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
These cookies are awesome. I never write reviews but feel these cookies need to be celebrated and made by more people. They are super easy and they come out perfect every time if you follow the directions. Yum!
I just have to leave a review!
I’ve been making vegan, gluten free cookies for several years now and I have to say…. This is the best recipe I’ve come across yet! I made mine with oat flour, coconut oil and almond milk. They turned out so amazing, so chewy and irresistible, just like a classic chocolate chip cookie. I won’t be using another recipe again! Thank you!!!
Thank YOU for trying them!
These are hands down THE BEST vegan chocolate chip cookies I have had since becoming vegan 6 months ago. These taste just like entenmanns chewy chocolate chip cookies. I’m going to be posting this all over social media because it’s Christmas time and people NEED this recipe
This makes us so happy 🙂
THE best chocolate chip cookie recipe vegan or not ive used this recipe more times than i can possibly count and taken them into work/given to friends and everyone has enjoyed them, anyone who didn’t know i was vegan couldn’t tell they were vegan cookies. my one tip for anyone following this recipe is rather than using a spoon to help them spread i place a towel on my worktop and with the cookies fresh from the oven using a towel i bang the tray down hard a few times to help them settle and look uniform
Overall, the taste of these cookies were great! They did require more time in the oven than the recipe stated, but I’m impressed by this recipe.
These tasted good! The texture was more like a cake than a cookie and the cookies did not spread at all! The only sub I did was use maple syrup instead of sugar. Any idea why this happened?
We have never subbed maple syrup (a liquid) for granulated sugar so can’t say how that would affect the recipe.
My fave cookie recipe, the only one I make anymore!!! Just made a Christmas version with crushed candy canes drizzled with chocolate…. The kids went crazy for them, they had no idea they were vegan:)
Your version sounds fantastic!
Great chocolate chip cookies!
These turned out amazing! Super quick and easy!
Hi. I just wanted to say thank you for the recipe, and let you know that this works just fine with gluten free flour. I have been making these cookies about twice a week for about a month now, using all purpose gluten free flour and they are amazing. Thank you, I now have a cookie recipe both my husband and I can enjoy together.
Thank you so much for trying them!
(Katie)
We made these last night. They are delicious. We definitely needed a bit extra nondairy milk. And due to high altitude living, cooked them for about 12 minutes. We used Enjoy Life chocolate chips and they turned out great! Thanks for another easy and reliable recipe!
I don’t eat eggs, so I appreciate cookie recipes that don’t use them.
I tried these today, using oat flour, vegan butter, half the sugar (coconut palm) which is plenty sweet for me, coconut cream + water. Instead of adding more “milk” I added 2 T of tahini to moisten the dough, and it worked perfectly. I will definitely make again, and try other flours. Oat flour made these very tender by the way. We all liked these.
I’ve made these so many times in the last few months. I have a breastfed baby with A LOT of food allergies, so it’s been a struggle following her diet and keeping my weight and milk up. I can’t have any kind of milk replacement, so I just make these with water instead of milk. I use 3 tbsp of water and an extra splash of olive oil (can’t taste the difference once cooked and I know it’s a safe oil for us). Then when I start mixing it I add one more tablespoon of water. I also cook it 13 minutes instead of 11. The first time I made them I only used 2 tbsp of water and they didn’t flatten like cookies. With the 4 tbsp they always flatten and taste wonderful. I don’t feel like I’m missing out with these.
These are legit my favorite cookies of all time, but the “milk” needed is definitely more than listed. However, we love at 6500ft above sea level, so that definitely plays a part. I usually double or sometimes triple the liquid required.
I’ve made this a few times and it always turns out great! The other day I replaced the chocolate chips with a broken up Lindt oat milk chocolate bar and it turned out great 🤩
the flavor is great but 11 minutes is not nearly long enough in the oven… they came out as discs of dough. next time I’ll try 15 minutes or 350°