My favorite vegan chocolate chip cookies
and how to adapt this recipe to create your own cookie flavors!
pictured here Chocolate Chip Cookies and White Chocolate and Matcha Cookies - both vegan (don’t mind my foot lol)
I developed this cookie recipe a few years ago when i was looking for the perfect ccc recipe. It should be easy to make, I thought. And it should be made with real ingredients and not something like coconut oil and a “healthier” sweetener, something that looks like a good cookie but just tastes healthy and disappointing (for when you crave a real cookie).
So I searched for recipes online and did not really find what I was looking for. Most of the vegan recipes for cookies were either healthy ones or really short recipes - recipes were you would instantly see that they wouldn’t work (only olive oil, flour and chocolate?? I mean come on!). So I took a deep dive into my then favorite food creators and how they made their cccs - not vegan of course. I listened carefully what would be important, which role every ingredient plays, how you can create different effects by treating the ingredients differently. I learned that you want a mixture of flours to have a chewiness but also a crunchyness to your cookies. That you always always always want to cream your butter with your sugar. And that you need both a white sugar and a brown sugar to have a dense and sweet cookie. And what I also learned is that the egg really does not play a big part in a good cookie. How convenient for a vegan version!
So next thing I did was writing down my quantities and getting straight to it! Half an hour later my kitchen smelled like vanilla, (vegan) butter and bitter sweet chocolate and I developed my first ever vegan recipe! And it has been put to good use since then! I make it when I need something easy and quick to bring to a birthday or picknick. I make it for my brothers who love these. And I also often make it to convince people that you don’t miss out when you bake with only plantbased ingredients.
This recipe has brought me so much joy and I shared it with a lot of friends (it even became famous among doctors in West Germany as one of my longest friends made the recipe a lot for her collegues). So I am really excited to share this with you and also tell you the story behind it. I hope you like it!
Recipe for CCC
Ingredients:
150 g soft vegan butter (softened)
120 g sugar (I use raw cane sugar, u can use whatever you like)
1 table spoon molasses (German: Zuckerrübensirup)
1 tea spoon vanilla (u could use extract, one real vanilla bean or vanilla sugar)
Dry:
120 g white flour (German: Typ 550)
100 g whole wheat flour (Typ 1050, be careful this is not actually whole wheat flour but a different type of flour which is made from a harder grain and contains more gluten. If you use whole wheat than adjust the measurements i.e. 170 g plain flour, 50 g whole wheat)
Pinch of salt
1 table spoon espresso powder
1/2 tea spoon baking soda
150 g dark chocolate (vegan)
Method:
Preheat oven to 180C.
Mix butter, sugar, molasses and vanilla until creamy.
Mia dry ingredients. In thirds fold them in the dough.
Now add the chopped chocolate.
Form balls with tablespoon. Put them on a baking tray lined with baking sheet. Sometimes they spread, sometimes they don’t. You can push them down a little bit. But they won’t spread as much, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll end up with one big cookie :D.
Sprinkle sea salt flakes on top (optional).
Bake for 8-12 min. Check on them, maybe you need to rotate the tray or take them out earlier. Let them cool down on the tray before removing them.
Recipe adaptations
So now that you have the recipe for vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies you can easily adapt this recipe by mixing up the flavors. You can change the flours for example and use buckwheat or rye flour for a nuttier and earthier taste. You can change up the added chocolate for nuts, berries or white chocolate. You can mix in cacao powder (reduce the flour by the same amount) and make dark chocolate cookies. You can basically do what ever your heart desires. I made one version quite often over the years: my vegan white chocolate and matcha cookies. I love these very much, the matcha gives a special earthy taste and is complimented by the very sweet white chocolate. I’ve eaten these in Japan for the first time and couldn’t stop thinking about them ever since. You’ll see that it’s basically the recipe from above just with changed ingredients.
Recipe Vegan White Chocolate and Matcha Cookies
Ingredients:
150 g soft vegan butter
120 g sugar
1 table spoon molasses (German: Zuckerrübensirup)
Dry:
220g flour
Pinch of salt
1-2 table spoons matcha powder
1/2 tea spoon baking soda
100-150 g vegan white chocolate
Method:
Preheat oven to 180C
Mix butter, sugar, molasses and vanilla until creamy.
Mix dry ingredients. In thirds fold them in the dough.
Now add the chopped chocolate.
Form balls with tablespoon. Put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Squish them a little other wise they don’t spread that much.
Bake for 8-12 min. Check on them, maybe you need to rotate the tray or take them out earlier. Let them cool down on the tray before removing them.