Back in the 1990’s, I became more mindful of how and what I was eating, and began to consider switching to either a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle. I started off as a vegan, but found that it was too difficult to maintain with my busy travel schedule. After realizing that achieving good health is a compromise of many factors, so I decided to try eating mostly vegetarian meals that also included some fish and eggs (occasionally). It was manageable for me and I maintained this way of eating for 13 years.
My travels took me to many different states, and I always found myself drawn to the food specialty stores of that particular area, especially the health food markets. There was a tremendous food revolution occurring at that time, which ended up paving the way for the many mega (health oriented) food stores we have today.
Although the word organic was used by producers since the 1970’s, it was not until 1990 that acceptable definitions, regulations and enforcement policies and procedures actually came about. I remember seeing more organic, vegan or vegetarian products trickling onto food store shelves as I would make my rounds from one store to another. I also remember trying many of them and being completely unimpressed — most were dry, flavorless and crumbly.
Thankfully, the vegan food culture took hold over time and creatively developed unique ways to replace eggs and/or dairy items in our recipes with outstanding results. Some of this new found knowledge is shared with my readers in recipes like my honey lovers chocolate cake, my vegan German chocolate cake or creating a vegan chocolate mousse using a canned, refrigerated full fat coconut milk.
I was recently doing some research on egg less desserts, and came a blog called Yammie’s Noshery. Yammie is an adorable young woman (American) currently living in Germany with her husband. Her blog does not necessarily specialize in vegan items, but she does offer a few. The item that caught my eye was her recipe for egg less pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I remember the many challenges I had to overcome when developing my pumpkin chocolate chip cookie, and trying to achieve a cookie that tasted like a cookie and not a cake-y cookie.
When I came across her recipe, I was concerned that I would have the same problem, especially since she was using pumpkin puree straight from the can and not pumpkin butter. Little did I know that I would not have a thing to worry about, these cookies are so delicious that you would never know that a few tablespoons of pumpkin puree and a little butter were the only two binding ingredients. The batter has a light pumpkin color that gives the final cookie a beautiful golden appearance — but the texture is right on — slightly crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.
So now you’ve got yourself two really delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that I hope you will make and share with family and friends. It’s so nice to have choices…
Egg Less Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies (16-20 1.5oz cookies)
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
1 cup brown brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 tablespoons pumpkin purée
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda (**I increased from 1/2 teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1 1/2 to 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (**I increased from 1 cup)
NOTE: Instead of adding the ginger, nutmeg and cloves, I added 1/2 teaspoon of pumpkin spice
This recipe does not require a mixer, and is very easy to mix together by hand in a large bowl. Combine the butter with the brown and granulated sugar and mix well together. Add in the vanilla and pumpkin puree and mix until smooth. Sift all of the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and sift into the wet ingredients. Add in the chocolate chips and mix until everything has been incorporated.
Scoop uniform balls of cookie dough out onto a parchment lined sheet pan and bake at 350ºF for about 10-12 minutes, until they start to puff up.
The edges may or may not take on a little color (mine did not, but Yammie’s did). My indication to remove them from the oven was when they were puffed up, did not appear raw on the top and when you gently touch the edges, they felt firm and set. Remove the tray from the oven and the cookies will cool and deflate. Allow them to cool completely before removing them from the pan.
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