This is the third vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe that I've tried. The first was from The Joy of Vegan Baking. It used powdered egg replacer as the eggs. My cookies always turned out flat and kind of gross looking, tough not soft.
My next recipe was a friend's recipe for her delicious, soft, chewy cookies that she would spoil us with in high school. I veganized it by using soft tofu to replace the eggs. My cookies never turned out as big and fluffy as hers used to, but they were chewy and delicious. The only thing about the recipe that I didn't like was the soft tofu. I used less than half of the container of tofu, and it only lasted a couple days in the fridge, so I was always wasting tofu. And, it's not an ingredient I have on-hand, so if I had a craving for cookies, I had to add tofu to my grocery list instead of being able to whip up a batch right away.
This latest recipe is from Chloe's Vegan Desserts and it is my favorite so far. It uses only ingredients that I always have on hand, which makes it easy. I first made them a few weeks ago, and I had to substitute a bit because I wasn't quite as prepared as I thought, and I tried out chocolate chunks instead of chips. The cookies were delicious, soft, and chewy just how I like them. I didn't love the chunks instead of chips, though. They made the cookies wonky shapes and did not distribute the chocolate evenly in each bite.
I wanted to perfect this recipe, so I made it again yesterday, with a few changes. I tried out tiny chocolate chips (even distribution of chocolate) and I chilled the dough before baking (prevents spreading, so your cookies stay thicker). I had two trays of cookies. The first tray I baked for the recommended 12 minutes. They turned out to be a few minutes under-baked. So, I kept the second tray in for longer and they were about 5 minutes over-baked. The photos above are each tray right out of the oven. The cookies look so much bigger right out of the oven, but as they cool they deflate. It always makes me a little sad because I think without eggs you can't get those really big fluffy chewy cookies, but vegan cookies are still just as delicious and have a great chewy texture (if you bake them right).
Below, you can see what each tray of cookies ended up looking like. They're both chewy and delicious, but the under-baked are soft and the over-baked are a tougher kind of chewy, with a bit of a crispy finish. I prefer under-baked to over-baked, but if I wanted to eat raw cookie dough, I would have kept snacking from the bowl, instead of stopping to make it into cookies. I will have to try this recipe again soon, with regular size chocolate chips and the perfect baking time. I'm glad I've finally got a recipe that is easy to put together and gives the perfect result. A good chocolate chip cookie recipe is an essential for any baker.
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