Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

Banana Bundt Cake, plated on a pizza pan
because you do what you can with the supplies you have

I spent this past summer living and working on my college campus. Some parts of this were great-- my job mostly involved me getting paid to watch netflix in an air conditioned room while occasionally answering phone calls. However, there were also some downsides, like the lack of air conditioning in my living space, and the part where I had to share a kitchen with all the 60+ residents of the house I was living in. The combination of the lack of air-conditioning and the crowded cooking space probably should have dissuaded me from meals that involved using the oven, but I am not easily deterred. I regularly used the oven to cook meals, and I also ended up baking about once a week with a few friends of mine who were also staying on campus. It started out with banana bread, which turned into a banana bundt cake once we realized we'd scaled the recipe up too far, and then progressed to scones and more adventurous cookie baking. I'd never really made vegan cookies before, but I stumbled on a recipe for these Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles and I knew I had to try them out. Mexican Hot Chocolate is my second favorite mexican drink, after Horchata, and it's definitely in my top 10 all time favorite drinks. They're also a recipe from Isa Chandra, who collaborated on one of the best vegan cookbooks I've read (Veganomicon), so I was pretty sure they'd be a hit even before I made them.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

From "The Post Punk Kitchen"

 First, preheat your oven to 350, and grease two baking sheets with a little bit of canola oil. You can also use parchment paper like the original recipe suggests, but this is college kitchen baking, you probably don't have that on hand. Next, get out you mixing bowl and mix together 1/2 cup canola oil, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup pure maple syrup, 3 tablespoons almond milk, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract. Get your almond milk from the vegan-vegetarian dining hall (and then drink the leftover almond milk when you get thirsty while baking). If you so desire, you can probably also obtain the maple syrup from your local dining hall, but that's unlikely to be real maple syrup, and I think it's worth it to run to the store for the real stuff. The original recipe suggests a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a teaspoon of chocolate extract, but once again, college kitchen, working with limited resources. But anyway. Mix until your sugar is relatively dissolved, then add 1 2/3 cups flour, 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon salt, some cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper. If you can find a sieve somewhere in your kitchen, sift the flour and cocoa powder as you add them to the mix (but from personal experience, I can promise that not sifting will not ruin your cookies). You should probably add about as much cinnamon as cayenne, but the cinnamon can really be adjusted according to your taste. Be more exact with the cayenne-- it's important to get just the right level of spice. Once you're done mixing, your cookie dough should be done. Separate it in to small balls (approximately 24) and place them on your cookie sheet. Flatten the balls with the palm of your hand or the back of a spoon and sprinkle cinnamon sugar (mostly sugar with a little cinnamon mixed together) on top. Bake for 10-12 minutes until they look like this picture I borrowed from the original blog because I forgot to take my own. Let them cool on the pan. You can transfer to a cooling rack after 5 minutes if you really want to, but I find this to be unnecessary unless  you're baking in something like cast iron that takes a really long time to cool down. 
Makes ~ 2 dozen cookies
Pair with a warm beverage of some kind, like coffee or hot chocolate, or a fruity desert beer, if that's your kind of thing.