Easy Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hi! If you want to know all the tips and tricks to make this recipe, please read the whole article with detailed step-by-step instructions and useful information. If you want to go straight to the recipe or print it, you can do so with the buttons above. Share, tweet, and pin on social media too! Enjoy the recipe. Maiko

Peanut butter and chocolate combo is always a win! These easy vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are soft, thick, and chunky with lots of delicious melty chocolate chips. They are full of peanut butter and chocolate flavour – one of the best peanut butter cookies for all the peanut butter lovers out there!

*This post may contain affiliate links. For full disclosure visit our Affiliate Disclosure page.

If you just stumbled upon this recipe by chance, I’m assuming you love peanut butter like me. Or maybe you are trying to find a good recipe with peanut butter because you are baking for someone who loves peanut butter like me. Either way, you have come to the right place – I made these vegan PB chocolate chip cookies just for you!

I did several recipe tests for this one, one after another to get the right texture for the cookies. It wasn’t easy… I thought if I just add peanut butter to my usual cookie recipe and voila! Delicious peanut butter cookies ready – but this wasn’t the case at all! Peanut butter actually has a very unique consistency of dry peanuts and the oil that comes from them, so to get the texture I wanted was rather tricky and it took a bit of experimentation.

After finishing a huge jar of peanut butter and eating a bunch of dozens of cookies, I got the cookies how I liked them at last! They are soft, thick, and chunky cookies that are a lovely treat for all peanut butter lovers or even for those who are not. They made perfect afternoon snacks and little something to bring to home parties.

Main ingredients and substitutions

Plain flour: This cookie recipe uses plain flour as the base. When I make soft and thick cookies I like using plain flour but if you want to make them gluten-free, use 1:1 gluten-free flour instead.

Natural peanut butter: The main of main ingredients, peanut butter! I went with natural smooth peanut butter that is made 100% peanut to make the cookies really, really flavourful and peanut buttery. I used smooth but you can use crunchy if you like too! I haven’t tested this recipe with store-bought peanut butter such as Skippy so I can’t tell if it works. While I think it would, the taste and texture will probably be different since this peanut butter has salt and other additives in them.

Brown sugar: If you read my post The Ultimate Guide to Vegan Cookies, you know how much I love using brown sugar in cookie recipes! I love the fact that it creates a soft and chewy texture in cookies as well as a sweet and rich flavour. You can substitute it for coconut sugar too.

Granulated sugar: Granulated sugar creates a slight crispy exterior and crunchy texture in this recipe. The combination and ratio of the sugars create the best texture for the cookies.

Vegan butter: I used melted vegan butter for this recipe as I wanted the texture to be more soft and chewy than crunchy. I used Naturli’s vegan block butter. I have been enjoying using them in my recipe and highly recommend you try them! You can substitute for coconut oil too if you can’t find vegan butter, but the texture of the final product will be a little oilier.

Soy milk: I added a couple of tablespoons of soy milk but you can use your favourite plant-based milk of choice too!

Ground flaxseed: To replace eggs and bind the cookies, I used flaxseed + water. Ground flaxseeds become thick and jelly-like when mixed with water and it can be used as an egg replacement in vegan baking.

Other ingredients: baking powder and vanilla extract

*I use bone char-free sugars for all of my recipes. I cover the topic in my article Vegan Baking 101. Go to the “Is sugar vegan?” section to learn more!

Recommended equipment for this recipe

Baking tray: Seems simple but important, baking tray! I used to have a baking tray, a bad one. Why was it bad? Because my old baking tray wasn’t completely flat. I or someone in my family must’ve dropped it and it had an uneven surface so whenever I baked cookies on it the cookies would run down on the tray and end up in a really weird shape! So to bake cookies in a good cookie shape, make sure that your baking tray is nice and flat.

Ice cream scoop: An ice cream scoop is a must-have to get an even amount of cookie dough. You can get cookies of the same size for every batch compared to when you just use a regular tablespoon. And it’s easy to get the cookie dough out of the spoon too!

Parchment paper: Place a sheet of parchment paper on the baking tray to prevent the cookies from sticking. 

Turner: Once the cookies are cooled down on the tray, use a turner that has a wide enough surface to transfer them onto a cooling rack. 

*The ingredient list and measurement for this recipe can be found in the recipe card at the bottom.

How to make vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

Step 1: Make flax egg

In a small bowl, mix the ground flaxseeds and water together to make a flax egg. Flaxseeds become thick and jelly-like when mixed with water, and it works as an egg replacement in vegan baking! It binds ingredients like eggs, interesting right? Set it aside for a few minutes to thicken.

Step 2: Mix the dry ingredients except for sugar

In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour, cornflour, and baking powder together with a whisk until well combined and there are no lumps of flour left. Set aside.

Step 3: Mix the wet ingredients with sugar

Mix the brown sugar and granulated sugar with melted vegan butter and flax egg until they are very well combined. Add the room temperature soy milk and peanut butter to the mixture and mix until well combined and very smooth. 

