What Vegans Eat: Chocolate Chip Cookies

People think that vegans can barely eat anything, and that the things they can eat are incredibly weird. So I'd like to start a series of posts entitled "What Vegans Eat" to dispel these horrific rumors. The other day I made a batch of utterly normal chocolate chip cookies. The only thing abnormal about them was that the yum-factor was out of this world. Below is a pictorial documentation of the event, in which the subject (me) demonstrates how easy being a vegan cookie monster can be.

Step One: Grab your copy of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar by Isa Chandra Moskowitz  and Terry Hope Romero, the goddesses of vegan cookbooketry. Then open it to the first recipe in the book: "Chocolate Chip Cookies." Note that the name  of the recipe is not "Carob Chip Gluten-free Oaties" or "Hemp Seed Granola Squares."

Step Two: Gather your ingredients. This recipe calls for brown sugar, white sugar, canola oil, almond milk, tapioca flour, vanilla, flour, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips. You can buy everything from the grocery store, except the tapioca flour, which is used as a binding agent in place of egg. Don't freak, you can always just use cornstarch. Also note my excitement to discover that the generic organic chocolate chips from Dominicks are vegan, saving me a the hassle of chopping Bakers chocolate or busing it to Whole Foods. Also, if almond milk frightens you, you can use soymilk, which is becoming less and less terrifying to mainstream eaters every day.

Step Three: Put on your bitchin' apron. Pre-heat the oven, and grease the cookie sheets.














Step Four: Put on your cookie-bakin' music, in this case, Pepi Ginsberg:

Step Five: Mix your sugars and your liquids vigorously until it turns into an amazing caramel-like goo. Do it with a fork so that you can't slurp it all up with a spoon at this point, because you kind of need this mixture for the cookies you are about to bake.

Step Six: Add the flour, baking soda, and salt, a.k.a "The Science." Think about the amazing chemical reactions that are happening, throw back your head and shout "Muahahahahaha!!! I am a god!"

Step Seven: Add those Safeway Organic chocolate chips, which really are probably the best vegan chocolate chips you've ever tasted. Mark one in the Dominicks column in your Jewel v. Dominicks Competition Spreadsheet.

Step Eight: Interrupt your husband so that he, too, can marvel at the amazingness of these chips. Take the bag away before he eats them all.

Step Nine: Drop the cookies onto the cookie sheets and pop those babies into the oven.

Step Ten: This is probably the most important step. Give your husband a spatula and let him scrape every last drop of the cookie dough out of the mixing bowl. This both raises his spirits and makes one less dish you have to wash.

Step 11: Take the cookies out of the oven, and let them cool. Break a few and get melted chocolate all over your face by trying to eat them too soon. Get all smug knowing that they could not have come out any better if you had used eggs and dairy milk.

Step 12: Get confirmation. "These are some damn good cookies."












See, that's really it. Twelve easy steps to vegan chocolate chip cookies. I didn't use seaweed or tofu. I just used basic cookie ingredients and a lot of vegan love. And that's one thing that vegans eat more than anything else. Love.