Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipes and Reviews
Mmmmmmmmmm! Chocolate chip cookies. I must admit, they are number 2 on my list of favorite sweet treats. I'll save my #1 for another blog.
Why look for a "healthy" cookie? Yes, I eat well most of the time so splurging on a decadent cookie isn't a big deal. But we like to have cookies around the house for my husband's lunch and my occasional sweet craving. There's the traditional toll house recipe that is loaded with white flour, white sugar, brown sugar and contains eggs. In my whole-food, plant-based world, I wasn't sure I could find a recipe that I would like as much as the traditional recipe.
I look for a few of things when I'm searching for a recipe:
1. Easy to make.
2. Not too many ingredients.
3. Ingredients should be items I'm familiar with or don't have to work too hard to find.
Making sure the recipe is tasty is, of course, important, but I never know that until after I've tried the recipe.
In my search for a new chocolate chip cookie recipe, I have a recipe I'm recommending and a recipe that deserves honorable mention.
Forks Over Knives Lunch Box Chocolate Chip Cookies gets my recommendation because it uses whole-food, plant-based ingredients. If I'm going to have a go-to cookie in my home, I want it to be delicious and as healthy as possible. On to the review.
Flavor: 8 of 10.
These cookies are hearty and require chewing. They don't flatten out as much as a traditional chocolate chip, but that's part of their appeal. The cookie flavor is pretty mild and you can bump up the chocolate flavor by adding more chips.
Ease of prep: 7 of 10.
This recipe has two ingredients I don't regularly keep at home.
Applesauce. Rather than going out and buying applesauce when I only needed 1/3 of a cup, I put half of an apple into my baby-food grinder (food processor or blender would work, too) and processed with a splash of water until it looked like applesauce.
Almond butter. I subbed peanut butter. This gives the cookie just a hint of peanut flavor but doesn't make it a full-on peanut-butter cookie.
This note is not ingredient-related, but one of the reasons this recipe gets a 7 for ease of prep is that the batter is pretty sticky. I usually use a teaspoon and my fingers to scoop cookie dough onto a baking sheet. The first time I tried this recipe I was very frustrated because the dough stuck to my fingers more than to itself. To combat this, I put the dough into the freezer while the first batch was baking. That helped a lot. The second time I tried the recipe, it wasn't as sticky. My recommendation is to use a cookie scoop to avoid the frustration.
One other item of note is that the dough has a tough time holding on to the chocolate chips. You may have to squash the chips into the dough once the cookie is on the tray for some of the cookies. Not a big deal, just different.
Ease of cooking: 9 of 10
Once the cookies are on the sheet, it's just 8-10 minutes for them to cook. They come off the tray easily (I use parchment paper to line the pan). They stay together well on the cooling rack.
Leftovers: Not many. The cookies are yummy and like all chocolate chip cookies, hard to resist. We used them for my husband's lunches for the week.
Overall: 8 of 10
Yummy, hearty and healthy. They might not fool your kids into thinking they're the same as a traditional cookie, but for the kid inside you, you can have your cookie and eat it, too.
Honorable mention goes to these vegan chocolate chip cookies from Chocolate Covered Katie. I won't go into a full review, but the highlights are that these take just about 5 minutes to prepare and are similar to a traditional chocolate chip cookie without the egg. She also uses oil in the recipe and I prefer to use whole-food ingredients.
Now it's your turn. Give one or both recipes a try and let me know how they go.