Vegan Baking

I’m meeting a friend of friend tomorrow who’s vegan and I’ve taken making them a presentable chocolate chip cookie as a personal challenge.  Most dietary restrictions don’t affect my baking.  I can easily make a recipe Kosher, or Hilal by avoiding things like jamming pieces of bacon into it (which has only once been a concern).  Vegetarianism is easy if someone’s an ovalactovegetarian which most seem to be.  But vegan, is a problem.  I lose all cream, sour cream, milk, buttermilk, eggs, gelatin (which is rarely called for but near impossible to work around) and many lesser ingredients like many types of chocolate chips as they’re often made with a trace of milk chocolate.

I have two options, either substitute ingredients into a known recipe or go for a tried and true Vegan Approvedâ„¢ recipe.  I boldly Googled the latter and found a recipe that required no crazy ingredients except the slightly rare molasses and made a batch.  What did it substitute for eggs as its binder?  Nothing.  None of the ground flax seed I’d seen used elsewhere or VegaMazing egg substitute (or some other ridiculous name) I recalled seeing on initial searches.  Maybe I’ll extend this tactic of “just don’t include it” and call my stuffing vegan meatloaf or croissants vegan pigs in a blanket.  The cookies weren’t bad and I was glad to find that Ghirardelli’s semi-sweets are animal product-free.  These cookies did come at a cost: Every time I opened the fridge during and after the first batch I could hear the eggs whisper “who do you think you are?” and “traitor”.  Eggs are douchebags.