Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookies using Flax Seed Meal
November 12th, 2008 Madhuram Posted in Cookies, Egg Free, Egg Replacements, Food Blog Events, Vegan Baking | 
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After the success of egg free version of the classic chocolate chip cookies (both chewy and crispy), I wanted to try my hands on another American classic the “Oatmeal Raisin Cookies”. I didn’t know then that it’s going to cost me a lot of time and material to find the perfect recipe for an eggless version. I had one recipe in hand from a book called “Cookies”. Since I have baked earlier from this book, I thought of proceeding with a recipe from that book itself. Then I saw that it used 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter, so I thought why not search for a healthy version of the cookies and found one in the net. It used only 5 tablespoons of butter, if I remember right. I proceeded with that recipe, substituting flax seed meal for the eggs in the recipe. I think I went overboard by replacing 1/2 the quantity of all purpose flour with whole wheat flour, because the cookies did not taste any good. I guess it was because of too many substitutions.
After the failure of the first experiment I decided to follow a regular recipe (not the low fat versions) exactly, but only replacing the eggs. So as per my first plan I decided to go with the recipe from the “Cookies” book. Again I used flax seed meal here to replace the one egg in the recipe. The dough came together and the cookies also looked like the store bought ones. I couldn’t wait to taste the cookies. But this time, the sugar in the recipe messed it up for me. It was way too sweet, even for a sweet toothed person like my mother and myself.
I did see a vegan oatmeal cookie recipe in “The Joy of Vegan Baking” book, but it used steel cut oats and I was not able to find it in the grocery store which I go regularly. So I thought why not try a recipe from the “Joy of Baking” website! Found this recipe and I was surprised that the recipe which I had tried out earlier was the same, but for the quantity of sugar. The previous recipe used 1 and 3/4 cups of sugar, whereas this recipe used only 1 cup of light brown sugar. This convinced me to try the recipe because only the sugar was excess in the previous batch. I baked these cookies yesterday and am very happy that they came out very well. Everybody liked the cookies, it tasted just like the ones from the bakery. Who said you need eggs to bake tasty cookies? We were not able to taste the flax seed meal at all. The cookies were chewy and tasted awesome. I can bet that nobody would guess that they are vegan cookies.
Optionals:
Yield: 21 large cookies
2. Cream the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. I used a hand mixer.
3. In a blender, add flax seed powder and water and blend it until it’s foamy.
4. Add the flax seed mixture and vanilla extract to the creamed butter. Stir it well using a wooden spoon/spatula.
5. In a medium size bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
6. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and combine it well using a spatula.
7. Now stir the oats and other optional ingredients you wish to include.
8. Drop the batter by tablespoonsfull 2 inches apart. I used an ice cream scoop.
9. Wet your hands and flatten the cookies so that they are about 1/2 an inch thick.
10. Bake it for 12-15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and the centre is little wet.
11. Remove it from the oven and let it cool in the baking sheet itself for 5 minutes. Then transfer it to a wire rack to cool it completely.
2. I wanted to try baking with vegan butter alternatives for long time now. So I bought Earth Balance Vegan Butter and tried this recipe with that, instead of regular dairy butter. I’m 100% sure that the cookies will come out good with regular butter also, because the original recipe uses the same.
3. I’m not a vegan, I just tried baking vegan cookies, so I have used dairy milk in the photo.
This is my entry for the following events:
1. Suganya’s Vegan Ventures.
2. DK’s AWED – American.
3. Egg Replacement Event – Flax Seed Meal hosted by me.
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Tags: all purpose flour, baking soda, butter, cinnamon, earth balance, Flax seed meal, light brown sugar, raisins, salt, Vanilla Extract, water
November 7th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
I baked these cookies today and they were fantastic!
Thank you so much for posting so many delicious vegan recipes!
You’re most welcome Kumudha. Thank you for giving your feedback.