Eggless Experiment #1 - Hemp Seeds

First of all, that workout yesterday didn't even feel like exercise but Kayleigh and I are both very, very sore today!  My arms hurt the most but my back, legs, shoulders, basically my whole body, is feeling the pain today.  Now on to the real post.

I am always writing down various egg replacement suggestions as I come across them.  I decided to pick a recipe and try several of the options to see which one works best.  Kayleigh is going to help and Bill volunteered to be a taste tester (what a sacrifice!).

I selected this chocolate chip cookie recipe because it doesn't make too many cookies and it calls for only one egg.  Usually with egg substitutes, the more eggs you are replacing, the less effective they work.  We might take the top two from this experiment and try a recipe with more eggs in it.

I'm not sure where this recipe came from originally.  When I moved into an apartment for my junior year of college, my mom typed up several recipe cards for me and this was one of them.  These are chewy cookies, not cake-like.  Here is the original recipe:

Chocolate Chip Cookies - Original Recipe

2/3 C margarine
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 C chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Mix margarine, sugar, brown sugar, egg and vanilla thoroughly.  Stir dry ingredients together.  Blend in.  Mix in chocolate chips.  Drop by rounded teaspoonsful about 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet.  Bake 8-10 minutes.  Cool before removing from sheets.


First of all is "teaspoonsful" a word?  That is what is on my card.  Anyway, you get the idea.  Also, we used parchment paper on the pan.

We get these from amazon.

So this time we chose to substitute the egg with 1 tablespoon of hemp seeds and 3 tablespoons of water.  We used room temperature water (it is freezing here right now so our room temperature is a little colder than usual).  We mixed the water and seeds together in a bowl and left them sit for a couple minutes but I don't think this is necessary.  The seeds didn't seem to soften during that time.

In case you don't know what hemp seeds look like.

 

First we tasted the unbaked dough because that is our favorite part.  We all agreed that the taste, texture, and appearance of the dough was the same as always.  After baking the cookies, we didn't notice any difference in the appearance.  The taste of the warm cookies was a little gummy but once they cooled, we couldn't tell any difference from a traditional chocolate chip cookie.  



Overall we rate this as a success.  They were easy to substitute, didn't change anything about the cookie and we always have hemp seeds on hand because I use them in my morning smoothie.

Here are some pictures of the process (although I'm pretty sure everyone knows how to make chocolate chip cookies!).

I love these blue bowls I'm using to pour the dry ingredients into the mixer.  They collapse so that you can pour everything into that small space without it going all over the counter.  I don't know what they are called but I think I got them from chefscatalog.com.

Next week we are going to try chia seeds.