This is the best recipe for vegan chocolate chip cookies you will ever find. Soft, chewy, and melt in your mouth delicious, they are everything you could ever want in a chocolate chip cookie recipe!
The Best Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
No flaxmeal
No chia seeds or egg replacer
Just 9 ingredients
No chickpeas
This is my tried-and-true best vegan chocolate chip cookies recipe that both vegans AND meat eaters love. Try the recipe out on all your friends.
How is it possible that these secretly vegan cookies taste so much like regular traditional chocolate chip cookies? It’s because the cookies are made with ONLY traditional chocolate chip cookie ingredients!
You may also like these Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
Homemade chocolate chip cookies have been one of my favorite desserts for as long as I can remember.
Give me a choice, and I’ll choose chocolate chip cookies over cake or candy any day of the week. Even before I was tall enough to see above the kitchen table, I earned the nickname Cookie Monster.
Any time there were cookies around, I would be sure to find them.
So it makes sense that, upon going vegan, they were one of the very first recipes I veganized, along with these Vegan Pancakes and Vegan Cinnamon Rolls.
No one who tries the recipe can ever believe these soft and classic chocolate chip cookies are actually vegan!
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Ingredients
The one bowl recipe is easy to make using basic ingredients, with no almond flour or applesauce, and no coconut oil required.
For the flour: Try the cookies with spelt flour, oat flour, or regular white all purpose flour. I have not tried using whole wheat flour so can’t vouch for that substitution. Be sure to leave a comment with results if you do try.
The fat source: Options that work include sunflower, coconut, or vegetable oil. Or sub a full fat vegan butter spread such as Melt Organic, Miyoko’s, or Earth Balance.
For the sweetener: Feel free to experiment with different types of sugar or sugar free alternatives such as xylitol or granulated erythritol.
You can also just use all of one type of sugar instead of two. The resulting cookies might be crunchy or spread more, or they might need more or less time in the oven, but edible baking experiments are the best kind of experiments!
*For keto chocolate chip cookies, try these Keto Cookies
Is Chocolate Vegan?
And are chocolate chips vegan? I’m asked these questions quite often, and thankfully the answer is that yes, chocolate itself is vegan.
While milk is sometimes added, there are many brands—even some generic grocery store brands—of vegan chocolate chips and chocolate bars that are becoming much easier to find.
If you want to seek out vegan chocolate chips at a regular grocery store, the best place to start is the natural food aisle. Most regular grocery stores should have a natural food section. Just ask an employee if you’re not sure where it’s located.
Look for one of the following brands: Enjoy Life, Simple Truth Organic, Target Simply Balanced, Lily’s Sweet Stevia Sweetened, Kirkland semi sweet (Costco brand), Guittard semi sweet or extra dark, Equal Exchange, Scharffen Berger dark chocolate baking chunks, Trader Joe’s semi sweet, Sprouts semi sweet, or Pascha.
(Note: Some of these packages say “may contain milk” on the label because the chocolate chips are made in a facility where non-vegan products are also produced.
Most vegans still consider such products to be vegan, but of course it’s a personal choice, especially if the reason to avoid milk is due to an allergy. At press time, Enjoy Life and Pascha brands are certified dairy free, gluten free, and soy free.)
Where Can I Buy Vegan Chocolate?
As mentioned above, you can find vegan chocolate chips at many regular grocery stores. Other good places to look include Whole Foods, local health food stores, Amazon, or iHerb.
Sometimes online stores will offer a lower price. If nothing else, you can always chop up a chocolate bar to make your own chocolate chips!
There are too many vegan chocolate bar options to list them all here, but some of my favorite fair-trade options include Theo, Pacari, Taza, Loving Earth, and Endangered Species brands. And there are so many more.
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How To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies
Gather all of the cookie ingredients as well as a medium mixing bowl.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips in the bowl. Stir well.
Add the nondairy milk, oil, and pure vanilla extract. Stir to form a cookie dough. It will be dry at first, so just keep stirring and it will suddenly turn into cookie dough.
