Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

A close-up...see that chocolate melting?

 I have made these over and over since I first discovered them in the summer. They are so very delicious as chilled cookie bars...mmm. I've made it with both turbinado and granulated sugars (and brown, for that matter), and while the turbinado adds a good crunch to these, I personally just like them with regular old sugar...hahaha because I don't normally have turbinado sugar at home, I used up all the little sugar packets we had saved up from Starbucks, etc...I got a full cup of sugar that way, though it took a while! It was a nice treat, and since it was for a birthday present, I didn't mind taking a little extra time to try it out.

These are slightly oily, more so as bars because probably the oil pools a bit or something...oh well, if you chill them they're totally fine. Excellent, even.  These are my favourite no-butter chocolate chip cookies :)



Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars (link goes to the original cookie recipe)

2 cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar (or turbinado, if you want some crunch)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup dark chocolate chips/chunks (make sure they're vegan, if you're making it that way!)
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup almond milk (or soy, but almond has better flavour, in my opinion)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp dark molasses (I just used plain ol' honey)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips.

3. In another bowl, combine the vegetable oil, milk, vanilla, and molasses.

4. Add the wet mixture to the dry and mix well with a wooden spoon or your hands to get the mixture well incorporated.

5. If you're making bars, just plop the dough (which is quite compact for bars...) into the parchment-paper-lined pan...no need for extra oil or greasing! Smoosh the dough around with a spoon so that it looks somewhat like a square or rectangle...I'm not sure that it will spread to the edges by itself, but it does spread a little bit especially near the edges.
OR for cookies, roll dough into compact balls, place on a parchment paper-lined pan, and squish them down to form saucers.

What it should look like by the end of baking...

6. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes*. Let cookies cool for 5 minutes on the pan before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe yields about 20 cookies or a 9x13in pan of cookie bars.

*Ermm I made the bar-cookies a while ago so I've forgotten the exact baking time for them. For cookies, it's 8-10 minutes. For the bars, I didn't know how long they would take myself, so I just kept checking after 10-12 minutes...I'm pretty sure they were done before 20 minutes though. If I get a chance to bake these again soon (which may not be for a while yet because I've got tests galore), I'll update the baking time!

A last shot...look how it's all perfectly golden-brown and chock-full of chocolatey goodness!