The BEST Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies (vegan, gluten-free)

Ingredient Notes

Here’s what you need for this must-have recipe:

• Creamy Almond Butter: This is the most important element in your cookies. Use roasted, unsalted, unsweetened almond butter with no other added ingredients. 
• Maple Syrup and Coconut Sugar: I use a combination of maple syrup and coconut sugar for the best texture and sweetness with a depth of flavor. When I tested the cookies using just maple syrup, they lacked the deep caramel-like flavour that coconut sugar adds. 
• Flax Egg: Make this by combining ground flax meal with water and letting it gel for a few minutes. This egg replacement works so well to make eggless chocolate chip cookies while still having that binder that eggs provide. 
• Oat and Almond Flour: The recipe calls for a combination of oat flour and almond flour in order to make the cookies gluten-free and chewy. I recommend using fine oat flour because sometimes homemade oat flour can be clumpy and not milled finely enough. Almond flour is essential for chewiness, richness, and a buttery flavour without added butter.  
• Vanilla Extract: Be sure to use real vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste, not imitation.
• Baking Powder + Baking Soda: These help your cookies rise a bit in the oven.
• Chocolate Chips: (of course!). Just make sure they’re dairy-free! Brands like Enjoy Life or Hu make vegan dark chocolate chips. 

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F while you prepare your vegan cookie dough.
2. In a large bowl, whisk almond butter, maple syrup, coconut sugar, and vanilla extract until smooth. Gently fold in your flax egg with a spatula.
3. Next, sift in all your dry ingredients (excluding chocolate chips), folding until the dough is even and starts to pull away from the edges of the bowl. See reference photo for texture. Add chocolate chips and refrigerate the dough if needed (see “expert tips”).
4. Scoop about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough and quickly roll into a ball shape* then lightly flatten onto a non-stick baking mat-lined tray. Leave about 2 inches between cookies as they will spread a little bit as they bake.
5. Bake for about 10-12 minutes, until tops are lightly golden brown and edges are cooked.* 
6. Remove from oven and let cool before lifting off the tray (don’t worry, they’ll still be soft and chewy!).

Expert Tips

Because there’s no gluten in these cookies, you don’t risk overworking the dough or making your cookies tough. However, there are a few tricks to ensuring your cookies have the perfect texture.

• To make the best healthy vegan cookies, I strongly recommend using a nonstick baking mat or parchment paper. They can be somewhat delicate, especially right as they come out of the oven and you’ll risk breaking them if you try to scrape them off of foil or directly from a baking pan surface.
• Next, as you’re placing your vegan cookie dough onto the baking sheet, if you run into any issues with dough sticking to your hands, try refrigerating or rolling with lightly damp hands. Work quickly, as the heat in your hands does warm the dough as well.
• Make flat cookie-shaped discs, keeping in mind they will spread a little bit.
• Finally, make sure you pull them from the oven before they’re fully cooked. They will continue to cook on the baking sheet for several minutes. If they don’t seem firm enough at first, wait until they cool.
• If you’re making cookies on a hotter day, you may find your dough a little sticky. If so, you can add a touch of additional oat flour (by the tablespoon) or refrigerate the dough for about 10 minutes before prepping to bake.

Swaps & Substitutions

• Be aware that any substitutions will impact the final outcome of your cookie. Please do your best to follow the recipe steps to a tee for the best results.
• In a pinch, you can swap out the almond butter for tahini, cashew butter, or peanut butter. However, I find that roasted unsalted almond butter works the best. Peanut butter will impact the flavour so your cookies taste mostly like peanuts. Cashew butter tends to be a bit on the drier side, and tahini a little looser.
• Because this is an eggless chocolate chip cookie recipe, there are no eggs included. While there are many other egg replacements out there, this recipe has been tested specifically with a flax egg, so if you try a different replacement, keep that in mind! 

Storage Tips

• Room temperature: Once cooled completely, store these healthy chocolate chip cookies at room temperature in an airtight container for up to five days.
• Freezing: You can also freeze the raw vegan cookie dough for up to six months. I recommend shaping the dough into cookie-sized balls before freezing. Then you can pop them directly into the oven, just add a few extra minutes to the baking time.