Stack of Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies against a white background
March 4, 2024

Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

March 4, 2024

Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Stack of Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies against a white background

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. 

Top-down view of vegan brown butter chocolate chip cookies drizzled with extra chocolate

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

Ingredients for Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies: white sugar, brown sugar, aquafaba, vanilla, flour, vegan brown butter, chocolate chips. Not shown: salt, baking soda, cornstarch.

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.

Step 1: Combine the butter, sugars, vanilla and aquafaba.

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.

Top-down view of white mixing bowl with sugars, vegan brown butter, and vanilla.

Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Step 2: Mix in the dry ingredients.

Next, mix in the dry ingredients . Add in the cornstarch, and baking soda. Then, mix in half the flour and then the remaining flour.

Top-down view of white mixing bowl with flour, salt, and cornstarch added to sugar, butter and vanilla

Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

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

Top-down view of white mixing bowl with crumbly cookie dough

Making Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Step 3: Mix in the chocolate chips and the buttery pecans, if using.

Top-down view of chocolate chips added to cookie dough.

Stept 4: Roll the dough into a ball and chill.

Get in with your hands and roll the dough into a large ball. 

Top-down view of ball of cookie dough in white mixing bowl

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. 

Ball of cookie dough in a plastic container

Making Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Step 5: Divide the dough and bake the 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.
Top-down view of vegan brown butter chocolate chip cookies on a baking sheet

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! 

Pinterest pin showing a stack of Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies against a white background

Recipe Card

Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

5 from 4 votes
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
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. 
Servings 12
Calories 281 kcal
Author Sylvia

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
  • 1.25 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

Calories: 281kcal | Carbohydrates: 40g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 11g | Saturated Fat: 4g | Cholesterol: 0mg | Sodium: 152mg | Potassium: 110mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 16g | Vitamin A: 355IU | Calcium: 45mg | Iron: 1.5mg

Courses, Cuisines, and Keywords

Course
Dessert
|
Snack
Cuisine
North American
Keywords
easy vegan brown butter
|
make-ahead dough
|
vegan brown butter chocolate chip cookies
|
vegan chocolate chip cookies

Comments

Enter your text here...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

Recipe Rating




{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

Hello!


We're creating a course: Baby Steps to Plant-Based Eating

Yes, seriously. Trying a plant-based diet can be overwhelming and we'd like to help. 

This course is for you if: 

  • you're curious about plant-based eating, but don't know where to start 
  • you have family or friends who eat plant-based and you'd like to be able to cook for them
  • you've dabbled with plant-based cooking, but would like to expand your repertoire

Baby Steps to Plant-Based Eating will: 

  • answer your pressing questions 
  • cultivate your confidence
  • arm you with recipes

Want to learn more?  

Join our email list for updates about the course launch. You'll also get priority access to new recipes, and other subscriber privileges.

Hello!


We're creating a course: Baby Steps to Plant-Based Eating

Yes, seriously. Trying a plant-based diet can be overwhelming and we'd like to help. 

This course is for you if: 

  • you're curious about plant-based eating, but don't know where to start 
  • you have family or friends who eat plant-based and you'd like to be able to cook for them
  • you've dabbled with plant-based cooking, but would like to expand your repertoire 

Baby Steps to Plant-Based Eating will: 

  • answer your pressing questions
  • cultivate your confidence 
  • arm you with recipes

Want to learn more?  

Join our email list for updates about the course launch. You'll also get priority access to new recipes, and other subscriber privileges.