Stella's Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies (Feeding That Darn Cat on A Hot Tin Roof at Midnight)

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you all here and tell the story like it happened. It was nine o'clock or so last night and I was nursing a mighty craving--I needed a dessert fix. Not an ice cream sort--though there's been aplenty of ice cream eatin' going on--but I craved a hot-from-the-oven-with-a-tall-glass-of-ice-cold-soymilk kind. The temperature reached near one hundred yesterday--heat index was up over the hundreds. This is not Texas or New Mexico--we're in the hilly part of the Ozarks in the middle of the Eastern side of Missouri--WHAT, I ask, is going on?

I hunkered down and kept cool with my canine kids, crochet project and new quilt I'm working on at hand. (I've even gone so far as to put up a quilt wall for 'workshopping' quilting ideas in my lair--I'll do a post about such matters later.) I like toggling back and forth between small motor skill action and big motor skill action.

I wouldn't say I'm the world's best cookie maker, but I am maybe one of the top one hundred. . . thousand or so. (Seriously--the blogs of bakers I follow AMAZE me!) But, the truth is: I can bake, too. I'm not shy about saying so. Mistakes aside, when it works, it works--what can I say? I haven't met a cookie I didn't like. (For that matter, I haven't met a cake I didn't like either.)

So last night. . . given that our air conditioner had not shut off since about three in the afternoon, I actually found the chilly air in the house--thermostat set at 78, then 76 or 75 at night--a bit, well cool for my liking. Imagine that--me, a living heat machine with my menopause moments so crippling I would swear my hot flashes could power the city of New York. So I went out onto the screened-in porch to take in some night air (or some of the 'wet sauna-type' air) then quickly thought better of that idea and instead, headed for the pantry to hunt down some chocolate chips and flipped through a few cookbooks to come up with a nice new variation on a chocolate chipper. On went my oven--350 degrees in 100 degree temperatures. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do--at least the sun had gone down already. 

I am a huge Tennessee Williams fan. I love his sassy and scrappy theatrics. I love he's from St. Louis. I especially love Cat on A Hot Tin Roof--all that Southern pent up frustration, all that desperate longing and fist holding--mad at the world. That's how I felt yesterday: mad at the world. For what--for this damn heat, that's what! I bet it was damn hot when Tennessee Williams wrote the play.  

So I decided to name these vegan chocolate chip cookies after one of my favorite characters of all time: Stella Kowalski. These cookies were the best. I am not just saying that because I can and because this is my blog--I'm saying so because it's the truth. I was quite impressed. I had a twist I added to the dough to bring a "healthy" aspect to them--I used part whole wheat white flour vs. using all unbleached all-purpose white flour. Then a small amount of almond extract--and the usual suspects of vegan-izing all baking: Ener-G egg replacer and no butter. These rock. I ate four last night. . . in case you're wondering--then one for breakfast--along with my Eat to Live Greenie Smoothie. 

Stella's Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

(Adapted from The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies by Tami Jewett in The Baker's Dozen Cookbook)

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 teaspoons of Ener-G Egg Replacer mixed with 4 tablespoons of warm water (equivalent of 2 eggs)

3/4 cup Florida Crystals sugar

1 cup light brown sugar

1 1/2 sticks of unsalted vegetable margerine, chopped up into small pieces

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

1 cup vegan chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. First, always prep the vegan egg replacer. It could be ground flax mixed with water or you could use the short cut method I prefer: Ener-G egg replacer--because I love that stuff. Begin the sifting of dry ingredients together--you know: a bowl, the flours, the salt, the baking soda--sift all really well. Set aside. Then the wet ingredients. In a larger bowl, using a hand mixer--blend both the sugars with the chopped up pieces of veggie margerine. Make sure you take this to the creamy state. Now, add you egg replacer to this creamy mixture, then the two extracts. Carefully, and in three separate batches, add the flour mixture to this. Mix just until the dough is all piecy and mostly wet. Don't overmix the cookie dough! Finally, fold in the chips with a spoon. Be sure to scrape down the sides. Take about a golf ball size amount of dough and place them two inches apart on the lined cookie sheets. Bake one tray at a time for about 12 minutes. Do not over bake these! Remove from oven and allow to cool on the cookie sheets. If you see a little golden color around the edges, get thee cookies out of thee oven immediately--you are close to the edge there with over doing it! Enjoy!