Here I bake again on my own

Dani has abandoned me. First she left San Francisco, and now she has fled the country. In order to drown my sorrows, I am making cookies.

Nic, another baking enthusiast, recently requested that I feature more vegan treats on this old thing. Always wanting to please the fans, I was only too happy to oblige. Vegan baking is an art in which I have dabbled once or twice. However, vegan items usually require various obscure ingredients that require extra work to obtain and/or use. When it comes to baking (and everything), extra work goes against all that I believe in. Furthermore, at the end of the day, non-vegan baked goods are overall pretty stellar, and why mess with a good thing?

Nonetheless, Nic had sent me a vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe that contained almost entirely normal baking ingredients. I was going to have to venture forth into the unknown realm of ground flax seeds, but I was prepared to do this in order to bring Nic's dream to fruition.

I followed Nic's recommendation of using chocolate chips instead of raisins (I mean, duh). In the interest of going hard rather than going home, I also purchased vegan chocolate chips, but unless you or anyone devouring the cookies is a real vegan, any chocolate chips are fine I'm sure.

Dani is in Sweden cookies
(recipe courtesy of Nicsicles, via the internets)

* 1 teaspoon ground chia seeds or 2 tsp. egg replacer powder or 2 tsp. ground flaxseed (being unfamiliar with all these things, I went with the first thing I found in the store, which was the flaxseed)
* 2 tablespoons water
* 1 cup regular oats
* 1 cup white whole wheat flour
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1 cup chocolate chips
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1/2 cup maple syrup
* 1 banana, not too big
* 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Preheat oven to 375˚.

Mix the flaxseed with the water in a small-ish mixing bowl and set aside. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking soda and powder, salt and cinnamon.

Note: Being the genius that I am, I did not read the whole recipe carefully before starting. The bowl I used for the flaxseed and water was far too small for the next instructions so I tweaked them slightly.














Add the maple syrup, vanilla (which was closer to 1 tsp due to my heavy hand and adoration of vanilla) and lemon juice to the flaxseed mixture and mix. Add to the dry ingredients but don't mix yet. In the same small bowl, mash the banana with a fork. Be sure to mash very well in order to avoid banana clumps, because once the banana is added to the mix it is hard to crush it further. Add the liquefied banana to the other ingredients and mix it all up. Lastly, add the chocolate chips and combine.














The original recipe said to line baking sheets with parchment paper, an advice I ignore without fail in almost all recipes. However, after the first batch stuck pretty nicely to the baking sheet, I caved and used some (vegan) cooking spray. This was effective.














Anyway, place the cookies on a GREASED cookie sheet. They don't spread out when they bake, so it is good to flatten them a little before putting them in the oven. Bake for about 9 minutes. Put them on a plate, and share with your non-animal-product-consuming friends.