These homemade soft and chewy vegan peanut butter cookies are the best peanut butter cookie recipe I’ve ever made!
Soft vegan peanut butter cookies
It’s been over six years since I first shared this peanut butter cookie recipe.
Yet this is still one of the most popular recipes I’ve ever published, with readers writing in pretty much at least once a week to say how much they love these cookies.
One reader even emailed to say she’d entered the vegan peanut butter cookies into a local contest, and this cookie recipe took home first prize!
You may also like these Black Bean Brownies
Above, watch the vegan peanut butter cookie recipe video
Discerning eyes might notice that although I roll seven peanut butter cookie dough balls in the video, only six cookies come out of the oven.
This may or may not be due to the fact that I ate one of the cookie dough balls instead of baking it with the others.
My favorite part of vegan baking is that, since there are no eggs, I can use it as an excuse to eat as much of the raw cookie dough as I wish.
Sometimes none of the cookies make it into the oven!
Readers also like these 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Balls
The best vegan cookies
With a delicious soft and chewy texture, these perfect peanut butter cookies are honestly better than any other peanut butter cookie, vegan or not, that I’ve ever tried.
The first time I made the recipe, I remember being shocked it could possibly be vegan.
How could there be no eggs or butter?!?!
They tasted way too good!
I’ll never forget how excited I was after bringing the peanut butter cookies to a pool party and hearing so many guests rave about them.
I loved seeing their surprised faces upon hearing the secret that the cookies were vegan. Yes, vegan peanut butter cookies that didn’t taste vegan.
(Ten years ago, veganism was much less mainstream than it is today.)
Aside from being both dairy free and egg free, the recipe has another surprising secret: applesauce! It makes these cookies so amazingly melt-in-your-mouth soft.
Also try this recipe for Applesauce Muffins
Vegan peanut butter cookie ingredients
Gather the following: creamy or crunchy peanut butter, applesauce, pure vanilla extract, sweetener of choice, salt, flour, and baking soda.
Want to use almond butter, sunflower seed butter, or cashew butter instead? Any of these peanut free options are perfectly fine to substitute in an equal amount.
Flours that work include spelt flour, oat flour, white all purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, gluten free sorghum flour or rice flour.
There is a keto peanut butter cookie recipe included below that calls for almond flour. Or use peanut butter instead of the coconut oil in these Coconut Flour Cookies.
If you do not have applesauce on hand, it can be replaced with nondairy yogurt, mashed banana, or even canned pumpkin or sweet potato.
Being a chocolate lover, I often stir a handful of mini chocolate chips into the batter. Chopped peanuts are also wonderful and give the cookies a fun crunchy texture.
Healthy peanut butter cookies
If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you may remember the original version of the recipe, posted all the way back in 2011.
The cookies became so popular that I went back a few years ago to see if I could make them even healthier without sacrificing any of the delightfully soft texture.
I was indeed able to decrease the sugar from the original version, and they are still just as delicious.
The entire recipe now calls for just a third cup of sugar. This can be regular sugar, unrefined coconut sugar or date sugar, or granulated erythritol or xylitol for sugar free vegan peanut butter cookies.
Some readers say that they successfully substituted pure maple syrup for the sugar by adding a few extra tablespoons of flour. We have not tried this substitution, so feel free to experiment. Be sure to report back if you do!
Still craving cookies? Make Vegan Sugar Cookies
How to make one bowl peanut butter cookies
Measure out the peanut butter. If it is not already easily stir-able, gently warm it for a few seconds in the microwave or let it sit in a warm room until soft and easy to stir.
Combine all dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Stir well to evenly incorporate the baking soda and salt.
Add all remaining ingredients to the bowl, and mix everything together to form a yummy eggless peanut butter cookie dough.
Freeze the dough for a few minutes, or you can cover and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight. Once it’s firm enough to scoop out with a spoon or cookie scoop, roll into cookie dough balls with your hands.
(You can also freeze cookie dough balls to bake at a later time if you wish.)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the unbaked dough balls on a baking sheet, leaving room between each cookie.