Press the dough into one big ball. Refrigerate at least two hours or overnight, or freeze until the dough is cold.
Once chilled, preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Roll chocolate chip cookie dough balls, and place the balls on a greased cookie tray. Leave enough room between cookies for spreading when they bake.
Cook for eleven minutes on the oven’s center rack. The cookies will look underdone when you remove them from the oven. This is what you want, because they continue to firm up considerably as they cool.
Let the chocolate chip cookies cool for at least ten minutes. If for some reason the cookies don’t spread enough (climate sometimes interferes), simply press down with a spoon after baking.
Storage And Baking Tricks
- If you’d like to freeze the cookie dough to have on hand whenever a chocolate chip cookie craving hits, roll into balls and freeze in an airtight container for up to three months. When ready to bake, there’s no need to thaw the cookie dough first. Just add an additional 1-2 minutes to the cooking time.
- For soft chocolate chip cookies, store leftovers in an airtight plastic container, and add about 1/4 slice of bread if you have one, which helps keep the cookies soft. For crispier cookies, store in a glass container. Baked cookies will last for 2-3 days.
- I’ve made these cookies so many times, and climate can definitely affect the shape and texture of the results. But despite not always looking the same, each batch has always tasted ridiculously delicious. I’ve never made a bad batch yet.
- The vegan chocolate chip cookies are great for lunchboxes or parties where someone else is hosting and you need a portable vegan dessert that you can take from point A to B without a mess.
- Over one hundred more dairy free and plant based vegan cookie recipes can be found by visiting the following page: Healthy Cookies Recipes
Above, watch the vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe video
The recipe was adapted from these Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup white, oat, or spelt flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar, unrefined if desired (For no sugar, try these Breakfast Cookies)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar or coconut sugar
- 1/3 cup chocolate chips
- 2 tbsp milk of choice, plus more if needed
- 2 tbsp oil or melted vegan butter
- 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl, then stir in wet to form a dough – it will be dry at first, so keep stirring until a cookie-dough texture is achieved. If needed, add 1-2 tbsp extra milk of choice. Form into one big ball, then either refrigerate at least 2 hours or freeze until the dough is cold. Once dough is chilled, preheat oven to 325 F. Form dough balls, and place on a greased baking tray, leaving enough room between cookies for them to spread. Bake 11 minutes on the center rack. They’ll look underdone when you take them out. Let them cool on the baking tray 10 minutes before touching, during which time they will firm up. If for whatever reason the cookies don't spread enough (climate can play a huge role), just press down with a spoon after baking. You can also choose to make extra cookie dough balls and freeze them to bake at a later date. I can only vouch for the flours listed, but feel free to experiment!View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
Vegan Dessert Recipes
I LOVE your recipes, your cookbook, and your blog!
I have made so many of your recipes, some repeats, and plan to make more. They have not disappointed!
I did want to point out though, that Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet chocolate chips do contain milk in them now. 🙁 They started adding milk in them almost a year or so ago. So disappointing!
I LOVE the Enjoy Life chips though! I’ll have to try the others sometime. 🙂
Thank you again for such amazing recipes!
Thanks so much for letting us know. The packaging we checked online must have not been updated. How disappointing, and a confusing step backwards, that they would add milk to a product that was fine without it.
Jason (media relations)
Whole Foods brand dark chocolate mini chunks did the SAME thing! WHYYYY
Trader Joe’s semi sweet chocolate chips are dairy free I believe! And they have several dark chocolate bars that are vegan for the same price or cheaper than chips!
Chocolate is super expensive right now, as you know. Doesn’t surprise me that a large company would scale back their recipe and dilute it with milk. Candies, cakes, confections, etc. have all been reformulated by big companies to maintain profit margins.
So I’m confused….are you suppose to use a 1/2cup of sugar or a 1/4cup of sugar????
Nope, just 1/4 cup white sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar 🙂
Isn’t brown sugar also processed with bone char? Is tbere an easy substitution or brand that you use?
https://www.peta.org/living/food/is-sugar-vegan/ 🙂
You can make brown sugar by using raw sugar and just a couple of drops of molasses. The more molasses the darker the sugar
The brand Zulka has plenty of vegan sugars!
