Almost totally vegan chocolate chip!

This was interesting, for sure. I first attempted this recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance a week ago, but I used vegan margarine spread instead of the regular non dairy margarine. Everything was going fantabulous until I got to the part where you add the flour, making a nice soft dough. I ended up with basically a crumbly mound. I went over the recipe in my head several times, and concluded I must have messed up with the margarine. Tired, I made an easy chocolate cake instead. Sorry, we ate that so fast I didn't get a good pic to blog with. Anyway, so I tried again the other day with real margarine. Again everything was going swell-like, until the part where I added the flour. AGAIN, I ended up with a crumbly-crumb castle. There is nothing in the book that mentions, "oh yeah, and by the way the dough's consistency is in no way similar to that of regular eggy cookies." I was stumped. I followed the recipe perfectly!

I decided at that point, well, maybe this is just the way that these are supposed to be. So I experimented. The first round I just plopped on the baking sheet and kind of smooshed together to form a circular structure. It looked really messy. So with the second round I pressed the dough into a spoon to make little spoon shaped cookies. That looked better at least, but my spoons are a funny shape. So then I got out the big guns- a serving spoon with shell shape to it. That seemed to work well, and those are the ones you see on top there, in the picture.

After all that work, the good thing is that they taste pretty darn good. They are a bit crispy, so I am going to experiment with some recipes to see if I can find a way to make them chewier (I was always a fan of the gooey cookie). Oh, and the reason they are not completely vegan would be the Ghirardelli chocolate chips I threw in there. Yummers.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup nonhydrogenated margarine
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp molasses
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt *if you use salted margarine, don't add the salt!*
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

oven- 350 degrees

taste 7 (my non veggie friends "say" they really liked 'em
prep time 15 min
cook time 10-12 min per batch