Bake on the oven center rack for eight minutes. Let the puffy cookies cool for at least another ten minutes, during which time they will firm up considerably and no longer be too delicate to handle.
If you wish to flatten the cookies, use a fork or spoon to press down lightly.
No bake peanut butter cookies
Feel free to skip the baking step after rolling the dough into balls.
Enjoy the peanut butter cookie dough balls as-is, or press down with a fork to make that classic pb cookie crisscross pattern.
Store leftover no bake cookies in the refrigerator or freezer for freshness.
Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup peanut butter, or allergy friendly sub
- 2 tbsp applesauce (or make these Keto Peanut Butter Cookies)
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 3 tbsp flour (spelt, white, oat, sorghum, rice all work)
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup sugar, unrefined if desired
- 1/8 tsp salt
Instructions
- *If you're a visual person, be sure to watch the video above showing how to make the vegan peanut butter cookies!Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. If your peanut butter is not stir-able, gently warm to soften. Add all remaining ingredients to the mixing bowl and stir to form a dough. Roll into cookie balls. If you want soft cookies, refrigerate the dough at least an hour. (You can also freeze cookie dough balls to bake at another time if you wish.) Bake in a preheated oven (350F) for 8 minutes. The cookies will look quite underdone when you take them out. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from tray, as they firm up while cooling.View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More Vegan Cookies
Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
I made these cookies today, awesome they are great! I added vegan mini chocolate chips to the batter great addition. Thank you for this receipe.
I’ve made these twice now and they are awesome. I use monk fruit sweetener and ite great. My second batch was a little crumbly while they still tasted good. I tried adding almond butter too. What should I increase to prevent them from being crumbly?
I think maybe it’s the monk fruit? They are never crumbly for me with real sugar 🙂
Jason
These tasted good, but mine were VERY crumbly and fell apart. I followed the recipe and instructions exactly as written. And made them with oat flour. Any idea why they are falling apart?
Hmmm, what kind of pb did you use? Maybe yours is just super dry and therefore needed a bit more applesauce to make up for it? I know different brands of nut butter can have vastly different consistencies. Or are you in a dry climate?
Amazing! Just made them and it took literally Les than 10 minutes altogether in prep time. Next time I’ll do a little less sugar (very sweet) and maybe some more flour to add texture.
What is the calorie count on the easy vegan peanut butter cookie?
Click the “view nutrition facts” right under the recipe ingredients/instructions in the post, and Katie’s recipes always come with full nutrition facts 🙂
I was quite confused by the directions but it seems like I’m the only one when reading through the comments. The written directions and video are pretty different. One says the dry ingredients go together first but the video you had them all together. Written says 8 minutes and video says 7. I also wasn’t sure whether to get sweetened or unsweetened apple sauce. The directions say to just roll into a ball but the video shows you kind of flattening them out, and the photo appears to have fork marks. This was my first vegan recipe because I was making for a friend’s birthday, so I don’t know if it’s because I’m used to non vegan baking, but maybe being a little more specific would be helpful for the vegan baking newbies. I decided not to flatten but the cookies didn’t spread at all and ended up looking like biscuits, and ended up being too soft as well even after leaving them on the sheet. Your video looked like a lot more than 3 TB flour also, but I wanted to stick to it exactly. They tasted really good though, so I’m sure with some tweaks I can get it right next time. I hope I don’t sound rude, just looking for some clarification
Yes I noticed that the instructions and the video are different! But mines still came out ok
My whole family loved these cookies! Definitely a recipe to keep. Love that it’s so easy!
I’m definitely going to try this out. I just made a batch from the King Arthur Flour website and even without the slight vegan mods I made, the recipe was high maintenance and the results were not commensurate with the amount of effort and time. PB cookies are my hubs’ face so I want to make him the BEST ?
Thanks Katie ???
Not sure what I did wrong but the dough was super runny but I just went with it. Baked the cookies for 8 min as directed and waited 20 to eat and they were literally just mush and didn’t hold form ?
Hmm never heard that before, what flour and brand of peanut butter and type of sugar did you use?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Absolutely obsessed with these!! They are delicious baked or even as the dough! So soft and good. Thank you for sharing!