Brown sugar can be vegan, too. It’s essentially sugar with molasses added to it. Whether any sugar is vegan or not depends on if it’s been filtered through animal based ingredients or has them added such as a flavoring. Often, it’s animal bone char. So, if the brown sugar has not been made with this then it’s vegan. By default, any organic, raw, beet sugar or unrefined sugar is vegan. This articles explains in detail: https://tofubud.com/blogs/tips/is-brown-sugar-vegan
These vegan chocolate chip cookies look AMAZING! I love your original healthy chocolate chip cookies recipe so will have to try these too. You can never have enough chocolate chip cookie recipes!
Totally making these cookies tonight!
Paige
These look very good and I really enjoy the fact that they are made with traditional ingredients. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a serious fan of your bean brownies and blondies, but sometimes you just want to stick with a recipe similar to your mother’s.
If I were to substitute almond flour, would the recipe work? I understand that the texture would be different.
Have a wonderful Monday night.
You never know unless you try! If you do experiment, be sure to report back!
Isn’t it the best when a vegan or healthy recipe tastes just as good (if not better!!) as the original AND nobody else can even tell?! You can simply never go wrong with chocolate chip cookies!
Those look so gooey and delicious! And I LOVE Enjoy Life’s vegan chocolate chips (or chunks). They’d be perfect in this.
I live in rural Wales and cannot find any vegan chocolate chips near me. I just buy a dark chocolate bar that is vegan and carefully cut it into small chip sized chunks. I will definitely be making these soon!
Any chance there’s a Sainsbury’s anywhere within reach? Their dark chocolate chips are vegan. (I’m aware it’s a long shot but figured just in case it’s helpful!)
Hi Heather, I buy the dark chocolate chips from Tesco and they are vegan and delicious. I recommend them if you have any Tesco nearby.
Hi, is there any way you could put the actual recipe at the very top of the post? I realize there are people who love seeing 19 photos of the same thing from different angles lol but some of us just want the recipe! Thanks!
So some of you should just scroll down. :p
Eh I agree that either the recipe should be higher on the page or have a jump to link. The photos are great, but the recipe is what we are all here for.
I feel the same. Don’t know why all food bloggers use this irritating format. Wastes my time scrolling through photos that don’t add anything to the story.
If its that frustrating come up with your own recipe and stay off these sites! Have a great day!
She provides the recipes for free. ._. I think she’s earned her fun of waxing poetic and lots of pictures. It only takes two seconds to scroll through if you’re not interested in reading the post or looking at photos.
Maybe try saying ‘thankyou’ instead of complaining about getting something for free? @_@ I’m so baffled about your post, honestly. Not even mad. Just puzzled that it’s possible to have your attitude.
Exactly! Thank you for your comment! I can’t believe how much irritating dôme people can be! Gratitude people.
I agree! @Missa
Exactly! I always read the entire blog! I enjoy reading about them! I respect and love the fact these amazing chefs post their recipes for us to enjoy free of charge! <3 NO complaints here!
baffled? try saying thank you? your passive aggressive response is unnecessary. most bloggers welcome feedback – honest feedback – about everything. why do you feel a need to correct or shame honest feedback?
shut up
Agreed. I often load these pages on my phone and it takes a while and extra scrolling. I often just go back and try another site that has what I want- just the recipe and a picture (or a *few*). Thats what I came for. At least she doesn’t do that crazy food blogger “when I was a kid” bs
It’s so they can make money on ads throughout the text. It’s worth it to support an entrepreneur and not have to come up with your own recipes. I think it’s annoying too, but most people aren’t going to make a food blog for everyone out of the goodness of their hearts. They are trying to provide for themselves and their families. Just look at it like cross marketing placement in a grocery store. Maybe click on some links that appeal to you and feel good supporting a woman’s business.
It actually has to do with Google’s search algorithm. There wordiness makes it come up
It also helps with google’s “time on page” metric. If people spend more time on a web page, google assumes they have found the information they were searching for.
