Dawn's Secret Chippers

These are so good I considered keeping them as a "secret family recipe."  Has anyone ever done that? Several years ago, a neighbor in my old South Philly hood (no, she was not Italian) made these awesome peanut butter candy brownie things.  She gave me some, me likey, me ask for recipe, she no tell me recipe. She said it was a "family secret." It was probably a box mix. I'm no good at keeping recipe secrets.  I am, however, good at keeping other secrets, so feel free to share juicy bits of your life in the comments section.

Dawn’s Secret Chippers

 Inspired by the chocolate chip cookie recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking.

10-12 tablespoons of Earth Balance non-dairy butter (1 stick + 2-4Tbs)

1 ¼ cups sugar (3/4 cup packed organic brown sugar, ½ cup organic white sugar)

2 tsp vanilla extract

4 ½ tsps of Egg Replacer Powder

1/3 cup (6 Tablespoons) of water

2 ¼ cups white whole wheat flour, King Arthur brand preferred*

*Another secret is to substitute ¼ to ½ cup very finely chopped walnuts for the same amount of flour (ex: if you use ½ cup walnuts, leave out ½ cup of the flour). I chop the nuts by hand until they resemble coarse flour, you can also use a food processor to chop for you! People don’t realize they have nuts, but know they taste awesome. Do not use to trick people with nut allergies, though!

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt (yes, a full tsp)

1 ½ cups chocolate chips, choco candy pieces, nuts, etc.

*I like a certain saturation ratio of chocolate chips to plain cookie, not too many and not too few chips, and I find that 1 ½ cups of chips (for me) gives the perfect ratio.

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Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Cut butter up into pieces and put in the bowl of a stand-mixer, which is what I use for this recipe—or, use a large bowl if you are going to use a hand mixer or good ol’ elbow grease and a wooden spoon.  Put the measured butter in the bowl first so it can come to room temp while prepping the rest of the recipe. 

Whisk the egg replacer powder and the water together in a small bowl until creamy and very well combined.  I use my mini whisk (the Whisk O’ Doom) to do this and it works great.

Sift the dry ingredients into a medium sized bowl.

Once butter is soft/at room temp (should be soft after you prepare the egg replacer and the dry ingredients) add the sugar and the vanilla and mix on low speed until creamed.  Add egg replacer mixture to the creamed butter/sugar and mix until well combined.  Add the flour mixture gradually, and mix on low speed until just combined (you will have to stop it and scrape down the sides manually, get dough out of the paddle, etc.), then add chocolate chips. Give it a few more turns to incorporate the chips, scrape all the dough out of the paddle, and you are ready to go.

Use a “medium” oxo scoop (=1.5 tablespoons) to scoop cookies out onto a Silpat-lined, heavy cookie sheet or jelly roll pan.  If you don’t have a Silpat, use parchment or just grease your cookie sheet.  With the flat side of a small measuring cup (I use a ¼ cup or 1/3 cup dry measuring cup for this) dipped in a little flour, press the cookies down a bit on the sheet just so they are flat. They will be ablout ¼ inch thick. 

Bake for about 15-16 minutes on the middle rack of your oven.  You can check your cookies earlier, but mine are never done until about 16 minutes (on my dark cookie sheet) and even 18-19 minutes on my lighter aluminum cookie sheet, just sayin’.  Allow cookies to cool about 4 minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a baking rack to cool completely.

Makes 34 cookies (if using a “medium” Oxo scoop= 1.5 T measure).  

Once cookies are completely cool, wrap each one in foil.  This really preserves the freshness of the cookie and I recommend you do it whether you freeze them or not!  I save the wrappers for the next batch, too. You can then freeze them in a zipper locked freezer bag for quite a while.  Just take the cookie out for about 5 minutes to come to room temp before eating.  We also eat them directly out of the freezer, no problem. 

Enjoy with some freshly brewed tea.

Himalayan tea from The Tea Trekker! 

What's your secret?