Soft & Chewy Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies with ‘Brown Butter’
These deliciously chewy vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are made with rich and nutty vegan brown butter and brown sugar, and loaded with molten chocolate in every bite!
These are truly the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They’re perfectly soft and chewy in the middle, with deliciously crisp edges. As a vegan baking cookbook author and cookie connoisseur, I’ve had my fair share of cookies, and these are it.
With hints of vanilla, these perfectly baked vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are sure to be loved by all eaters, vegan or not.
Based off of my classic iced vegan oatmeal cookies (which seriously taste like an old fashioned oatmeal cookie), these are some of my favorite vegan cookies ever (aside from my classic vegan chocolate chip cookies and vegan double chocolate chip cookies of course 🙂 ).
In fact, I even made a super fall version, my vegan pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, based off of these, as well as my oatmeal fudge bars!
They’re so easy to make and in just one bowl if needed, and you simply scoop the cookie dough and bake. You can even freeze the dough for baking alter on as well!
Not to mention, these vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are naturally made without eggs, without dairy, and easily gluten free as well, yet you’d never know. That’s what makes them one of the best vegan cookies to ever exist.
Make these for a quick and easy after school treat or dessert, or even as a part of your Christmas cookie exchange (and check out more of my favorite vegan Christmas cookies here!).
Ingredients & Substitutions:
But before we get into how to make the cookies, let’s go over the ingredients. For these cookies, you’ll need:
- All purpose flour: You can also use gluten free 1:1 baking flour, such as King Arthur’s measure-for-measure or Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 gluten free flour blend. Alternatively, you can swap in oat flour (either homemade oat flour or store bought!).
- Rolled oats (go with certified gluten free if needed): Please DO NOT use steel cut oats nor quick oats. You absolutely need rolled oats for this cookie recipe.
- Vegan butter: you can also use melted coconut oil instead.
- Sugar: I used a combination of organic granulated sugar and brown sugar. However, if you’d like to keep these vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies entirely refined sugar free, you can swap in coconut sugar.
- Vanilla Extract
- Unsweetened applesauce: or dairy free yogurt. You can also use flax eggs, but I personally don’t think they yield the best results.
- Vanilla extract: For flavor!
- Baking soda: To help the cookies spread.
- Chocolate Chips: I recommend Pascha Organics or Enjoy Life for the best vegan chocolate chips!
Really simple ingredients! You won’t even need any almond milk or soy milk for the cookie dough.
Overview: how to make vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies:
Now we get to the fun part! Making these vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies is seriously a breeze. It can be broken down into two main steps: combining the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately, then bringing them together.
- First, whisk together the wet ingredients.
- Then add in the dry ingredients, and fold together until you get a consistent dough. Next, fold in the chocolate chips.
- Use a medium cookie scoop to scoop the cookie dough, and bake! Once baked, simply allow the cookies to cool for a few minutes, then enjoy.
That’s it!
Seriously, baking vegan and gluten free really isn’t that complicated…in fact, many are the same steps, just varying ingredients!
Optional Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Add Ins
Personally, I’m a huge fan of the chocolate chips, but maybe you want some more add-ins or want to swap out the chocolate for something else!
You can also add in:
- Raisins
- Vegan sugar coated chocolate gems (very much like M&M’s- I use the Unreal brand!)
- Your favorite vegan candy
- Vegan marshmallows like Dandies
- Your favorite dried fruit
- Nuts and/or seeds
- Vegan white chocolate chips (I love Pascha Chocolate, or making my own vegan white chocolate!)
Tips & Tricks for making gluten free vegan cookies
- You can use a whisk, a hand mixer, or a stand mixer to combine the wet ingredients. Since the vegan butter is melted, it’s easy enough to just use a whisk.
- Freeze the cookie dough balls in the freezer to bake whenever you need. This makes these vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies really easy to make for a Christmas cookie exchange or for a school bake sale.
- Use chocolate chunks, mini chocolate chips, or regular chocolate chips. I really love Valrhona’s vegan milk chocolate chunks!
You are just going to absolutely love these vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! They’re just so easy to make and taste like a dream.
