Week 1: Vegan Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Happy New Year! For 2023, I have made a modestly triumphant return with a new challenge for the year: 52 weeks of vegan and/or gluten-free recipes. When I did my 52 weeks of cookies in 2021, the most popular cookie was The Healthiest Breakfast Cookie, and I wondered if you can make tasty desserts that were either vegan and/or gluten free, so that’s my challenge for the year.

My goal for this year is to try out recipes that are vegan and/or gluten-free. There are a lot of vegan recipes out there, but you’re not sure which ones are worth trying. This is where I come in: to try things out so you don’t have to.

That always seems to the problem with vegan or gluten-free cookies: they remind you that you’re missing something, and my goal is to make it feel like you can still enjoy good stuff while cutting out gluten, dairy, and/or eggs.

For this first recipe, I decided to go with something simple: peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but in vegan form!

First, let’s prepare all of our ingredients.

There we go!

First, we’re going to combine the peanut butter and maple syrup.

Aw yeah, that’s the good stuff!
Mix it all together!

Once the peanut butter and maple syrup was well mixed, put that bowl aside.

Grab another bowl to mix all the dry ingredients together (oats, cinnamon, baking soda, and sea salt). Put that aside.

Whisk it up!

Now, back to the peanut butter and maple syrup. Before we put in the dry ingredients, mix in the chocolate chips. I use the Enjoy Life chocolate chips since they’re vegan.

Go with these if you want vegan chocolate chips in your peanut butter cookie.

Make sure you combine the chocolate chips with the peanut butter/maple syrup mix because if you put the chocolate chips in later, they won’t bind well.

This step is crucial to making this cookie stay together.
Like so.

Now go ahead and pour in the dry ingredients you mixed in earlier.

It’s okay, they won’t bite…
This dough mixes together better if you put the chocolate chips in before the dry ingredients.

Alright, so now our dough is made, let’s go ahead and preheat the oven to 350℉ and line a couple of aluminum cookie sheets with parchment paper. Using your trusty 1.5Tbsp cookie scoop, place 10 cookies on the cookie sheet and flatten them with a spoon or fork.

They taste better than they look. Trust me.
You’ll want to flatten them because they will retain whatever shape they go into the oven with.

Place each cookie sheet in the oven for about 14 minutes.

Almost ready to eat!

Let the cookies cool for about 10 minutes before eating.

This could almost be a breakfast cookie honestly.

Overall, this is a very good, yet simple, cookie to make that doesn’t require too much effort. Despite it being vegan, it doesn’t feel like you’re sacrificing anything when it comes to these cookies.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup organic peanut butter
  • ⅓ cup organic pure maple syrup
  • 1 ½ cups rolled oats
  • ¼ tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 2/3 cup vegan chocolate chips

Instructions:

  1. Mix peanut butter and maple syrup in a large bowl. Set aside.
  2. In a medium bowl, mix the rolled oats, baking soda, ground cinnamon, and sea salt. Set aside.
  3. In the large bowl with the mixed peanut butter and maple syrup, add the chocolate chips. Mix well.
  4. Pour the dry ingredients into the large bowl and mix thoroughly.
  5. Preheat the oven to 350℉.
  6. Line two aluminum cookie sheets with parchment paper.
  7. Using your 1.5Tbsp scoop, place 10 cookies on a cookie sheet at a time, and flatten with a spoon or fork.
  8. Bake for 14 minutes.
  9. Let the cookies cool for 10 minutes before you enjoy them!

Source

Author: Michael Maravick

I hold a Bachelor's of Science in Manufacturing Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I'm a process engineer by day with a passion for baking and trying new recipes.

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