Sweet and gooey with lovely caramel notes, these vegan brown butter chocolate chip cookies are simply irresistible with their slightly crispy edges and soft centers.
You've heard of meal prep. Let's call this cookie prep!
These cookies are perfect make-ahead treats because you can choose the length of the chilling stage, from a minimum of 1 hour to up to 5 days. So rather than bake all the cookies at once, you can bake a couple to enjoy on day one, and then pop the remaining dough back in the fridge.
You’ve heard of meal prep -- let’s call this cookie prep! Your day gets a little bit better when you know that this delicious cookie dough’s lounging in your fridge. The dough loves to lounge, the vegan brown butter, sugars, and vanilla mingle, intensifying the flavour of the cookies over time.
Ingredients
Most of the ingredients for this recipe are pantry staples. We use both white and brown sugar to give a nice balance of flavours and texture. Sugar is one area where there's not complete overlap between plant-based and vegan diets. To learn more, see Sugar Sugar, Honey, Honey: A Guide to Sweeteners for Plant-based Diets.
Aquafaba
We love using aquafaba as an egg replacer in baking. Aquafaba is the name for the liquid obtained from canned or home-cooked beans, typically chickpeas (garbanzo beans). It's almost free and very easy to use. To learn more, see Aquafaba: An Easy Vegan Egg Replacer.
Chocolate Chips
For the chocolate chips, be sure to read the label to make sure they contain no dairy or other animal ingredients. Even dark chocolate usually contains milk.
Vegan Brown Butter
These cookies use our Easy Vegan Brown Butter. The vegan brown butter takes about 20 minutes to make and it’s just two ingredients, pecans and margarine. You end up with a rich and nutty vegan brown butter and a big handful of buttery pecans. You can add the buttery pecans to this cookie recipe, too.
The vegan brown butter should be chilled for at least an hour. Once the vegan brown butter is ready, making the cookie dough is very straightforward.
Visual Overview: Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Before you start this recipe, be sure to prepare and chill the vegan brown butter.
Start by combining the vegan brown butter, sugars, vanilla, and aquafaba (this is the egg-replacer in the recipe. See our detailed post, Aquafaba: An Easy Vegan Egg Replacer. We used black bean aquafaba for this recipe, but any kind will do.
Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Next, mix in the dry ingredients . Add in the cornstarch, and baking soda. Then, mix in half the flour and then the remaining flour.
Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Once the dry ingredients are incorporated the dough should look crumbly.
Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Get in with your hands and roll the dough into a large ball.
Transfer the dough to a container with a lid. Chill the dough in the refrigerator, for a minimum of 1 hour and a maximum of 4 days.
Making Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
When you’re ready to make cookies, remove the dough from the fridge, and preheat the oven to 350F.
To make 12 large cookies, divide the dough into 12 pieces and roll the pieces into balls.
- If you’ve only chilled the dough for an hour, it’s going to spread quite quickly in the oven, so just flatten each ball a little bit.
- If you’ve chilled the dough for longer, it’s less likely to spread, so you can flatten the balls a bit more. The dough in the picture below has been chilled the maximum amount of time.
Pop the cookies in the oven for about 10 minutes. Remove them and let them cool.
If desired, melt some additional chocolate and drizzle it on the warm cookies.
Tips: Plant-Based Baking
If you're new to plant-based baking, you're probably curious about making cookies without eggs or butter. We love using aquafaba as our egg replacer. It's the liquid from canned or home-cooked beans. If using the liquid from the can, it requires no preparation at all - just separate the liquid from the chickpeas drain and it's ready to go. See our detailed post, Aquafaba: An Easy Vegan Egg Replacer, for more information.
To replace the butter in this recipe, we're using vegan brown butter, which is made from vegan butter or margarine and pecans. The pecans provide the nutty flavour that you get from browning regular butter.
This recipe uses both white and brown sugar. Sugar is one area where plant-based and vegan diets don't completely overlap. Due to how they are processed, some white and brown sugar may not be vegan-friendly -- however some plant-based eaters choose to use them, as the final product does not contain animal products. For more information, see Sugar, Sugar, Honey, Honey: A Guide to Sweeteners for Plant-Based Diets.
These cookies are a site favourite!
We hope you love these cookies. They're a site favourite!
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Recipe Card
Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup vegan brown butter {See instruction section for link to recipe.)
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons aquafaba (See Recipe Notes)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 11/4 cup flour
- 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- pinch salt
- 2/3 cup dark chocolate chips
- 2 tablespoons chopped pecans, optional
- 2 tablespoons dark chocolate chips, melted, optional
Instructions
- Cream together the vegan brown butter, sugars,
aquafaba , and vanilla. - Mix in the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt, adding the flour in 2 batches. Mix until incorporated. The mixture will be crumbly.
- Mix in the chocolate chips and pecans, if using.
- Roll the dough into a ball. Refrigerate in a sealed container and chill for at least an hour and up to 5 days.
- Divided the dough into 12 balls for large cookies, or 24 balls for smaller cookies.
- Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet at 350F for 10 minutes or so.
- Optionally, melt the additional dark chocolate chips and drizzle melted chocolate all over the cookies.
Notes
About Aquafaba
See our detailed post, Aquafaba: An Easy Vegan Egg Replacer.Refrigerating the Cookie Dough
You need to chill the dough for at least an hour before you bake these cookies. If you don't chill the dough, the cookies will still taste good but they will be quite flat. The longer you leave the dough in the fridge, the longer time you're giving for the flavours to mingle together. Your cookies will be even better the second, third, fourth, and fifth day. Each day in the fridge your cookie dough will also grow a little bit less moist, which translates into the cookies spreading a little less when baked. To summarize, the longer you have the dough in the fridge, the more you can flatten the cookie dough balls, as they will be less likely to spread.Freezing the Cookie Dough
You can also freeze this dough. Let it defrost in the fridge. I would not recommend freezing, thawing, and refreezing.Original Source
I adapted this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction, Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe.Nutritional Information
Nutrition information is an estimate only and does not include extra dark chocolate drizzle.Nutrition
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Comments
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Tasty! And easy to make too.
So glad you liked them!
I enjoyed following this creative take on a a classic cookie. Well thought out.
Thanks! I hope you enjoy them!
This looks super tasty!! I can’t wait to give it a try! It’s all delicious ingredients 🙂
Thanks Roslia! I hope you love them! Come back and let us know!
Yummy!!!!
Thank you! Glad you liked them!
Best cookies ever!!!
AWWW! Thank you!