These Easy Awesome Chocolate-Covered Animal Cookies are just that. Easy and awesome. This is a fun kitchen project filled with sprinkles, cute animal shapes, melted silky chocolate and parchment paper fun. No oven required. No ingredients to measure. Three ingredients! Try these cuties today!..
Vegan Animal Crackers/Cookies. I spotted a giant tub of *vegan* animal cookies at Trader Joe's - so I had to grab them. These cute little cookies were what inspired me to make this recipe.
I loved those pink and white creamy bite frosted animal cookies as a kid. I liked the white ones better than the pink ones. But alas, these frosted animal crackers are not vegan. And since I knew my husband would go gaga for dark chocolate animal cookies - that's what I did.
Chocolate. I wanted a super bold, not too sweet coating for my cookies. So I grabbed some easy melt baking circles from TJ's as well. They are pretty much 100% cocoa mass. However, after taste-testing the cookies I thought they were a tad too bold. So I did another round with basic vegan chocolate chips. I liked these better, but the chocolate was a bit thicker to work with. Funny enough, my dark chocolate loving husband loved the straight up baking chocolate cookies. The darker the better I guess. The cookies do have a subtle sweetness which enhances the bold chocolate.
Sprinkles. Vegan sprinkles are out there. True, most mainstream baking sprinkles are made from vegan ingredients (sugar, chemicals, artificial stuff etc) - the only thing you may be skeptical of is the food dye sources - which you can't really confirm from a package sometimes. To be safe, go with the vegan-certified sprinkles available at Whole Foods or online. I had some basic sprinkles in my pantry - so I used those. But I made half my batch "non-sprinkled" for me since I'm not a fan of non-vegan food coloring. I use my India Tree and plant-based sources every chance I get.
OK, enough of the technical stuff. Here's the fun part..
Easy Awesome Chocolate-Covered Animal Cookies
vegan, makes 2 cups of cookies
1 ¾ cups vegan animal cookies
medium bowl of melted chocolate - about ⅔ cup - (baking, dark, semisweet all optional)
round sprinkles - or your fave variety
parchment paper-lined baking sheets (so the sprinkles don't roll onto the floor!)
Directions:
1. In a double broiler, start melting your chocolate via steam. Do not burn it.
2. Line a few baking sheets with parchment paper.
3. About 3 cookies at a time - drop them into the melted chocolate and remove with a fork. Place the coated cookies directly on the parchment paper. Then grab your sprinkles and dash a few on top of the still-soft chocolate coating.
4. Repeat with all your cookies.
5. Place your cookies in the fridge or freezer to harden. I like to store mine in the freezer - they keep longer that way - and it's easy to grab a few for a treat.
Enjoy!!
