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
Loved this!! I used more milk, and a dash more of oil to make the dough wetter. Spread out pretty well, but I did flatten the dough balls a bit. Will definitely make this again next time with plant-based milk and vegan chocolate, or with other flavors like cinnamon and almonds. 🙂 Thank you for this!
Thank you so much for trying them!
I’ve made this recipe (using oat flour and coconut sugar instead of white and brown sugars) a million times and it is hands down my FAVORITE GF vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe! So simple and delicious!
BUT! Tonight, I made a huge mistake.
I used a gluten free flour 1:1 blend to save on oats. I do NOT recommend doing that. Totally different cookie. It’s dry and crumbly and flavorless.
Stick to the flours recommended!
This is such a perfect base recipe to experiment with and turn into your own. Quick and perfect every time, TOO quick and perfect for something so sinful, we’ve been having it for breakfast all week!
For the flour, I use half white flour half quick oats, makes them nice and chunky.
I use less sugar and add a couple tsp of molasses for extra chewiness.
I also add a flax egg (1tbsp ground flax + 2tbsp water)
And juuust enough milk for everything to come together and hold so it’s a very thick dough that we flatten before baking.
And always keep them covered so they stay perfectly chewy, otherwise they get too hard. That’s some troubleshooting for ya. GREAT recipe to learn from.
With what do you cover them?
Excellent recipe! Tried it but like you said, they don’t spread much so I ended up with very delicious cookie balls, kinda like tiny muffins. However, I tried it again adding a little more almond milk and instead of making balls, I made disks, and that fixed that issue.
Great and easy recipe made in no time looks and tastes amazing!
This looks like a good recipe, especially because I try to bake oil free. I am planning to use kamut flour and was wondering about subbing some of the sugar with my homemade sugar free, very delicious applesauce. What do you think? Thank you in advance.
I’ve made this recipe a couple of times now. Easy and tasty. I would recommend making a few marks on top with a knife before massaging the chicken with oil and spices.
Wow, they sound great. I love experimenting with vegan bakes so I can’t wait to give these babies a whirl!
The recipe translated to grams/milliliters:
130 grams flour
3 grams of baking soda
2 grams of salt
50 grams of sugar
45 grams of brown sugar
28 grams of oil (or 35 grams of butter)
53 grams of chocolate chunks
30 milliliters of (soy)milk
1.2 milliliters of vanilla-extract
325 F = 163* Celsius.
I hope this helped you.
Yes!! Just FREAKING YES! TO ALL OF THIS!! So good! Sooo amazingly good!..Try this recipe! You will NOT regret it!! PERIOD!!
TOODLES!
I made the cookies twice, the carrot cake several times, both versions of the lemon loafs ( the “original one being my fav)the vegan brownies and the black bean brownies, for various parties, gatherings, birthdays etc! Never a leftover lol! My boyfriend fav is the carrot cake and the chocolate chip cookies! Thank you for the good work!
Go to recipe for vegan cookies!
Accidentally switched out the peppermint and vanilla this time, and somehow doubled it. It was still delicious.
Just leaving a question about this recipe….you say they keep for 2-3 days. They really dont keep longer than that? I want to try making a batch and send to somebody by mail which would mean they may take at least a week to get there. Many thanks!
They are pretty much just like normal/traditional chocolate chip cookies, so will be freshest the first few days but technically are fine for days after most likely 🙂
Awesome. Thanks so much for your quick reply!!
why no calorie bar hu worst recipie ever
I’m not really sure what this comment is trying to say, but if you are asking about the calorie information, it’s linked under the recipe instructions in the post.
For those wondering – I made with simple Great Value brand gluten free all purpose flour – did not change the amount of flour the recipe calls for – and the cookies turned out great.