Be sure to grab my free vegan cookie baking guide for all of your holiday baking needs. And let me know what you think down below in the comments section, and as always, I love to see your beautiful creations, so be sure to tag me on Instagram and Pinterest!
Happy cookie baking!
More vegan cookie recipes:
Chewy Vegan Peanut Butter Blossoms
Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!
If you make this recipe, please be sure to leave a comment and a rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ below. This helps others to find the recipes! As always, I absolutely love to see your beautiful creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there as well!
Print
Soft & Chewy Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies with ‘Brown Butter’
- Prep Time: 5
- Cook Time: 15
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
These deliciously chewy vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are made with rich and nutty vegan brown butter and brown sugar, and loaded with molten chocolate in every bite!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups (220 g) all-purpose flour* (see notes for gluten free)
- 1 1/2 cups (150 g) rolled oats, gluten free certified if needed
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1 cup (220 g) vegan butter, melted* (see instructions for browned butter option)
- 3/4 cup (150 g) light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup (150 g) dairy free yogurt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup (220 g) mini vegan chocolate chips
- 1 bar vegan chocolate, chopped
Instructions
- Prep: Brown the vegan butter if you’re incorporating that into the dough. Heat the vegan butter in a small saucepan on medium heat until melted, then continue to stir until the fat starts to turn a golden brown. Remove from heat and let cool for 5-10 minutes.
- Make the dough: In a large bowl, whisk together the melted vegan butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, yogurt, and vanilla extract until combined. Then add in the baking soda and powder, followed by the sea salt. Whisk just until combined. Then add in the dry ingredients by pouring in the flour and using a silicone spatula to fold the flour into the wet ingredients. Pour in the oats, and fold again just until evenly distributed. Finally, fold in the vegan chocolate chips.
- Chill: Cover the cookie dough and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes to overnight.
- Scoop: Preheat the oven to 375F, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Use a medium cookie scoop to double scoop about 1.5 tablespoons each of dough into a ball. Stack one cookie dough ball on top of the over to create a tall cookie dough mound (this will help the cookies bake without sinking entirely). Repeat for the remaining dough, placing the cookies about 2-3″ apart. You can yield 12 large cookies with 3 tbsp of dough total, or reduce the cookie dough by half for smaller cookies, about 24. The smaller cookies will need to bake less.
- Bake: Place the cookies into the oven and bake for 11-13 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned and crisp looking.
- Cool: Remove from the oven and press additional vegan chocolate chips into the tops of the cookies. Allow the cookies to rest on the baking sheet for 10 minutes. Then serve and enjoy!
Notes
Flour: You can use a gluten-free flour blend, such as King Arthur Measure for Measure. Or you can use oat flour. For the store bought flour blends, use the cup measurements then convert to gram measurements. For the oat flour, use the gram measurements only.
Browned Vegan Butter: If you would like to make this recipe using browned vegan butter, you absolutely can! Simply heat the vegan butter on the stove top on medium heat until melted, continually stirring. Reduce to medium low heat, then watch for the vegan butter to start to turn a caramel and light brown color all while stirring. Once the butter has browned and smells nutty, remove the butter from heat and pour into a heat-safe bowl. Let the butter cool for 10-15 minutes before using in the recipe.
Sugar: You can swap in all coconut sugar for a refined sugar free vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Freeze: You can also freeze the cookie dough scooped for an easy bake.
Actually the best oatmeal cookies I’ve ever had! Soooo gooey and delicious! Came out just perfect 🙂
Aw I’m so beyond happy to hear!!! Enjoy!
Best oatmeal cookies ever!!! I made them for my sisters and my parents and they were gone within the hour. Will definitely be making again!
Aw that is just wonderful to hear, thank you so much!! Enjoy! 🙂
These were so delicious! I made a half batch yesterday to test them out, and my sister and I loved them so I made another batch today! These were the best oatmeal cookies I’ve had 🙂
Aw wow thank you so much!! I’m so beyond grateful you loved them!!
Will a powder egg replacer work in place of the flax “egg”?
