Chocolate Chip Cookies: Substituted Edition

My dorm's kitchen can be very convenient. It stocks a lot of baking essentials - such as flour, eggs, white sugar, brown sugar, rice, butter, cream cheese, chocolate chips - as well as baking sheets, bowls, and measuring cups. Theoretically, I can walk in there and make some thing simple from scratch without buying anything myself.

Alas, that doesn't always happen.

As a stress reliever, I wanted to make the gooey chocolate chip cookies that I made JK. As I was gathering ingredients, I realized that the kitchen was out of eggs.

The kitchen is out of eggs?!

I pondered what to do. White Dress' opinion was that it was not worth it to run out and buy eggs, and I agreed. But I had other options, right? After searching online, I found this egg substitution: 1.5 tablespoons vegetable oil, 1.5 water, and 2 teaspoons baking powder for one egg. So far, so good - that is, until I went to add the white sugar and found out that the kitchen didn't have this either.

Seriously?!

Again, after searching online, I figured I could replace the white sugar with brown sugar, even though the recipe already called for brown sugar. I knew I was going to loose some of the great aeration that white sugar gives cookies, but I didn't have much of a choice.

I got stung by the kitchen's lack of supplies when they didn't have salt, and finally when it was time to add chocolate chips. While the kitchen usually has a large bag of chocolate chips that they keep regularly stocked, it wasn't there that night. Sigh. At this point, could I really be surprised? Luckily, I had a cup of semi-sweet chips and a cup of milk chocolate chips left over from making the boyfriend cookies a few weeks earlier.

An interesting property I noticed was that this time, it took a few minutes longer for these cookies to get brown around the edges. Also, due to the brown sugar substitution, they cracked pretty severely.

This is what cookies look like when you have to substitute practically everything in them.

The result? They were passable, but I definitely prefer the original recipe without substitutions. They were a little tough and chewy, and would probably taste best with milk, tea or coffee. The one positive is that these cookies held their shape much better than the previous ones I made for JK, although that may be because I baked them for a longer period of time. 

Spring break is coming up, and I am looking forward to baking with my mother. We usually make a small treat for me the day I leave so that I can bring fresh sweets with me back to university. My mother is a wonderful cook and baker, and I am excited to spend time with her. I just have to get through finals week first!

Until next time!

~Pink Heels