This is actually one of the first recipes that got me (Jamie) into cooking! I started making it for club events in college, and people loved it! I experimented a lot with tweaks to get the best consistency, and eventually landed on this recipe here.
Believe it or not, the original source for this recipe is actually the standard Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe -- you know, the one that comes with the chocolate chips! Even if that actual brand of chocolate is awful, I'll admit that their recipe was a good starting place. Of course, we've made quite a lot of changes since then!
Before getting into the recipe, I should talk about chocolate choice. Good quality chocolate is extremely important for the overall flavor of these cookies. I don't want to see any of that Nestle rubbish! I really like to use good-quality dark chocolate, in the 50-70% range, so that the darkness of the chocolate balances out the sweetness of the cookie dough.
Also, to be strictly vegan, you will need to use vegan dark chocolate. I've had pretty good luck with Enjoy Life brand, though it might not be easy to find in stores. And, though not strictly labeled as vegan, Guittard makes some very high quality dairy-free dark chocolate, and I have seen similar from Ghiradelli as well. I won't blame you for using your favorite dark chocolate in these, but keep an eye on it if you are giving these cookies to vegans!
Yield
~40 cookies (2 sheets)
Ingredients
- 88 g vegetable shortening
- 88 g fake butter (e.g. Earth Balance)
- 160 g white (granulated) sugar
- 165 g brown sugar (light brown preferred)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp egg replacer (e.g. Bob's Red Mill brand)
- 1/4 cup water
- 281 g all-purpose flour
- 20 g almond flour (helps with crispiness, but for a nut-free option, sub with regular flour)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ~250 g (about 2 cups or one bag) 60% dark chocolate chips (see note above)
Tools:
- Stand mixer
- Small dough scoop (~1tbsp)
- 2x flat baking sheets
- Parchment paper
- Optional but recommended: Silicone baking mat (e.g. silpat)
Time:
Making dough: 20-30min
Baking: ~30min per batch
Procedure:
- Preheat the oven to 360°F
- Beat shortening, butter, white and brown sugar, and vanilla in the mixer until creamy, about 3-5 mins on medium-high speed.
- Meanwhile, Combine egg replacer and water together in a small bowl, then mix thoroughly with a fork.
- Once the butter and sugar are creamed, add the egg replacer mixture gradually to the mixing bowl while beating at medium speed. Then, beat on medium for another ~2 mins.
- Meanwhile, mix together flour, almond flour, salt, and baking soda in a seperate medium mixing bowl.
- Gradually beat in flour mixture at the slowest possible speed.
- Pour in chocolate chips and mix on low until combined.
- Prepare a baking sheet with a silicone mat, then a sheet of parchment paper on top of it. The silicone keeps the bottoms of the cookies from being burned by the sheet, and the parchment paper provides makes for easy cleanup and also provides extra insulation.
- Spoon cookies onto the pan with the dough scoop. I usually do smaller cookies in a 4x5 grid, but you can also make them bigger and space them further apart.
- Bake for 11-13 minutes, or until all of each cookie has turned golden. If you want, you can prepare the next baking sheet during this time.
- Remove sheet from the oven (the cookies will still be puffy and very soft) and allow cookies to cool and finish cooking on the sheet for an additional ~5 minutes.
- Transfer cookies to a plate/container and repeat until all cookies are baked!
Note 1: It might be a good idea to do a test sheet with only 3 or 6 cookies on it first, to make sure you have the mix right and that your cooking time is correct. This way, you won't lose a good chunk of the recipe if you cook them for too long or something.
Note 2: I strongly advise against trying to cook two sheets in the oven at the same time. It never ends well -- one sheet always gets overcooked on the top and the other on the bottom. With the method described here, you can have one sheet in the oven while the other is cooling and then being populated with new dough, so you can go just about as fast as if you were baking two sheets at a time.
