Dessert & a movie: The Social Network

For The Social Network (which I liked, by the way, although I don't think it quite lived up to all the Best Picture of the Century hype), we went with a fancy college food theme. We had a salad and a delicious homemade pizza, which I unfortunately didn't take pictures of. And for dessert, I made Vegan Milanos from the Post-Punk Kitchen! I was a little afraid they would be above my skill level, but they turned out pretty well. If I do say so myself, they were a hit. Not as big of a hit as Facebook, of course, but if I had a bigger kitchen 500 million people might want to eat these cookies.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup rice or soy milk (I used soy)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• Scant 1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest (I didn't use this but I bet it would make the cookies even awesomer)
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped (or use chocolate chips)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease two cookie sheets.
2. Mix the sugar, oil, milk, vanilla, and zest.
3. Add half of the flour, along with the cornstarch, baking powder and salt and mix well.
4. Add the remaining flour and mix until you have a soft, pliable dough.
5. Set aside a little bowl of flour and dust your hands before making every cookie!
6. Take a small spoonful of dough and roll it into a log in your hands. Then squish it flat until it's like, the shape of a Milano.
7. Keep making Milanos until you use all the dough, then bake them for 10-ish minutes.

8. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate. I use a makeshift double-boiler of a small pot inside a slightly larger pot of boiling water. If you don't melt chocolate often, let me stress... stir the chocolate like there is no tomorrow or it will burn and be horrible! Also don't let any water splash in there or it will also be horrible.

9. OK, so the recipe advised you to dip each cookie facedown in the chocolate and then push them together to make a sandwich, but I was afraid I'd drop the cookies or something. So I just dropped about a spoonful of chocolate on a cookie and then squished another one on top of it.

10. Put them on a tray in the fridge for an hour or so. Then let them get back to room temperature before serving them.
11. Hurrah!