Homemade Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Snow days are becoming a bit of a routine here in Little Rock this year. We woke up to 3 inches of snow this morning! And while neither one of us were necessarily excited about it because it meant both of our Saturday plans were now cancelled, we've taken the forced home-bound time to enjoy some coverage of the Olympics and accomplish a few productive tasks we wouldn't have done if we'd been out and about today.

For example, I baked a batch of cookies while David updated his resume.

There are a few foods we try to keep out of our diet (egg, dairy, corn, and soy being the top four). Why? In short, our bodies just don't respond well to them. 

I have this delicious cookie recipe by Giada De Laurentiis for Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies. But, it calls for an egg and a stick of butter (dairy). I've never attempted to make these cookies with substitutes before, but on this cold, wintery day, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies sounded really, really good. 

So, I went for it. Here is the recipe and my substitutions to make these cookies dairy free, soy free, and egg free. 

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1 large egg (or substitute 1 T ground flaxseed and 3 T water)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp fine sea salt

1 stick unsalted butter @ room temperature (or substitute 8 T Earth Balance soy free/dairy free spread or 8T coconut oil - I used Earth Balance with this batch)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract*

2 cup old fashioned oats

1 cup dried cranberries* 

1 4 oz. 60-72% chocolate bar, chopped into chunks (or substitute 1/2 cup Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolate chips if you can't find a chocolate bar that is both dairy and soy free)

*Optional

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In stand mixer, beat butter and sugars together till light and fluffy, about 1 minute. (It took mine more like a minute and a half to get light and fluffy.) And egg and vanilla beat till smooth. With machine running, gradually add flour mixture. Add oats, cranberries, and chocolate chunks. Mix. Using a 4 oz cookie scoop, scoop slightly rounded mounds of dough into 12 balls. Put 6 balls each on a cookie sheet. Use the back of a spoon to flatten the tops slightly and bake 13-15 min. (If you choose to use my substitutions, I recommend not baking longer than 13 minutes unless you like your cookies more on the crunchy side, in which case, bake for 15 minutes.)

So, how did my substitutions pan out? (Pan.. chuckle, chuckle...)

Really well! I can't honestly claim that my modified cookies are as good as Giada's originals, but for dairy free/soy free/egg free, they're really good!! Let me know if you have any other tried and true substitutes by commenting below!