Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I've mentioned before I'm not a baker.  Baking makes me nervous.  Forget one thing or add a little too much this and that and you've ruined it all.

Well I made some chocolate chip cookies today (with the help of my five year old assistant) and I/we didn't ruin them!  They actually came out really good!  Good enough for me to want to share with you in fact.  

The child and I have varying degrees of colds right now so I'm not sure if our cookies would be board of health approved, but they were certainly husband approved.  I searched the internet for different chocolate chip cookie recipes that were specifically vegan.  I honestly feel like sometimes vegan baking recipes are made to be too complex and contain a lot of ingredients that one doesn't not usually have in their kitchen.  I felt a little discouraged and decided to search regular scratch chocolate chip cookie recipes and "veganize" them.  

I found a few different recipes all containing ingredients I have in my kitchen (yes I have a bag of chocolate chips on hand don't judge) and I got to veganizing!  

Here's what I did…

Ingredients

• 1/2 Earth Balance vegan butter (melted) 
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 flax eggs (I'll explain)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1 bag of vegan chocolate chips (sometimes these are "accidentally" vegan but you can fine dairy free chips in the healthy (expensive) section of the grocery store as well.)
• 2 1/4 cup flour (I just used all purpose flour)
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt 

So to review flax eggs are not that scary!  First you need some flax seed meal, I use Bob's Red Mill (I get mine at Xmas Tree Shop of Job Lot…so much cheaper).  All you need to do is whisk one tablespoon of flax seed meal with three tablespoons of water to make one egg equivalent.  Let the mixture sit for about five minutes.  

While your flax eggs are setting whisk your salt, baking soda, and flour together.   In a separate bowl mix together your sugars, melted butter, vanilla extract and flax eggs.  Slowly pour in your dry mixture and stir together.  I felt like my mix was a little dry to I added a few splashes of almond milk (you could use water too).  If I made this recipe again I might experiment with adding another egg but stick with this for now.  Then add your chocolate chips!

Have your oven preheated to 375 degrees.  I scooped out my cookie dough with and ice cream soup and spread my cookies about two inches apart on my cookie sheet.  I covered my pan with aluminum foil because I have a cheap cookie sheet and I was afraid they would stick.  I cooked my cookies for about 25 minutes.  

I personally think they came out great.  They were nice and chewy.  It's a super easy recipe I'll defiantly be making again soon!