Wonder Mum Bakes, Makes & Creates - Vitamin Enriched Vegan Chocolate Coated Cookie Dough Balls!

This is the improved version on the basic recipe which works for the kids (especially Cub) as we substituted some of the plain flour for a vitamin enriched powder that we use.  I will also link a separate post to these as these have been extremely valuable in our food allergy journey and a fantastic find!

Recipe

• 225g dairy free spread (we used Pure)
• 220g soft brown sugar
• 1tsp vanilla essence
• 100g plain flour
• 100g vitamin enriched power (we used Nesquick cocoa flavour)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp water
• Vegan chocolate - having learned from our earlier version, we used dairy-free milk chocolate (around 50g initially but we saved some dough so you'd probably need closer to 100g to coat all the dough in one go)

Method

• As before, we mixed together the butter, Pure and vanilla.  This was just to combine them - so a very quick mix in the K-Mix (or you could do it by hand).  You don't want air in it, so just enough that it's mixed together.
• We added the flour and a pinch of salt and mixed again.  Initially on a half to let get the flour into the mixture so it doesn't shoot everywhere (!) and then for about 30 seconds on a number 4.  This would take longer by hand but could still be done.
• We ended up with a chunky dough consistency - where the dough was not one ball but in chunky bits.
• We chose whether to add the water or not at this point and as ours looked on the dry side, we added the full tablespoon and mixed again as above.

This is how our dough looked when we stopped mixing.  A smaller 'crumb' than the previous recipe

• We used a spatula to push the dough into a sort of ball shape just for ease of handling and then once we plopped it onto the mat, we pushed it together into more of a ball shape with our hands.
• We found this helped to handle the dough as well as for wrapping in cling film later if you don't wan't to use all the dough at once (or as if often the case, you are interrupted and need to come back to this later!)
• We pulled tiny pieces off the dough and rolled them around in our palms to make the tiny dough balls which we then rolled in the melted chocolate.
• We tried various ways of getting the chocolate onto the dough balls but the best seemed to roll them in the bowl of melted chocolate as long as the temperature was not too hot (so we let it cool a little after removing from the microwave) and as we did small batches at a time, the amount of chocolate in the bowl was only small, so it didn't 'drown' the dough-ball which could have melted the dough-ball or made it lose it's shape.
• As before, we placed baking parchment on cooling racks and placed the cookie dough balls on there and when they were all on there, we placed the racks in the fridge to set.

Overall Review

• This dough was a noticeably firmer consistency and held it's shape better when we then rolled it in the melted chocolate generally than the other recipe.
• The flavour of the dough itself was not as sweet and Cub didn't eat as much of this (but he had just eaten his fill from the previous recipe so it could have just been that!)
• Cub did, however, prefer the final cookie dough balls to the previous recipe, which is fantastic as these are vitamin enriched and are another way for us to get vitamins in!

Further Ideas

As ever, I always have extra ideas of what else to try but I rarely have enough time so my other ideas include:

• Trying different vitamin enriched powders as these are available in a variety of flavours
• Varying the flour/vitamin enriched powder ratio - the 'ideal' point being the maximum amount of vitamin powder versus the minimum amount of plain flour that Cub will still tolerate and that won't make the dough too thick (as the vitamin powder seemed to make the dough more stodgy)
• Adding extras to the dough balls before they are set - e.g. sprinkles 
• Adding a chocolate drizzle for aesthetic effect e.g. melted white chocolate drizzle over the dough balls once already set and then refrigerate to set the drizzle