Delicious and cruelty-free!
Ingredients
2 1/4 cu whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/3 tsp salt
1 cu Earth Balance, Soy Garden or other non-hydrogenated margerine, softened
1/2 cu sugar (I use evaporated cane juice)
1/2 cu brown sugar (I like dark right now)
1/4 cu warm water mixed with 1 T Egg Replacer
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cu vegan chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
Beat together the Earth Balance and sugar in a large mixing bowl. While mixing, add in the egg replacer/water mixture and the vanilla extract. Slowly add the dry mix to the wet mix in the large bowl. I usually have a bit of flour that hasn't mixed in completely, but that is just fine.
Add in the chocolate chips with a spatula, folding in to make them stick. Drop rounded tablespoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9-11 minutes, depending on how soft or crispy you want them. Enjoy!
Makes about 32 cookies (if you don't eat any dough)
Baking Notes
I love the whole wheat flour in this. It changes the texture so it has more substance, which I find very satisfying.
The rounded dough balls on the cookie sheet won't flatten out much, so if you don't want slightly flattened puffy cookies, then press them down a bit on the pan. I've tried both, and Mr. Duck and I both prefer puffier cookies. We also like them baked for only 9 minutes so they are soft and break up into delicious morsels of goodness in a glass of rice milk. Ah, divine!
Moderations
Mixins: Since Mr. Analogduck doesn't really care for chocolate, I usually split the dough in half and add 1/4 cu each of sliced almonds and unsweetened coconut shavings to his. I've even thrown in a handful of date pieces to great effect. They're pretty good like that, which I know because when my chocolate chip cookies are done I usually sneak a few of these!
Flavor Extracts: Today I used only 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract and added in 1/2 tsp almond extract. This flavor puts the quack in the duck and the buzz in the bee if you get what I mean. It's good. Reminds me of drinking the juice from the jars of maraschino cherries as a kid. I mean, I never did that. Ever. Forget I said it.
UPDATE
I just made these cookies a few weeks ago using Earth Balance butter sticks instead of the spread, and I did not like the cookies. They tasted too buttery to me. I'm not sure if I used too much, or always used less in the past, or maybe the sticks taste a lot different than the spread. I have been out of "butter" for a while now since I keep forgetting to pick it up at the store, so I am looking at recipes using oil instead. I'll try to put something together soon.