Cookie Monsters: Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero, 'Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar'

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WHEN IT COMES to vegan cooking, it's easy to think that making savory dishes are a piece of cake.

But actual pieces of vegan cake — or any sweets — are a lot tougher.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero certainly make dairy-free baking accessible in "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar," though. It's the follow-up to their 2006 cookbook "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World," but where cupcakes are an inherently time-consuming project (whether dairy-free or not), Moskowitz and Romero's cookie recipes are simple and easy-to-make.

Most importantly, the duo makes dairy-free baking seem so effortless, with thorough descriptions of all of their ingredients and tips on how and where to find vegan versions of common items like sugar and chocolate chips.

Most of the ingredients in "Vegan Cookies" are surprisingly easy to find, as well; most are either in your kitchen already or available at most regular supermarkets. (I was peased to be able to find everything from ground flax seeds to tapioca flour at my local Safeway — vegan ingredients have come a long way towards the mainstream in the past few years.)

Due to the ease of finding ingredients, I dove right in to these recipes, making the Pumpkin Pie Brownies and Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles — a delicious chocolate sugar cookie with a little cayenne kick. (Warning: the latter calls for chocolate extract, which is a little tricky to find in stores and may need to be ordered online. But Moskowitz and Romero have written a work-around into the recipe, in case you don't have the ingredient on hand.)

Best of all, these recipes are littered with tips and tricks. Raisins looking a little under the weather? No problem, there's a little hint about how to plump 'em up naturally. Not sure how to toast pecans? The authors will walk you through the process.

The 100 recipes in this book are grouped into categories (drop cookies, wholesome cookies, bar cookies, fancy cookies, and sliced and rolled cookies), and while there are plenty of vegan versions of standard cookies (chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and so on), it's the more unusual ones that are the most intriguing.

My only complaint is that there's no indication of preparation time at the top of each recipe, but it's easy enough to read through the directions to get a sense of complexity — and the authors do give a heads-up for any recipe that's particularly time-consuming (the Sell Your Soul Pumpkin Cookies recipe, for example, calls for about an hour's worth of cooking down canned pumpkin).

All in all, that's a minor grumble for a book that does such a great job at making dairy-free baking so easy.

Written by Express contributor Catherine Lewis