Picture the scene: It’s midnight.  An adorable mid-20s couple wanders into the kitchen in their PJs with the intent of making chocolate chip cookies.  Then, disaster; they discover that they are out eggs.  How this happened, no one knows.  But there’s nothing that can be done about it now.  What do they do?  Do they give up on having cookies?  Do they go to bed without dessert?  No!  They adapt!

“But what did they do?” asks the little bird.

Aaand scene.  Yes, this tale of potential horror and woe actually happened to us a couple of weeks ago.  And this is how we discovered the magic that is using cream cheese in place of eggs in chocolate chip cookie recipes.  The process is really quite simple.  Just use our basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, except substitute 8 oz. cream cheese for the 2 eggs.  You may wonder how cream cheese can replace eggs.  Mainly it has to do with fats and proteins (which is why you can’t use low-fat cream cheese for this).  The result is a cookie that tastes like a chocolate chip cookie, with just a slight tang from the cream cheese.  It’s really not that noticeable at all.  But the cream cheese does make the cookies almost creamier somehow, and keeps them moister longer.  You may find that you like these enough to make them even when you have eggs on hand.

Our knight in shining armor.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 1 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375° and set aside two bowls, one medium and one large.
2. In the medium bowl, add flour, baking soda, and salt together and stir together.
3. Begin creaming the butter, and sugars. Add in the cream cheese and vanilla extract and mix until smooth.
4. Slowly add in flour mix to the batter and beat until it forms a well-blended dough. Add in the chips after and mix slowly until evenly distributed.
5. Spoon the dough into balls onto ungreased baking sheets (preferably with parchment paper) about two inches apart.
6. Bake for 8-12 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Any they went to bed with bellies full of cookies. A truly happing ending.

The only other difference with this recipe is that we found they took a little longer to cook than the version with eggs and did not brown as much.