Thin Vegan Chocolate Chunk Cookies

This is my very favorite recipe for thin vegan chocolate chunk cookies. Honestly, it's my favorite of all chocolate chunk cookies right now, but that will probably pass once I get tired of them. But they're a little different! They are thin, chewy and have big splotches of chocolate throughout. They also have a lot of flavor from small amounts of "secret ingredients". If you like Insomnia's chocolate chunk cookies, they may remind you of those (but vegan).

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This recipe is spin-off of some egg-free chocolate chips cookies I posted a while back. Those were so close to being dairy-free, I decided to take it out completely by using vegan butter. When I did that, I ended up having to make a few more changes to the recipe so it took on a new life.

Vegan Butter or Margarine

Earth Balance is a key ingredient in these cookies. I tried other vegan butters and margarines, but the Earth Balance cookies were always the best. I use the kind from the tub and measure it by weight. I'll update when I get around to testing it with the Earth Balance baking sticks.

Karo Corn Syrup or Lyle's Golden

Either Lyle's Golden or Karo brand corn syrup stands in for the eggs and makes these cookies soft and chewy. Golden syrup has a little more flavor and makes the cookies darker. The white Karo makes a real good cookie too, just not quite as brown. For best results, go by weight. Three tablespoons of syrup usually ends up weighing about 54 grams, so I just set the bowl on the scale and pour in 54 grams. You may want to add it spoonful by spoonful because it's easy to accidentally pour in too much.

Blackstrap Molasses and Cinnamon

Black strap is completely optional, but adding a little dash of it, no more than 2 grams, bumps up the flavor even more. Same with the cinnamon. I love adding just a very tiny bit to chocolate chip cookies, but not enough so that they taste like spice cookies.

Vegan Sugar

When making vegan baked goods with sugar, the bone char issue always comes up. My understanding is that cane sugar is processed with bone char, but is chemically free of bone char once processed, which would be an ethical issue for some. Beet sugar is not processed with bone char, but some brands of beet sugar are mixed with cane, so again -- not always vegan. Some mainstream brands are vegan. Dixie Crystals and Imperial both claim to be processed without the bone char. But if you are not so sure, you can just go with an organic sugar. The point is, if you're calling these vegan and making them for people you don't know, be sure the sugar is actually vegan.

Vegan Chocolate Chunks

Vegan chocolate can be a little confusing too. If there's no dairy in the chocolate, you'd think it would be vegan, but if the chocolate is made with cane sugar, then based on the information in the paragraph above it may not be vegan. When in doubt, go with something certified vegan. But it all depends on the situation. A lot of my friends look for vegan products, but their real concern is eggs. So again, depends on the audience. I love baking these with a mixture of different chocolate cut into chunks or couverture, which melts into the cookies and creates stripes of chocolate throughout. The Trader Joe's pound plus dark chocolate also works very well, and I believe it is actually vegan.

Small Batch Vegan Chocolate Chunk

While testing different brands of vegan butter and types of syrup, I made small batches of these. If you need a quick cookie fix and want to bake up a small batch, here are the easy-to-memorize measurements.

• ¾ cup all-purpose flour (105 grams)
• ¼ teaspoon plus ⅛ baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon plus ⅛ salt
• 1 tiny pinch of cinnamon
• 4 ½ to 5 tablespoons Earth Balance (63 to 70 grams)
• ¼ cup organic light brown sugar (50 grams)
• 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons organic granulated sugar (32 grams)
• 1 ½ tablespoon Lyle's Golden Syrup or corn syrup (27 grams)
• 1 tiny drop blackstrap molasses
• 1 ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract (you can use slightly less, depends on brand of vanilla)
• 1 tablespoon soy milk (scant)
• Somewhere around ½ cup chocolate chunks, but you don't really need to measure

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Have ready a baking sheet lined with parchment.
2. Mix together the dry ingredients and set aside.
3. Put the mixing bowl on a scale and add the vegan margarine, sugar and brown sugar. Beat with a handheld mixer until smooth.
4. Beat in the corn syrup, molasses (if using) and vanilla.
5. Add the flour mixture and stir with a heavy duty scraper until halfway blended, then add the soy milk and stir to make a soft dough.
6. Stir in the chocolate.
7. Using a medium size cookie scoop, form balls of dough and bake on the parchment lined baking sheet for about 12 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Tips for Best Results

• Weigh the ingredients. It's an easier way to measure and more accurate. I used all of the weights listed.
• Chocolate chips are okay, but the cookies look and taste so much better with chunks. I'd probably choose another recipe if all I had were chips.
• The cookies are supposed to spread thin, but in different ovens they might spread too thin or not enough. If your first tray of cookies seems too thin, you can spoon a little more flour into the dough.
• Don't forget the soy milk! It's added last so it's easy to forget. The cookies need it for the proper texture. I use full fat soy milk. I've never tested with almond milk.

• Blackstrap Molasses Cookies
• Artpark Brownies
• Keto Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Earth Balance Coconut Spread Coconut Cupcakes
• Fudge Brownies With Golden Syrup

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