Vegan Bear Paws Cookies

Recipe by Nikoleta, vegan cook and author of every recipe in the Tofu app · @surovadcerka

Ingredients

batter

• 190 g vegan butter
• 250 g all-purpose flour
• 120 g powdered sugar
• 100 g ground walnuts
• 15 g Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• vegan butter (for greasing molds)

topping

• 80 g 70% dark chocolate
• 20 g cocoa butter (or other neutral fat)
• walnuts (ground or finely chopped; or pistachios)

Contains: gluten, nuts

How to make it

1. Take the butter out of the refrigerator, cut it into cubes, and let it soften. To speed things up, you can briefly heat it in the microwave to 25–30 °C – about 20 seconds is enough after cutting it into small cubes.
2. In a bowl, combine the plain flour, sugar, ground nuts, Dutch cocoa (this gives the paws their rich color), ground cinnamon, and ground cloves.
3. Once the butter has softened perfectly, add it to the flour mixture and work it in with your fingertips to form a dough. Work quickly, as you would with linzer cookies, to avoid over-activating the gluten.
4. As soon as a uniform dough forms, stop working it. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or for at least two hours.
5. Carefully grease the molds with butter and remove the chilled dough from the refrigerator.
6. Working with small portions, take just enough dough for one mold. Place it in the center and press evenly with your fingers so the dough covers all sides with uniform thickness.
7. Bake the paws in a preheated oven at 175°C without fan. My bear paws baked for 6-7 minutes, keeping them crispy yet tender inside.
8. After baking, let the vegan bear paws cool for about 15 minutes, then turn them out by tapping gently on a board.
9. Melt the dark chocolate and cocoa butter over steam. Dip each paw halfway into the chocolate and sprinkle with ground or finely chopped nuts.

Nutrition