I have not personally tried powdered egg replacers, as I find applesauce or flax eggs (or dairy free yogurt!) works best!
Could I use mashed banana instead of applesauce?
Hi Christy! Yes you can! The cookies will have a bit more of a banana taste, but if that’s okay with you, then you can use it!
Can you sub coconut oil for vegan butter?
Hi Barbara! Yes, you can! If you use virgin coconut oil, however, the cookies will definitely have a bit more of a coconut taste!
Since I stopped eating dairy and gluten I have missed the Potbelly oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and I was so happy that these were just as good if not better!
This is so wonderful!! I’m so happy to hear it 🙂 Enjoy!!
We love these, a total yummy treat that you feel like is from a bakery, but way better.
I used 1 cup oat flour, half cup gf 1-1 as my flour mix.
I also only used the half cup brown sugar.
Always turns out.
Oh I’m so happy to hear it!! Thank you so much for mentioning your notes too, this is so helpful for other readers 🙂 Enjoy!!
Hey Britt, I made these today but the ingredients here are different than when I printed it a few days ago. I used 180g flour, 113g butter, and I think it was 80g oats.
The intro said one bowl, no chill, but method calls for two bowls, 20 min. chill. I browned the butter, used two bowls, chilled, used extra cinnamon and added cardamom. They are really easy and SO good. I loved them.
I also easily got 20 cookies, 10-14 would have been giant cookies beyond the 1.5 tbsp. mentioned.
I’ve made a bunch of your recipes and haven’t seen this kind of mix up, wanted to let you know. I also can’t seem to print your recipes anymore without ads taking up almost 1/4 of a page per ad. Not sure if something is amiss?
Love your work, and your recipes. And these cookies! Tomorrow I’m going to make the s’more ones.
Hi Chantal! I’m SO incredibly sorry for this confusion!! When I went to update the recipe, it looks like the recipe card didn’t fully save, so it had a mix up of instructions 😞I’m so sorry for this error! It’s been corrected now, and please feel free to let me know if it still doesn’t look right! But yes, the recipe was updated to include more flour and more oats too, to create a chewier cookie. I hope they turned out well for you!! I love that you added in the cardamom too 🙂
Thank you so much for pointing this out to me (and in such a kind way!!), and I’m so sorry again for this slip up on my part! The recipe card is a bit finicky at times, and I should have double checked that it saved properly when I made the edits! Hope you love the s’mores cookies 🙂 And thank you again!!
Yay! I thought about it afterwards, there also wasn’t a mention of salt, I added some (plus flake Maldon on top of mine, to keep my partner’s rations separate 🤣), and your 1c of chocolate chips is 220g, but elsewhere is 170g. I was reading a ton of your cookie recipes last night and was like “what is this giant mixup, there’s a glitch in the matrix, I should let her know”. Glad you picked up what I was throwing down. I’m an experienced enough baker, no issues for me, I love this recipe! Do you think I can use it as a “base” and add other things like swap in a little cocoa for flour, add marshmallows and a few chunks of Graham crackers, that kind of thing? Thanks for the great work.
There was definitely a glitch in the matrix there 🤣 or Mercury in retrograde?? I always get so nervous about my posts during then haha! but my goodness that idea sounds BRILLIANT with the graham crackers!! I absolutely need to try that myself, let me know how it comes!!
Made almost exactly as the recipe outlines, except I completely forgot that I ran out of brown sugar and had to add in a tablespoon of molasses and use all white sugar. These were great!!!!! A little flatter than shown (which always seems to happen when I melt the butter for cookies), but they were great. Will make again!
I love this recipe. I made it last week prior to the change of no chill time. I made it again this week and when it came to rolling the cookie balls it wasn’t as easy with the room temperature dough. I found it a lot easier to chill the dough for 20 minutes prior to rolling. These make large delicious cookies. Soft in the middle and the outside has a lovely crisp. Very easy to make.
This is so wonderful 🙂 And so sorry about the stickiness of the dough! Did you happen to use a gf flour blend? So happy you loved them though!! Thank you so much for the review!
