Vegan chocolate chip cookies: chewy, golden, no eggs

These are classic American chocolate chip cookies with golden, slightly crisp edges and soft, chewy middles, made without butter or eggs. The dough is built the traditional way, by creaming fat with sugar, but three choices make the vegan version behave: a firm plant-based butter stick instead of a tub spread, more brown sugar than white, and an hour in the refrigerator before baking. The recipe card above gives the amounts; the sections below explain what each step is doing, so you can adjust with confidence.

What replaces the butter and the eggs

The fat. Vegan butter sticks are blends of plant oils made to work like butter: mostly fat, with some water, and solid at room temperature. That combination is what lets them cream with sugar and trap air. Tub spreads and “light” spreads contain more water and less fat, and they give flat, cakey cookies, so use the stick kind. Many vegan butters are salted, which is why the card uses only 1/2 teaspoon of salt; add the extra 1/4 teaspoon if yours is unsalted.

The eggs. In a regular chocolate chip cookie the eggs add liquid, some structure and a little lift. In a dense, chewy cookie the liquid matters most, and 1/4 cup of plant milk supplies it. The flour provides the structure, and the baking soda gives the lift. If you prefer an egg replacer, a flax egg (1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed stirred into 3 tablespoons of water and left to thicken) can stand in for the milk and makes a slightly chewier, nuttier cookie with visible flecks. The guide to egg substitutes explains which replacers suit which bakes.

Why brown sugar makes them chewy

Brown sugar is white sugar with molasses, and molasses holds on to moisture. More brown sugar than white keeps the centers soft and bendy for days instead of drying to a snap. Molasses is also slightly acidic, and that acid reacts with the baking soda as the cookies heat, giving them a gentle rise and a deeper color. White sugar does the opposite job: it melts and spreads, and it gives the crisp, caramelized rim. The 3/4 cup brown to 1/2 cup white on the card is the balance between a chewy center and a crisp edge. Shift it toward all brown sugar for softer, thicker cookies, or toward more white sugar for thinner, crisper ones.

Creaming the vegan butter with both sugars for 2 to 3 minutes matters too. The sugar crystals cut tiny air pockets into the fat, and those pockets expand in the oven. Stop when the mixture is lighter in color and fluffy. Vegan butter warms quickly under the beaters, and if it starts to look glossy and greasy, refrigerate the bowl for 10 minutes before adding the flour.

Chilling the dough is not optional here

Many vegan butters soften faster than dairy butter, so a warm ball of dough spreads across the baking sheet before the edges have time to set. An hour in the refrigerator does two things: it firms the fat, so the cookies hold their shape long enough to set, and it gives the flour time to absorb the liquid, which improves both the chew and the browning. The dough keeps, covered, for up to 3 days, and longer chilling deepens the brown-sugar flavor a little. Very cold dough may need a few minutes on the counter before it will scoop.

Keep the dough you are not baking in the refrigerator between batches, and always put it on a cool sheet. A baking sheet that is still hot from the oven starts melting the fat before the cookies are in.

When to take them out of the oven

Pull the cookies at 10 to 12 minutes at 350°F (175°C), when the edges are set and golden and the centers still look puffed, pale and a little underbaked. They keep cooking on the hot sheet for the 5 minutes they rest there, and the centers settle into a chewy middle as they cool. If you wait until the centers look done in the oven, the cookies will be crisp all the way through once cool. Ovens vary, so check the first batch at 10 minutes and adjust the rest.

For cookies of the same size and bake, portion them with a 2-tablespoon scoop or weigh them at about 40 g each. Bake one sheet at a time on the center rack, which gives the most even color.

Substitutions that work, and two that do not

• Chocolate: chopped dairy-free dark chocolate makes puddles and streaks instead of neat chips. Many semisweet chips contain no dairy, but check the ingredient list, because some contain milk fat or milk solids.
• Gluten-free: a gluten-free all-purpose baking blend made to replace wheat flour one to one and containing xanthan gum gives a good cookie with a slightly sandier crumb; let the dough rest the full hour so the flour hydrates. The cookies are then made with gluten-free ingredients; check labels for cross-contact, which the NIDDK notes can happen when foods are grown, processed, stored, prepared or served.
• Coconut sugar for the brown sugar: works measure for measure, with a darker color and a slightly drier, less chewy cookie. For how coconut sugar, maple syrup and other sweeteners differ, see natural sweeteners compared.
• Does not work: liquid sweeteners. Maple syrup or agave in place of the sugar adds liquid and removes the crystals that creaming needs, so the cookies turn out cakey and spread unevenly.
• Does not work: oil in place of the vegan butter. Liquid oil cannot be creamed, and the cookies bake up dense and greasy.

Chewy, crisp or thick: steering the texture

The card makes cookies with crisp edges and chewy centers. Small changes move them in either direction:

Whatever you change, keep the oven at 350°F (175°C) and judge by the edges: set and golden means done.

Egg replacers and other swaps compared

The card needs no egg replacer, because plant milk supplies the liquid an egg would. These are the swaps people ask about most, and what each one really does:

A half batch for a smaller tray

For about 14 cookies, halve everything: 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon fine salt, 1/2 cup vegan butter, 6 tablespoons packed light brown sugar, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons plant milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 3/4 cup chocolate chips. If you bake by weight, use exactly half of each gram amount on the card. The method, chilling, oven temperature and bake time stay the same. For a bake of only two or three cookies, make the full dough and freeze the rest in scooped portions, as described below.

An air fryer can bake a few cookies at a time on a round of parchment, but its fan browns the tops quickly: set it lower than the oven temperature on the card, flatten the dough balls slightly, and check well before the oven time.

Ice cream sandwiches from the same dough

Chewy cookies make good ice cream sandwiches because they bend instead of cracking when you bite. Bake the cookies as written, cool them completely, then press a scoop of softened dairy-free ice cream between two flat sides. Banana nice cream works well if you freeze it until scoopable first. Roll the edges in mini chocolate chips, wrap each sandwich and freeze until firm, then let them stand a few minutes before eating so the cookies soften.

Storing the cookies and freezing the dough

Once completely cool, keep the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature; a slice of bread in the container helps keep them soft. Baked cookies also freeze well in a sealed bag and thaw on the counter in well under an hour.

Raw dough freezes even better. Scoop it into portions, freeze them on a lined tray until hard, then move them to a freezer bag. Bake from frozen at the same temperature, adding a minute or two, until the edges are golden. The FoodSafety.gov storage chart describes freezer times as being for quality only, since frozen food stored continuously at 0°F or below can be kept indefinitely; for the best flavor, bake frozen dough within a few months.

However tempting the bowl, do not taste the dough before it is baked. The FDA points out that “Flour is a raw food” and says: “Never eat or taste raw flour, dough, or batter.” Egg-free dough is no exception, because the concern is the flour itself.

Allergy and ingredient notes

This recipe contains wheat (all-purpose flour, which contains gluten) and soy (soy milk; many vegan butters also contain soy oil or soy lecithin). Some vegan butters contain coconut oil, and some chocolate chips are made on equipment shared with milk, tree nuts or peanuts, so read the labels if anyone you bake for has an allergy. For a soy-free batch, use oat milk, a soy-free vegan butter and chocolate chips without soy lecithin, a common emulsifier in chips. The recipe contains no nuts. If you like a chewier cookie with toasted coconut, the oatmeal coconut cookies use the same method, and the cinnamon-sugar vegan snickerdoodles are a good second batch.