A couple months ago we invited a couple over to our house to have pizza together and watch a football game. We don’t have any family out here in California so I am always looking for opportunities to try and make some close friends. This guy was a work friend of my husband who always said he wanted to get together.

Yada yada yada….we were about an hour and a half into our couple “blind date”, if you will, when they came up with some sorry excuse and “had to leave”. We just got tippy-toed.

Do you remember that episode of Seinfeld where George left a voicemail on his girlfriend’s answering machine that he wishes he wouldn’t have? So he and Jerry go over to her house and George goes back into another room to chat with his girlfriend and distract her while Jerry is supposed to erase the message on the answering machine before she hears it? George and Jerry’s secret code word to each other so Jerry would know that she was coming back in to the room and to abort the mission was “tippy toe”.

Well, unfortunately my husband and I got tippy toed. They had set up this excuse at the beginning of the night and when they realized they’d probably rather be doing something else than hanging out with us old folks and our three kids, he seemed to give a code word and they got outta here quick as a flash! Call me old school but if I’ve committed to hanging out with somebody I’m going to be there for the allotted amount of time. I gotta be honest….it seemed like such a Millennial thing for them to come up with this excuse and leave. Oh well.

We laughed about it and said that hey, if there was one good thing we got out of the night it was the chocolate chip cookies that his wife brought over and a secret ingredient in the cookies she begrudgingly divulged to us.

She starts with the base for THE Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe but here’s the kicker: instead of using the butter it calls for, you replace that with butter flavored Crisco. She claimed that it made them chewier and that you can leave them out for a couple days and they will still taste as fresh as the day you made them, which is indeed true and AWESOME!

So if you’re not interested in the vegan version of this recipe you can call it a night and just remember to use butter-flavored Crisco in the Nestle Tollhouse recipe.

However, here’s the cool part. My daughter is allergic to eggs and as you can imagine that presents challenges with making delicious food, particularly in baking. Now, I’ve always felt that if I want to be the world’s best mom to my children I’ve got to have a knock-your-socks off chocolate chip cookie recipe. It’s Mommy 101 material.

The only other egg-free CC cookie I had tried was anything but desirable. It knocked your socks off, but not in a good way. It was glorified shortbread hockey pucks with some chocolate chips.

Now, after having made a couple recipes with the eggs for my husband and I, I decided it was time to give it the flax-egg challenge and see if this amazing Nestle recipe could work out with a flax instead of a regular egg.

A flax-egg is a staple for any vegan or person allergic to eggs. It works for some recipes and doesn’t for others (brownies were sadly an epic fail :( ). I mixed all my ingredients and said a prayer to the food-allergy gods and hoped for the best!

“Please cut me a break here! Food allergies are hard enough so please at least give me this so I can continue on my quest of being the World’s Best Mom to my little sweeties! My daughter needs this victory. I NEED this victory!”

The results were outstanding! I could NOT tell a difference in taste or texture in these compared with the original perfect Nestle Tollhouse recipe I had used.

These are chewy, yet crispy. They end up being the perfect shape, not flattened out or in golf ball shaped. Just the perfect round, crackled chocolate chip cookie of your dreams! The only difference is that you can see little flecks of the ground flax seed but it just looks like little chocolate chunks or something, so it’s absolutely no big deal at all.

I was over the moon and so happy for my daughter that she can make these perfect cookies for the rest of her life! Now onto perfecting an egg-free brownie! Challenge accepted.

If you have any vegan friends, or anyone you know who is allergic to dairy or eggs, you have to make these for them and give them the recipe. They will be indebted to you for life! My favorite chocolate chips to use that are vegan (as well as free from the top 8 allergens! wahoo!) are from the brand Enjoy Life. I can find these at most grocery stores or of course you can get them from Amazon. I don’t know how in the heck these taste JUST like regular chocolate chips, but they do.

Vegan Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter flavored Crisco shortening

¾ cup granulated sugar

¾ cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 flax seed eggs (2 tablespoons ground flax seed mixed with 6 tablespoons water, mix and let rest for 5 minutes to thicken and become gooey mixture)

2 cups vegan chocolate chips (I recommend Enjoy Life brand)

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Make flax egg in a small bowl and set aside. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. Beat shortening, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixing bowl until creamy. Add half of flax egg mixture and mix. Add rest of flax egg mixture and beat well. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels. Drop by rounded spoonful onto greased baking sheets.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

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