Dairy Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

The other day I wrote about those wonky lemon bars I made for our friend who can't eat dairy. As I was quite leery about their quality, I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies as a back up. I had seen this recipe for soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies from The Pastry Affair that uses all shortening instead of butter.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity to give the recipe a test drive.

I even got some special dairy free chocolate chips from Trader Joe's.  Which, by the way, don't taste too terribly bad.  I mean they're no Guittard or Ghirardelli, but loads better than no chocolate at all.

The cookies themselves were a lot softer than the standard Toll House cookie.  I assume this was due to the shortening, and the extra moisture from the molasses.

I had a hard time getting over the taste of the shortening in the cookie.  I'm just so used to the flavor that butter brings to a cookie.  Our friend was plenty pleased with the cookies as he had been going without chocolate chip cookies for some time.


Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from the Pastry Affair: makes about 3 dozen
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c brown sugar
1 c shortening
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla 
2 T molasses
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 c flour
1 c semi-sweet chocolate chips (or more- I had a 12 oz bag of chips and I used about half the bag)

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large mixing bowl, blend sugars. Cream sugars and shortening til light and fluffy. Add in eggs one at a time, mixing well between additions. Mix in vanilla and molasses.
In separate bowl, whisk baking soda, salt, and flour. Gradually add flour mix to batter. Stir in  chocolate chips. Scoop cookies onto baking sheet and bake 8-10 min, til top is lightly browned. Remove from oven and leave cookies on baking sheet for a few minutes so the cookies can set. (If you don't do this, your cookies WILL fall apart!) Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

P.S.  These cookies are pretty spectacular made into a sandwich with some Biscoff Spread  smeared between them.  (Not that I would indulge in that sort of thing.) The Biscoff erases any hint of shortening flavor.  Oh and bonus,the Lotus brand Biscoff Spread surprisingly doesn't contain any dairy!