Focus on Coop Suppliers:
Liz Lovely Vegan Cookies

by Suzanne Fisher

In the arena of American producers of food products, it is hard to find a company that makes anything that distinguishes itself for its quality or for the social responsibility of its business practices. At Honest Weight, we try to support those companies that accomplish either or both of these tasks. The relatively new Liz Lovely’s Vegan Cookies is remarkable for both the homemade, traditional flavor of their cookies and for their social mission: “Authenticity from start to finish.”

Their mission statement is well defined and put into practice in a tangible way. To begin with, they pay their workers a living wage and give them benefits even though they have only four full-time (hoping to get another soon) positions, as well as three part-time workers (stay-at-home moms) who prepare the packaging in their own homes. They use fair trade chocolate and many organic ingredients, and are working toward becoming fully organic, with the purpose of promoting organic agriculture. By producing vegan cookies that satisfy like the non-vegan goodies many of us used to eat as children and beyond, they hope to open the minds and markets of Americans to the ideas of and reasons for the vegan lifestyle.

Liz and Dan Holtz started their business in Philadelphia. It began when Liz was trying to start a vegan chocolate company and had a party to get feedback on her vegan chocolates.

She had some cookies that she had baked to serve on the side, and everyone raved about the cookies instead of the chocolates. She changed direction and went into cookie baking. Gradually the business began to expand, and their products can now be found in coops and natural food stores throughout the East Coast. Seeking to grow their business in an environment more accepting of their artisan philosophy, Liz and Dan were able to find investors willing to support them in setting up shop in Waitsfield, Vermont, a little town in Mad River Valley ski country. They began baking cookies from that location a year and a half ago.

The cookies contain some interesting ingredients. Instead of butter, they use Earth Balance Spread, a combination of expellerpressed oils of soybean, palm fruit, canola seed and olive. Although a whipped version of this product is available as organic, they are not using the quantities they would need to purchase to get the organic spread in the unwhipped format, but hope to be able to arrange to do this in the future. Instead of eggs, they use Ener-G Egg Replacer, the ingredients of which are published on their website, www.lizlovely.com.

The Coop stocks three varieties of the cookies. First of all, there is the Cowboy Cookie, an oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookie set into a thin layer of chocolate with a hearty, chewy crunch that must derive from the addition of walnuts in this better-than-traditional recipe. Next is the Cowgirl Cookie, a chocolate chip cookie with a perfectly balanced chocolate to cookie ratio, which has a lovely crunch followed by a melt-in-your-mouth texture. This is Liz’s favorite, because it reminds her of the raw chocolate chip cookie dough she used to sneak when she was younger.

Last but not least is the Peanut Butter Classic, a tender peanut butter cookie with peanuts scattered across the top set into a thin disk of chocolate on the bottom. This cookie has a chocolate peanut butter cup flavor that will take you right back to the Halloweens of your childhood.

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