Eggless Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was craving chocolate chip cookies lately, and I happened to have a recipe that billed itself as "better than sex". I forget where the original came from, but I have it written down as coming from Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit, which does not in fact have a recipe for chocolate chip cookies called "Better Than Sex Chocolate Chip Cookies". 

The ingredients and instructions are pretty much the same, though, so whatever.

VwaV Chocolate Chip Cookies (No, I'm not sure what VwaV stands for. Go google it yourself.)

I halved the recipe, which yielded several cookies. My cookies are not vegan, since my margarine is just whatever was cheapest at winco. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 c butter
• 2/3 c sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp molasses (1/2 tbsp)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/4 c whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• as many damn chocolate chips as you want

 Instructions

• Set the butter out in the sun in the bowl you want to use (don't unwrap it, there are bugs and dust out there) to warm it up to a reasonable temperature.
• Preheat the oven to 350 F.
• Cream together with white sugar until it's nice and fluffy.

Trusty spatulas work for this.

• Mix in molasses and vanilla

I had my doubts about the molasses. It has such a strong smell.

After mixing in molasses and vanilla, the butter mixture should be light brown, about the color of normal cookie dough.

•  Mix in the dry ingredients. I mix them together first, but you don't have to.

This food blogging thing isn't so hard...

Bam! Dough! It will be softer than normal cookie dough. This will result in thin, chewy cookies. If you're a cakey cookie person, add some flour.

 Let the dough sit while you find your chocolate chips. My pantry shelf is a swamp of winco bulk bags, and I bought these before I bought some other stuff. I don't know if the sitting is necessary, but it might give the whole wheat flour time to absorb some moisture.

Chocolate chips. The Hershey's "special dark" ones are actually the cheapest at walmart, beating out Nestle and Tollhouse, not to mention Ghiradelli.

•  Add as many damn chocolate chips as you want. I follow the school of thought that teaches that there cannot be too many chocolate chips in a cookie, but that chocolate chips should be hoarded as much as possible without sacrificing the goodness of the cookie. I used half a bag for this half a recipe. It was about perfect.

That right there... beautiful.

•  Put on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes.

When making a new recipe, I make a small first batch to see how long to cook them, how they spread, if they'll stick, that sort of thing.

 While you're waiting, eat some cookie dough. You know you want to. And besides, this won't make you sick, at least until you eat too much sugar and get diabetes.

No fear of salmonella.

 See, could have packed a lot more on there. I left the first batch in a bit too long, so they're kind of stiff now. 8 minutes is about perfect.

Nicely browned. This batch stuck to the pan a little more than I would have liked, so I greased it for the next batch, which used up all my dough.

This is how they should look when you pull them out for minimum stiffness. Make sure they're a little puffy and not too browned.

Blurry cookies!

I hope you enjoy your chocolate chip cookies that could be vegan if you had fancy vegan margarine. I've made a valiant effort to eat too many of them.
Because they are delicious.

We're Making Sourdough! Day 4, Or "Why You Should Always Keep Whole Grain Flours Around"

Day 4 (10:45): A decent amount of hooch was on the starter, but the starter had bubbled through the hooch and could be seen looking down through the mouth of the jar. The smell was basically the same, kind of fruity and off. I decided to remove about 100 g (it ended up being about 125) and took much of the hooch with the discarded starter. Then I added 50 g each of water and flour, with the flour being probably about 7% whole grain stuff in probably bleached white flour. I stirred in between the water and flour additions, and scraped the sides down with the trusty spatula to prevent mold.

I took this last night a few hours after putting it back in the warm oven. Bubbles! They exist!

The first thing I really thought about this morning.

Hooch... The bane of my sourdoughs.

See how in the middle, it's lighter? That's the starter shining through the clouds of hooch.

I put a line on the jar to show where the starter started, and to see if it got above the line.

That whole wheat stuff is good for starters, it seems. It's the only change I make, and it makes a drastic difference.
Also, my camera eats batteries. I thought it was just the ones I got in England being terrible, because it lasted months on batteries before that, but oh, no. It went through duracells from 'MERICA in less than a day.
My camera is all "OMNOMNOM BATTERIES" and the batteries are all "HELP ME! HELP ME! EEEEEE!" and I'm all "GODDAMMIT I WAS TAKING A PICTURE OF A WAFFLE THIS IS IMPORTANT!"
Oh, yes. Waffles. I will tell you about them, I promise.

So, I watched the starter like a hawk, except for when I was grocery shopping. While grocery shopping, I bought rye flour, whole wheat flour, yeast, other real food that I can eat for a few weeks, and the ingredients to make pad thai (according to Emily from Well Fed, Flat Broke's recipe). I also got batteries, as you can see from there being pictures below, although my camera actually accepted the old batteries again. In any case, I have two new kinds of batteries, some "heavy duty" ones and some "high energy" ones. Even if my camera does start the battery-per-day thing, I'll be good for almost five days.
Back to the starter, whose name is Scott. There were no changes in volume all day, which saddened me.

Day 4 (22:10): No change in volume. No bubbles of starter visible through thin layer of hooch. The smell has returned to sickly sweet and unpleasant. I added 25 g tap water and 50 g rye flour, stirring between additions and scraping the sides well. The resulting starter mass has brown flecks and bubbles.

This was sad, especially after the grand success of the morning. By which I mean the small victory.

There were some bubbles, but all on the hooch and none from Scott.

After the addition of about 75 g worth of water and rye flour, I drew a new line.

Scott is so bubbly right after I add flour... I have high hopes for the rye flour.

If this has produced lots of hooch and next to no bubbles, I'm starting over with rye flour. I'll follow Mihl's instructions over Mike's, too.
If that doesn't work, I'll shelve the idea until I wind up at home and then persuade my mom to help me out.