 dozen cookies and the small cookies i made worked out to around 40.

Bake cookies at 180C until cookies start to brown around the edges. Take the cookies out of the oven, and cool on a wire rack.

 Then take some dairy free chocolate chips- melt them in a bain marie (or stick them in the microwave for 20 seconds.) Stir to melt all the choc chips. One by one, add the cookies to the chocolate, stir around, until they are covered in the chocolate- then place onto some baking paper to dry. Voila- dairy free chocolate covered cookie bites :)

Now, onto the mini cupcakes. Why mini i hear you ask? Well my biggest customers are my two little ones- George (7) and Tina (5) and they are big fans of icing- so if the cake is too big, then the little ones tend to just nibble off the icing, and leave the cake! This way, the cakes are little mouthfuls, and the kids eat them in one gulp :)
Today I used Isa Chandra Moscokowitz'  recipe for Golden Vanilla cupcakes, from her vegan cupcakes take over the world cookbook (which i HIGHLY recommend), and iced them with a plain glace icing ( 250-350g icing sugar, 2-4 Tbsp water, and a few drops of food coloring)and finished them off with some sprinkles. They are pretty adorable...look

(hint-i didn't have any pink food coloring, so i used 1/2 teaspoon of plum jam instead- put it together with the water, and the icing sugar- voila pink icing :)
Last, but not least, i made some chocolate truffles. These are the easiest things in the world to make, and are just delicious! I take 200g ground almonds, and mix them with 5 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 100g icing sugar. Mix until there are no lumps, then add 4-5 tablespoons of liquid-if i am making them for the children i might use freshly squeezed lemon or orange juice, but if i am making them for adults, i usually use a liqueur :) Add the liquid one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture starts to come together. Then squeeze the mixture into small balls. At this point you can also put something into the middle of the truffles (candied peel, small nut, chocolate chip)if you like. The truffles are now ready, you can finish them off by rolling them in sprinkles, crushed nuts or even by dipping them in melted chocolate.