These turned out fabulous! And SO EASY!
So happy to hear it!! Thanks for the review 🙂
These are UNREAL. I’ve been keeping dough in the freezer since I first made them. I literally don’t have words, this is the exact oatmeal chocolate chip cookie I’d be nostalgic for, only deliciously vegan. I do half the cinnamon because I prefer a lighter cinnamon flavor, and a pinch of salt since I always buy unsalted butter. So so so delicious, a perfect cookie.
Omgsh I’m so happy to hear it!! Thanks so much for the review 🙂 That was my goal, to re-create that nostalgic cookie (because I have that same nostalgia haha! Especially for those oatmeal cookies that came pre-packaged with the icing on top in the red box- the best!!). Enjoy, and thank you again!
How many flax eggs fi you dont have applesauce?
I’ve been looking for a vegan cookie recipe that is moist, tender and oh so delicious. Well, this is it – I also made them with gluten free flour and they came out amazing!! I will definitely be making these again.
I’m so happy to hear it omgsh!! Enjoy! And thank you for the review 🙂
Came across this recipe but Im not vegan. I’d like to use what I have on hand. Can I use regular butter?
As with all of my recipes, I don’t test them with animal products but you’re more than welcome to try it out and see how it works! I know many readers who have an egg allergy will use dairy with success- but it doesn’t always work. I hope that helps!
Recently made these, they are really good but why did they come out a bit puffy and cakey? Thanks
Hi Rochelle! So glad you loved them!! Hmm I’m wondering it may have been your baking powder is super powerful and fresh- did you use the proper amount too? Super cakey could also mean the flour was over measured!
OMG, these are the best vegan cookies! My boyfriend isn’t dairy free so he wanted Heath bar pieces in his cookies. I took the top cookie dough ball, pressed toffee into the bottom and top before baking. I also used Miyoko’s vegan butter which browned great! I love your recipes!
My dough came out very wet. I used the same butter I always do for cookies… I stuck the mix in the freezer. Hopefully it will be workable!
Please let me know how they came out! I’m wondering, did you use a gluten free flour blend?
Did you recently change/update this recipe? It looks different from the last time I made them. Hmmmm.
Hi Carolyn! We’re always working to improve and update all of our recipes, so just make sure you follow the recipe card at the bottom of the page for the most updated version. 🙂 I hope this helps!
Full transparency, I did not change any ingredients, but I am not vegan and did not use the vegan options which may change things a bit. That being said these were hands down the best oatmeal cookies I have made! I’ve made tons of different recipes, but now I’ve found the one I can keep coming back to. Made this account just to post this.
Oh my goodness!! This is so wonderful! So happy to hear you loved them 🙂 Thank you so much for your review!! So glad to have you here!
This recipe mentions cinnamon but I don’t see it in the recipe???
Also, I have an older recipe of “Soft & Chewy Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies” and the ingredients and amounts are different. I’ve baked the older version many times and my son, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren LOVE them! I’m reluctant to try this different version.
Hi Marlene! Sorry about that! The recipe and post have been updated, so thank you for the heads up! We promise you’ll still LOVE the new and improved version!
I’m not exaggerating when I say these are the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had. They put crumble to shame! Seriously, crispy on the outside soft on the inside. The flavor is incredible! I used Trader Joe’s cashew yogurt, and a tsp of coffee grounds to bring out the chocolate chips, and added extra chocolate chips. 10/10 Will be my forever go to recipe!!!!
This will be my new go-to cookie recipe! Absolutely perfect AND beyond easy to make? Count me SO in! Thank you 🙂
Oh my gosh that is wonderful!! So so happy to hear it, thank you so much for the review!
Hi Brit,
Can you share your brands (for the ingredients) that you used for this recipe? The cookies look delicious!!!
Thank you so very much!!!! <3
Oh sure!! For the oats, I used One Degree Sprouted Organic Rolled Oats, vegan butter is Miyoko’s, sugar I do Florida Crystals and/or Wholesome Organics, chocolate chips I do Enjoy life mini, and dairy free yogurt I use Forager Project cashew milk unsweetened!