Step 4: Mix the dry and wet mixture

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix with a large wooden spoon until it forms cookie dough. Because the dough has peanut butter in it, it’s a little sticky compared to ordinary cookie dough. Add the vegan chocolate chips and fold them in gently.

Step 5: Make cookies

I experimented with chilling the dough, but I actually liked the cookies without chilling! Chilling the dough made crunchy cookies, so if you like crunchy ones you can chill the dough for 15 to 30 mins. Not chilling makes soft cookies.

Using an ice cream scoop, scoop the dough and make balls. Place them on a baking tray with parchment paper on, and press down the top gently to flatten them into a cookie shape. If you do chill the dough, especially don’t forget this step! Because the cookies tend to NOT spread in the oven, and chilling the dough makes it even more unlikely for them to spread. So always, press them down gently before baking. Make sure to leave some space between the cookies so that they won’t stick together when they are being baked in the oven. Add some extra chocolate chips on top if you like.

Step 6: Bake!

Bake the cookies for 11-13mins. 11 mins make softer and gooier cookies and 13 mins make crunchier cookies! Take the cookies out of the oven and cool them down on the tray for 5mins until they are firm enough to transfer. Do not try to transfer them immediately after taking them out of the oven as they are still quite soft and fragile at that point. Using a spatula, carefully insert it under cookies and transfer to a cooling rack. Enjoy while it’s warm or when it’s cooled!

Tips and tricks

Use natural 100% peanut butter

I used natural smooth peanut butter that is made of 100% peanut for this recipe. I haven’t tried this recipe with store-bought peanut butter like Skippy, so I can’t guarantee the result if you use one of those peanut butter. While I think it would work, they have sugar and salt already so it would change the taste and texture of the cookies quite a bit I imagine. Feel free to use natural crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth though, it shouldn’t be a problem! 

Leave the cookies on the tray for 5 mins

Leave the cookies on the tray for about 5 mins after baking. This is because the cookies tend to be quite crumbly right when they come out of the oven. And if you try to transfer it with a spatula there’s a good chance that they will fall apart. Cookies will continue to cook a little longer on the tray and firm up nicely, so leave them there for about 5 mins then transfer to a cooling rack.

Press them down before baking

As I mentioned earlier, these cookies won’t spread much so press them down to flatten using your fingers or a spoon before baking! So that they will be in just perfect cookie shape.

Use room temperature peanut butter and plant milk

As this recipe calls for melted vegan butter, use room-temperature peanut butter and plant milk to prevent the butter from solidifying while mixing them together. 

How to store

You can store these cookies in a cookie jar or airtight container for about 3 days! I like to have them in a cookie jar because it makes me happy to see a jar full of cookies in my kitchen. If you want to keep them in a freezer, place them in one layer in a freezer-friendly airtight container, place a sheet of parchment paper, place another layer of cookies and freeze for up to 2-3 months.

You can also freeze the cookie dough in advance! Make cookie balls then place them on a flat tray, cover them with reusable cling film, and freeze for up to 2-3 months. When baking, take them out, thaw, then press them down before baking. Then follow the instruction for baking as stated in the recipe below!

Q and A

My cookies are too crumbly! What went wrong?

If your cookies are crumbly, I can think of a couple of reasons provided that you didn’t make changes to the ingredients. The first could be that your dough didn’t have enough liquid. This could happen if you measured liquid ingredients incorrectly or because of the type of peanut butter you used.

Measuring liquid ingredients correctly is a bit tricky, so try to measure accurately with a proper measuring jug or cup, and if the batter looks too dry and crumbly, add a tablespoon of plant milk and see how the dough looks. The dough should be put together with no problem with a soft and pliable texture.

Another reason could be that you didn’t leave the cookies on the tray for 5 mins after baking. The cookies are quite fragile and can be crumbly right out of the oven but will start to firm up as they settle on the tray. So try to leave them on the tray a bit until they firm up!

My cookies didn’t spread?

These vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies don’t do best at spreading in the oven because of the peanut butter in the dough! So I always press them down with my fingers prior to baking so that they come out in a perfect shape. If your cookies didn’t spread, don’t throw them away! Simply press them down with a spoon or fork right when they come out of the oven, bake for another 2-3 mins and let them set on the tray for 5 mins. They will be perfect to eat!

Want to master the basics of vegan baking?
Check out Vegan Baking 101 – the beginner’s guide to vegan baking for you to become an excellent vegan baker and familiar with the basics of vegan baking, ingredients, and techniques with useful tips!

You will LOVE this peanut butter choc chip cookie recipe because it’s:

• full of peanut butter flavour
• Easy and simple to make
• vegan
• perfect snack for work/school
• delicious

Please leave a comment and rate this recipe in the comment section below if you like this recipe! Let me know and tag me @thechestnutbakery on Instagram too. Thank you for making my recipe, friends!

Recipe Card

Print

Pin this recipe for later!