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. They’re also 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 by the way, just loves to lounge, the vegan brown butter, sugars, and vanilla get all mingly, and the flavour of the cookies intensifies over time.
TL;DR – Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

The dough loves to lounge, the vegan brown butter, sugars, and vanilla get all mingly, and the flavour of the cookies intensifies over time.

Start by Making Easy 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.
For this vegan brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe, the brown butter should be chilled for at least an hour. Once the vegan brown butter is ready, making the cookie dough is very straightforward.
Let’s Make Some Cookies!

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. I used black bean aquafaba for this recipe, but any kind will do.

Next, mix in the dry ingredients – the flour, cornstarch, and baking soda. Mix the flour in in two batches.

Once the dry ingredients are incorporated the dough should look crumbly.

Mix in the chocolate chips and the buttery pecans, if using.

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, for a minimum of 1 hour and a maximum of about 5 days.
You’ve heard of meal prep.
This is cookie prep!

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 for a few minutes if you can control yourself. If you’re feeling extra indulgent, melt some extra dark chocolate and drizzle that on the warm cookies.

Eating Together Made Easy
Maybe you’ve encountered non-vegans who, for whatever reason, shun any and all things vegan, including even these delicious cookies. If you need to accommodate this situation then you can melt a few tablespoons of milk chocolate or white chocolate, non-vegan versions of course, and use that to make a lovely chocolate chip cookie sandwich that isn’t vegan. When I do this, I make each cookie smaller (about 1/24th of the dough, instead of 1/12th of the dough). This provides a nice visual cue too when you’re feeding mixed groups – as the vegan cookies are larger and the non-vegan cookies are smaller, sandwich style cookies.

Looking for Other Vegan Sweet Treats?
- Vegan Brown Butter Shortbread
- Dark Chocolate Bark with Buttery Pecans and Smoked Almonds
- Pear Zucchini Bread
- Blend and Bake Vegan Lemon Cheesecake
- Vegan Ginger Molasses Cookies
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
PIN Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies for Later

9 comments
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!
[…] 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. Click here for the recipe. […]