I am more of a chocolate chunk person, so what I like to do is to chop up a bar of 70% dark chocolate and just stir it in the dough. It works perfectly! This batch of chocolate chip cookies could not be more simple, and I love it. The dough probably tastes delicious too!
I am a person who cannot follow a recipe. I always think of some ingredients not listed. In this case I used a little almond butter, medjool dates for sweetner along with Sukrin. I have been vegetarian 20 years and now vegan for 2 years. I don’t need much sweet for things to taste sweet.
Very tasty recipe. No refined sugar for years.
I love this. Minimal or no processed sugar is what I am aiming for but I’ve got quite a way to go to make all our old recipes vegan and sugar free (or to replace them with healthier versions).
Do you know how much you used? I always have to follow a recipe.
Kroger has organic chocolate chips that are accidently vegan, as well as 72% cacao chocolate chunks.
Do I have to refrigerate the dough? Don’t feel like waiting! 🙂
They come out thinner and crispier if you don’t, but if that’s what you want then definitely go ahead!
I tried this recipe today and they turned out paper thin and not cooked all the way through. I put the dough in the fridge for 2 hours. Could it just not have been cold enough? They taste super gooey and delicious though.
What specific ingredients (sugar, flour, oil, etc) did you use? Impossible to know without this info!
Hello this recipe looks delicious. You stated you used oil, what kind of oil did you use?
Melted coconut, canola, vegetable, or suflower oil all work!
OMG! Best vegan/gluten free chocolate chip cookies I have ever had!! I ran out of milk so I used water… I don’t do reg sugar so I added 1/2 maple syrup… ran low on vegan butter so I mixed with olive oil. SO DELICIOUS! They taste like grandma’s homemade cookies.
Has anyone tried using ALL coconut sugar (instead of part cs, part regular)? How did they come out?
The texture will be different ad they might spread differently, but taste-wise it should work. Be sure to report back if you try!
I make these with regular coconut sugar and brown coconut sugar and they come out perfect every time. I measure by weight (48grams of each) which I think makes it more consistent.
I made it with coconut sugar only and it came out great.
I’ve made this recipe twice in the last week and doubled the recipe the second time around, they were that good! I used blended gluten free oats for my flour and coconut oil for the oil. I used Pascha 85% cocoa chocolate chips which are both gluten free and vegan. The first time I chilled the dough, second time I didn’t want to wait, and I did not notice any major difference in the outcome, so I’ll just skip the chilling from now on. I brought them to a party and everyone loved them and no one could believe they were vegan. I usually make oatmeal cookies, but these will definitely be added to my cookie rotation. They come out soft, chewy and gooey and so delicious, thank you for this amazing and super easy recipe!
Freakin delicious
I live at 5,000 foot altitude and I want to make these rather badly!! Would I need to make any adjustments at all? Any advice would be most appreciated!!! XOX
Unfortunately we don’t have any experience at all with high altitude baking, but please do report back if you experiment!
Jason (media relations)
We live in the north Denver Metro area, and I’m an experienced baker. For most cookie recipes you shouldn’t need to alter the recipe much, in my experience cakes/cupcakes from scratch are the trickiest to get right at higher altitudes like ours. I’ve made many of Katie’s recipes on here and so far haven’t needed to make any changes for the altitude so you should be good to make these as-is.
I used sprouted spelt flour, myokos vegan butter and Enjoy chocolate chunks. I am also at altitude in the north Denver area. I did not notice a difference at altitude. They didn’t spread as much but I suspect that’s because of the sprouted spelt. Still absolutely delicious! Will definitely make these again!!!
Which milk did you use please
So delicious as always! I literally was never able to make a healthy dessert successfully until I found your blog and now they turn out every time and are amazing xoxoxo
P.s. the cookie dough by itself is fantabulous
These were a hit at home and at work! I’ve never used coconut sugar in a baking recipe before, and I really like the flavor that it added. I also used So Delicious coconut milk creamer as my liquid, which added more sweetness. I followed everything in the recipe as it was stated. Thanks for another great one!