the essential (boujie) choc chip cookie
Recipe Tuesday | the great cookie quest
My quest for the *perfect* vegan chocolate chip cookie has sometimes felt like a wild goose chase. I would not describe myself as a perfectionist in any other area of life, lazy and careless as I am, but when it comes to cookies my standards for my own produce are unimpeachably high. A cookie, I assert, must be:
chewy/gooey in the middle;
buttery;
crispy around the edges;
sensibly sweet, not sickly sweet; and
contain the right amount of (high quality) dark chocolate.
Since going vegan several years ago, I’ve struggled to nail down a good vegan chocolate chip cookie. Eggs usually do the binding and part of the raising, and without them it’s hard to recreate the texture; vegan cookies often end up with more of a cakey texture than the gooey texture I want, or worse yet, dry and crumbly. Then there is the matter of sugar - I can’t stand anything too sickly sweet, and instinctively halve the amount of sugar in any American recipe, for example, but the sugar is what gives the crispiness and crunch so you can’t throw off the ratios completely. And what about the fat content? A lot of vegan recipes use coconut oil, but I want the buttery taste, and decent vegan butters are relatively new to the mainstream market. Too much, though, and it’ll melt and merge the cookies in the oven, leaving you with one big Frankenstein’s monster of an omnicookie; but too little and they’re dry. Some vegan recipes add weird things like black beans or sweet potato - no hate, but that ain’t it for me. In short, I’ve been wholly dissatisfied with any recipe I’ve tried, be it mine or anyone else’s.
Finally, though, we have it - a recipe I am 100% happy with. I call it the essential cookie recipe because it everybody needs a decent chocolate chip cookie recipe in their repertoire. But that said, I have made it a bit boujie with the sea salt flakes and vanilla bean extract etc, and fully appreciate not everyone is going to have those things lying around. That’s fine, use what you have. And if you like your cookies with nuts or spices or raisins, swap those things in for the chocolate in the same quantities. Now that we’re here, this recipe is your oyster.
Makes c. 12 cookies
Ingredients
115g vegan butter, melted (I used Vioblock)
115g dark brown sugar
85g granulated sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt flakes
1 tbsp vanilla bean extract
3 tbsp aquafaba*
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
200g 70% good quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped (I like Green & Blacks or Divine, which are Fairtrade)
*if your’e new here, that’s the liquid from a can of chickpeas - no need to whip it or do anything fancy here, just add it straight in as it is, weird as it sounds
Method
Whisk together the melted butter, dark brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt and vanilla extract until smooth. Add the aquafaba and whisk again.
Sieve in the plain flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and stir to combine. Finally, stir in the roughly chopped chocolate.
Place the bowl of cookie dough in the fridge and leave to chill for at least 30 minutes. I know, I know, but don’t skip this step!! The butter needs to harden in the fridge or it will melt too fast in the oven and the cookies will spread too much (not today, omnicookie).
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
Scoop balls of dough out onto a greased and lined baking sheet using an ice cream scoop. Space the balls of dough quite far apart to give them space to expand.
Bake for around 10-12 minutes, or until browned around the edges. Leave to cool completely before consuming.
Currently:
Reading: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Eating: couscous salad with a lemon & tahini dressing
Enjoying: Victorian crime novels and ghost stories — niche, but true.