Lila, who is an old pro at making cookies and intuitively understands the basic "made from scratch" cookie recipe (as opposed to my more commercialized "slice and bake" experience), set to measuring and mixing the dry ingredients in a bowl while I measured out (Earth-Balance non-dairy) butter to melt, set the oven to preheat, and fished out the cookie sheets and parchment paper.
Next, Lila took over measuring the butter and sugar together while I made an "egg" using Ener-G Egg Replacer. Since I was only making one, I used a bowl and fork. It ended up a bit frothy, but a good consistency. I added those and the vanilla and mint extract to the dough. I was surprised to find that the Peppermint extract was clear. Luckily I measured it over an empty bowl, because I set the measuring spoon overflowing, and having that happen over the dough may have resulted in mint-overload.
Lila stirred all the ingredients together, adding the chocolate chips in last. Since we had bad experience in the past with cookies that had too much spread we gave these cookies extra space.
The recipe called for 10-12 minutes in the oven. We checked the cookies at 8 minutes, again at 10 minutes and then took them out of the oven at 11 minutes. It was a little tricky to tell when the cookies were done due to the cocoa powder in the mix. The cookies were dark, and because of that we had no real visual cue of the edges browning. Lila was looking for the cookies to spread as a cue, but they didn't do that either.
We starting taking them off the cookie sheet and onto the wire racks, and discovered that warm, the cookies were very soft. Once we got to the second cookie sheet, I realized I could simply lift the parchment paper, with the cookies still resting on it, and place the whole thing on the wire racks. This ended up working quite well for us.
Thinking ahead to the bakery, we realized we would either need to prepare bundles of cookies, or make larger cookies. We were unsure if making larger cookies would require different baking time, we took the remaining dough, and made 4 large cookies.
We baked these for 10 minutes, then added a minute. When we took them out of the oven, they were still a bit poofy, but they spread nicely as we let them sit. We did leave these on the warm cookie sheet longer than the smaller cookies, and we are keeping in mind that may have affected how the cookies came out (which was utterly delicious and soft, by the way).
The large cookies were a lot softer than the smaller cookies, but first day trial, the larger cookies were still warm. A taste test the following day proved that still held true.
Lila observed the cookies had a good dough to chip ratio, which I agree (important because the dough also had the cocoa power in it), though we may try to cut down the sugar to a scant 1/2 cup granulated sugar, as the cookies became too sweet if you tried to eat more than a single small cookie.
All in all, this was a baking success, and all our friends loved the cookies. I look forward to baking them again.
New tools / ingredients: Peppermint Extract
Recipe used: The Joy of Vegan Baking
Co-baker: Lila
Date: April 15, 2010
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