Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Hey guys, long time vegetarian here transitioning to vegan, seems like a great place to learn :)

I have a great cookie recipe, and I decided to try to make them vegan tonight for the first time (of course my husband thought I was going to ruin his favorite cookies). Used Earth Balance butter and replaced the eggs with flax seed/water mix.

Took the cookies out of the oven and thought there was no hope, they were runny and greasy blobs with crisp edges. Well, let me tell you, they are DELICIOUS. But is there any way to make them look a little more presentable and make them more cohesive? Should I try a different egg substitute? And why are they so greasy? I did a 1:1 ratio for the butter- do I maybe not need that much? Thanks for your help!

tell us more about your original recipe!!!

just off the top of my head, i find that when i have too much oil/butter in a cookie i get crisp edges. i am not sure i use flax eggs for any cookies except biscotti- often i just use some starch and no egg sub at all. depending on the function of the egg in the cookie the replacement might not even be needed at all. many of isa's recipes use an emulsion of oil/sugar/starch that makes a nice base for a cookie.

You might try ener-G egg replacer. You should also make sure you used the correct amount of flax egg -- it could vary quite a bit depending on the size of eggs you would normally purchase. I've used flax eggs with the substitution on the bag (Bob's red mill) in a chocolate chip cookie recipe (Nestlé toll house with veg shortening instead of butter) and they never came out greasy or runny. If anything they were a bit more firm than usual. Now I use ener-G egg replacer and they are perfect.

I can't comment on the earth balance since I've never used it.

i've had similar issues when using earth balance to bake... total greasy melt-down - hate that stuff.

if you have the time, the vegan butter over at
http://www.veganbaking.net/other-vegan-treats/735-vegan-butter.html#.USV9Mny9KK0
is awesome and is now what i use exclusively. it's based on refined coconut oil which also works pretty well by itself too.

yes, definitely tell us your recipe! we'll be able to help. another good thing to do is to find an existing vegan recipe that is similar and use that as a guide.

How many eggs you were trying to replace with the flax? I've had good luck combining a few egg replacers for multiple eggs. More information about the recipe might help people pin point a better recommendation.

I generally use Ener-G replacer when veganising my old cookie recipes (there are a few exceptions) - I find it is perfectly consistent. Like the Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe never turned out well for me using real eggs, but with Ener-G it's perfect. So weird.

I haven't usesd Earth Balance - Nucoa is what's readily available for me, so that's all I'm familiar with at this point. So I can't comment on the oil part of the equation.