Egg-free/Dairy-free/Nut-free
In solidarity with our children, it's been a good, long time since we've had any nuts. So long, in fact, that while sampling one of these cookies today, we could swear we tasted a certain nuttiness to them. Knowing the ingredients that go into making them, and that the list included no nuts of any kind, was a huge comfort.
These cookies, from the Quaker Oats website, are equally delicious with chocolate chips as they are with raisins, so take your pick, or don't, and use a little bit of both. The original recipe was for chocolate chips, and that's how it's written here. In parentheses, you'll see the substitutions we made for our batch.
As for the "boatload," this recipe makes a ton of cookies! You can easily get 5 dozen from these proportions, so if you don't want that many lying around the house, reduce the recipe by the proper amount to suit your need for a cookie fix.
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound margarine or butter, softened (it's horrifying to think of it as half a pound of butter, but yes, you're reading that right) (and BTW, we used 1/2 of a 16 ounce tub of Earth Balance 100% Vegan margarine)
- 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs (we replaced it with 2 eggs' worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer: 1 tablespoon Ener-G beaten with 4 tablespoons water)
- 2 tablespoons milk (we used vanilla flavored soymilk)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla (we used between a splash and 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract)
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional) (we used it)
- 2 1/2 cups Quaker Oats (quick or old-fashioned, uncooked) (we used quick)
- 2 cups (12 ounces) mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (see note above - in previous batches, 1 1/2 cups of regular sized chips was plenty, and we're chocoholics!)
- 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) (duh, we omitted this, and used an additional 1/2 cup, for a total of 3 cups, of oats to make up for some of the bulk lost to the absent nuts)
Steps
- Heat oven to 375 degrees.
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Mix well and set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat margarine and sugars with an electric mixer until creamy.
- Add eggs, milk and vanilla; beat well.
- Add combined dry ingredients to wet ingredients.
- Stir in oats, chocolate chips, and nuts (but again, we left those out), mixing well.
- Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets.
- Bake 9 to 10 minutes for a chewy cookie or 12 to 13 minutes for a crisp cookie. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets, remove to wire rack.
- Cool completely, store tightly covered.
Update 7/2/08:
I wanted to make a batch of cookies, and these came to mind. If you've been paying attention recently, you know that I'm crazy about calorie burning these days and therefore didn't want too many of these lovelies lying around in the kitchen, beckoning... So, instead of making a full batch, I went for half. I halved all of the ingredients except the flour (because I didn't feel like trying to measure out 7/8 cup of flour) and the chocolate chips. I went with 1 full cup of flour and about 3/4 cup of chocolate chips.
But the important thing here is that instead of egg replacer, I whizzed up some silken extra firm tofu that I had in the fridge from the
Bella Biscotti baking. I measured out 1/4 cup to equal one egg, took the electric beater to it (because I didn't want to make the mini-food processor dirty, and although I don't think it made a significant difference, it probably would have been generally better if I had gone to the extra trouble) and proceeded with the recipe as usual. They turned out great (!) and I will be pulling this rabbit out of my hat again and again.
P.S. According to my calculations, the cookies clock in at about 70 calories each. That's less than 10 minutes on the treadmill per cookie.
