An American classic.... veganized

I had to take a stab at veganizing a sweet treat. It's time. And what a better place to start than the one and only, the classic Nestle's Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie.

:-O

Aw, it'll be OK.

The 'veganization' agents:

The protagonists.

The forgotten protagonists. (Forgot to include these in the picture above. Oops.)

Perhaps you've lived under a rock your whole life and have never made these cookies. Hey, perhaps you're new to the U.S. For that reason, here's the recipe of this American classic. I, like many Americans, have made these cookies a bajillion times. Enough to prefer them with half the salt and twice the vanilla. Now, that's not veganizing, that's just personalizing.

As far as veganizing:

• 1 cup of Earth Balance vegan butter in place of regular butter
• 2 egg equivalents of Ener-G egg replacer in place of 2 eggs
• vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips in place of regular chips
• 1 1/2 cups vegan sugar (evaporated cane juice) in place of 3/4 c. sugar + 3/4 c. brown sugar
• ~1 tbsp. molasses - to "create" brown sugar in the mix
• butter flavoring - decided to add this after the batter was made to add extra buttery flavor

The rest of the ingredients stay the same.  Procedure also stays the same as the original.

Ready for the oven.

The finished product.

 So here are my thoughts after having veganized chocolate chip cookies for the first time.

1. Vegan chocolate chips taste pretty much like non-vegan ones. They melt really nicely. They just don't have any chemicals derived from animals, milk proteins, whey proteins, etc. But they're pretty much like the real thing.
2. Vegan butter provided the same level of greasy gooeyness as you get in the regular cookies, so texture-wise they weren't lacking in anything. They were still very moist and fairly gooey-chewy.
3. They rose, but not as much as the original cookies can. Now, my dough was room temperature. I have leftover dough which I've frozen, so the next batch will be with cold dough to see if it allows the leaving agents to do their job a little more before the butter totally melts in the oven and brings the cookie down too fast.
4. Taste - here's where the biggest difference was noted. I would add a) more butter flavoring, and b) more vanilla. You don't know the richness of flavor that eggs and butter impart until you've done something like this. I did welcome the molasses, I could detect them subtly and they added a nice depth of flavor. But at the very least, as much as I had already doubled the vanilla, I would maybe have to triple it. That, or use vanilla bean paste - I think this would be a great thing to try. 
5. Egg replacer - I noticed a slight "chemically" after taste. I'm guessing that was the egg replacer. Here's a cookie that may benefit from an alternative, more natural binder rather than this stuff. Maybe some ground up flaxseeds mixed with a little water and/or applesauce, perhaps. 

Overall, not bad at all. For my taste they need a little more depth of flavor, that's all. I'm in the "you can never have too much vanilla" camp, so that's where I'd start. Maybe a little nutmeg, cinnamon.... it needs more notes. But texture-wise, they were still great, chips and all.