A Quite Good Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie

Makes 10-14 cookies
90 minutes —
Intermediate —

The best chocolate chip cookie recipes kind of have to be a little bit of everything; memorable, memorize-able, achievable, approachable, delicious, and perhaps most important: simple. For decades, my mother made cookies every other weekend in an attempt to satisfy each and every one of these personality traits. She was in search of the perfect cookie. It’s always irked me a little bit, the fact that she never crossed the finish line. In an ideal world, I’d have a family recipe for “the perfect choc chip cookie” scribbled on an index card that I could pass down. There’s something, however, that I’ve since realized talking to my mom about these early memories of her baking – she wasn’t searching for the perfect cookie, she was searching for her perfect cookie.

I just asked ChatGPT how many chocolate chip cookie recipes there are on the internet. Apparently, it’s “impossible to determine.” Go figure. It’s funny to me, the way everyone can love something so unanimously, yet all go about it completely differently. Every person is searching for something unique in their cookie. Realizing this is what changed my outlook on my mom’s cookies, and also my approach to my own. The title of this recipe used to be “The Perfect Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie.” Hogwash. I was writing for SEO, the way a good recipe blogger should! The reality, however, is that perfect doesn’t exist, but “Quite Good” sure does.

So you’re thinking: “Ok, so everyone has their own style, yada yada. What style cookie is this?”

Fair question. Personally, I can’t stand gooey. I’m not looking for melt-in-your-mouth. My go-to test is to pinch a cookie by the edge and hold it up in the air. If it sags or breaks within a few seconds, it’s not my style. Here’s how I’d describe this cookie: soft & buttery on the inside, firm with some bite on the outside, complex & flavorful.

A tip: I recommend going the chopped chocolate bar route, as opposed to chocolate chips. I know chips are nice and easy, but rest assured there is good reason. When you chop a chocolate bar, all of these tiny little flecks and shavings of chocolate remain on the cutting board and your knife – we want these. Add them into the dough with the chocolate. Some of it will melt away into the cookie, and the rest will remain as beautiful little flecks in your dough. This will result in not only a beautiful cookie, but a flavorful one. If you only have chips around, that’s fine. Give ’em a chop.

The Perfect (Vegan) Chocolate Chip Cookie

4 from 5 votes

Makes

10-14

cookies

Prep time

1

hour 

Cook time

10

minutes

Total time

1

hour 

10

minutes

Ingredients

• 170g (3/4 cup) plant-based butter

• 1/4 cup hazelnuts or walnuts (optional)

• 200g (1 cup packed) dark or light brown sugar

• 50g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar

• 2 tbsp ground flax seed

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tbsp plant-based milk

• 270g (2 + 1/4 cup) all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

• 170g chocolate (chopped bar is best, chips are fine too)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375F. Whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, & baking powder in a small bowl. Set aside.
• Make your flax egg. Combine the ground flax seed with 5 tbsp water. Set aside and let sit for at least 10 minutes.
• Put all of the butter and nuts in a pan together on medium to infuse the butter. Once fully melted, cook for around 5 minutes total, until the butter foams and has a nutty aroma. Strain nuts out of the butter, discard nuts. Let butter fully cool to lukewarm (115F or so if you have a thermometer). This works fastest if you put it in a separate bowl. If you want to really speed it up, you can whisk the butter in a bowl over ice water for a minute or two.
• Add both sugars to butter and whisk, until sugar is incorporated and no clumps remain. Add egg replacer, vanilla, and milk, whisk until fully combined.
• Using a rubber spatula, fold the reserved dry ingredients into the butter mixture just until no dry spots remain. Fold in chocolate. The dough may be soft/gooey at first. If so, gently stir again and let sit 5-10 minutes as flour hydrates. You want the dough to be scoopable.
• Scoop dough into large balls. I use a large 2-inch (2.5 tbsp) cookie scoop. Sprinkle flake salt on each. Chill dough balls for at least 30 minutes (or overnight for the most flavorful cookies possible.)
• Bake cookies for 9-12 minutes, depending on size. (Always a good idea to test bake 2 cookies and make adjustments accordingly.) They should be golden brown, and will still look soft in the middle. Take cookies out and set the whole pan on a cooling rack. After 5 minutes, transfer cookies directly to the cooling rack to finish cooling.

Notes

• If you’d like to use real eggs, I’d recommend three room temperature eggs, and reducing baking powder to → 1/2 tsp and baking soda to → 1/2 tsp
• If you’d like to use real butter, just replace 1:1
• If cooking dough from frozen, lower oven temperature to 325F, and bake for 15-20 min.