Spiced Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies; soft and chewy cookies scented with cinnamon and ginger, and packed with smooth dark chocolate, made with no dairy or eggs.
Occasionally you’ll witness vegans being asked why they chose their lifestyle? Was it an ethical choice to prevent the needless suffering of animals? Perhaps to minimise the impact of their individual diet on our ever-fragile environment?
The same question could be posed to me, a non-vegan, today as to why this cookie recipe contains no animal byproducts. If so, the response would be pure unfiltered laziness.
You’ll find plenty of plant-based recipes here at Maverick Baking, from Biscoff brownies to orange loaf cakes. This one specifically was inspired by my vegan chocolate chip cookies from back in Veganuary 2020, and a complete unwillingness to go to the shop to buy butter and eggs.
In place of the butter in the spiced dark chocolate chunk cookies, we’re using olive oil, ideally extra virgin for best flavour. The olive oil adds a surprisingly welcome bold richness to the cookie dough, as well as helping to bind the ingredients together and preventing the dough from flattening out too quickly in the oven. If it’s a bit out-of-budget or you just don’t have it to hand, you can also use a milder oil such as rapeseed, though it will produce a slightly different flavour in the end-product.
The egg instead in replaced with just a little plant-based milk or water, to help amalgamate the cookie dough and keep things nice and moist and chewy in the centre. Being that they play a fairly small role in a regular cookie recipe like this one, you won’t notice that they’re missing! Don’t worry, these aren’t one of those vegan recipes that tastes like some kind of punishment.
Of course, now that October 31st has passed, it’s officially the festive season whether we like it or not. Thanks to that, and my constant craving for sweet spices, it only felt right to add a generous sprinkling of cinnamon and ginger to the dough. They work beautifully with the brown sugar to mellow out the strength of the dark chocolate, and keep you coming back bite after bite.
Slightly crispness as the edge, soft and chewy in the middle, chocolate ready to melt in every mouthful. Try these with a glass of cold (plant-based or regular) milk, or warm them gently and enjoy with a steaming cup of tea. I promise you’ll love them!
You should get 8 big fat cookies or 10-12 smaller snack-sized cookies from this recipe.
Ingredients
- 60ml (¼ cup) extra virgin olive oil or rapeseed oil
- 130g (¾ cup, packed) light brown sugar
- 3 tbsp non-dairy milk or water
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 140g (1 cup) self-raising flour (or plain flour + ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda + ¼ tsp baking powder)
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- 100g (3 ½ oz) dark chocolate, broken into chunks
- Generous pinch of sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat your oven – 190 C / 170 C fan / 375 F / gas mark 5.
- In a large bowl, beat together your oil and sugar until they resemble wet sand.
- Add your milk and vanilla extract to the bowl and beat again until smooth.
- Gently stir in your flour, spices, chocolate, and salt until you have a thick golden cookie dough.
- Line a wide baking tray with some greaseproof paper.
- Use your hands to roll 8-10 balls of cookie dough and space them out evenly on your lined tray.
- Bake the tray of dough balls for 10-13 minutes. The cookies should look puffed and dry on top.
- Allow the cookies to cool on their tray for at least 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely. Sprinkle with extra sea salt to finish (if you like!).
- Enjoy!
BE A MAVERICK: why not add some grated orange zest to the dough before baking for more seasonal flavour?
These Spiced Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies will keep well for up to 5 days in an airtight container. Feel free to store them in the fridge if you’re in a warm climate, but they’re best eaten at room temperature or slightly warmed!
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Just baked these – delicious! 😋 You wouldn’t know these were vegan (if that bothers you – I made them because I was out of some ingredients and thought I’d give them a go). You can taste the olive oil but with the spices I think the flavours just make for a more sophisticated cookie for adults (pretty sure if these were in a posh supermarket you’d pay double just for the privilege of them sounding fancy 😂)
So easy, really recommend, I got 9 cookies from my batch, will definitely make again!