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No one will guess these delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies are vegan! Thick, chewy, and made with real pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice, they’re one of the best pumpkin cookie recipes ever! Make sure to cool the cookies completely, which take them from soft cakey to nice and chewy!!!
Pumpkin Chocolate Cookies, Please!
The main problem with most pumpkin cookie recipes? They come out soft and cakey, instead of chewy and crunchy. The second problem with most pumpkin cookie recipes? Little to no pumpkin flavor.
This is because a lot of pumpkin cookie recipes rely solely on pumpkin pie spice to flavor their cookie dough. As a professional baker, I understand the why behind this. Adding pumpkin pie spice to the dry ingredients will have little to no impact on the texture. Whereas adding pumpkin puree will completely change the texture of the pumpkin cookie recipe.
My solution to this pumpkin cookie recipe conundrum? Eliminate eggs, add pumpkin, and add molasses to further increase the pumpkin flavor. The result? A chewy cookie that actually has pumpkin flavor!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies: Ingredients
- Coconut Oil: Instead of butter, we use flavorsome coconut oil. If you’re not vegan and would like to use butter, feel free to use 1 cup of room temperature butter instead. If you’re using coconut oil, make sure it’s not liquid. And don’t sub vegetable oil, canola oil, or olive oil.
- Sugar: A combination of granulated sugar and brown sugar sweeten the cookies, and given them structure.
- Vanilla Extract: Vanilla adds its signature rich flavor while enhancing the other flavors in this pumpkin cookie recipe,.
- Molasses: I think molasses enhance the pumpkin flavor. But feel free to omit this ingredient or sub with maple syrup.
- Coconut Milk: (almond or soy milk will also work)
- Pumpkin Puree: I don’t suggest subbing pumpkin pie mix for the pumpkin puree.
- All-Purpose Flour: For best results, weigh your all purpose flour with a digital kitchen scale.
- Baking Soda: Make sure your baking soda is fresh and don’t sub with baking powder.
- Salt: A pinch of salt balances sweetness and enhances the flavors in the cookie dough.
- Pumpkin Pie Spice: Feel free to add an extra teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice for even more delicious pumpkin pie spice flavor!
- Chocolate Chips: I love these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies exploding with chocolate chips! But my husband argues the chocolate can blanket the pumpkin flavor. So you might want to reduce the chocolate chips if a pumpkin forward cookie is your main objective.
- Flaky Sea Salt: This is an. optional ingredient, but we love sprinkling the cookies with sea salt once they’ve come out of the oven.
Let’s Bake Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Unlike many recipes that call for your oven to 350, this recipe asks you preheat your oven to 375.
- Make the cookie dough then drop the dough in large mounds onto the lined baking sheets.
- Bake for about 10 minutes. Cool on the baking sheet for at least 30 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
- Eat and enjoy these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies FAQ
- First of all, let’s talk about texture! These cookies are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. They are NOT cakey pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. But they do come out of the oven VERY soft. So it’s crucial to cool the cookies on the baking sheet for at least 30 minutes before serving. But if you can, I suggest letting them cool a full hour! The longer they sit, the firmer and chewier and they get. The silver lining is that these cookies taste even better with time!
- So now that we’ve covered texture, let’s move onto flavor. Because these vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies have a lot of it! In addition to real pumpkin puree (be sure not to grab pumpkin pie mix by accident!), these cookies are flavored with brown sugar, vanilla, molasses, and pumpkin spice. Yum ♥
- These pumpkin choc chip cookies don’t spread out too much while they bake, so be sure to scoop the dough into mounds, then lightly press down the top of the mound before baking.
- I make VERY large cookies with this recipe, and usually get about 1 dozen. However you can make smaller cookies, just be sure to decrease the bake time a minute or two.
- For extra pretty – and extra chocolatey – cookies, press a few chocolate chips on top of them right when they come out of the oven. You can also add a sprinkle of flaky sea salt!
- If you don’t like coconut flavor, you should use refined coconut oil, which does not have a coconut taste or scent. If you don’t have coconut milk, almond milk or soy milk will work fine!
- Finally, be sure not to over bake your cookies! As I mentioned earlier, they will be very soft when you remove them from the oven, but they firm up a lot while they cool.
These are hands down the tastiest pumpkin chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever eaten! Not cakey, plenty of pumpkin flavor, and soooooo many chocolate chips… I mean, what’s not to love? The fact that they’re vegan is really just the icing on the cake 😉
If you try this recipe for Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, let me know! Leave a comment below and don’t forget to snap a pic and tag it #bakerbynature on instagram! Seeing your kitchen creations makes my day.
More Vegan Cookie Recipes:
- The Most Wonderful Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever
- Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Chewy Chocolate Fudge Cookies (Vegan)
Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (113g) coconut oil, solid (be sure it’s not melted at all)
- 3/4 cups (159g) dark brown sugar, packed
- 1/2 cup (99g) granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 Tablespoons (40ml) unsulphured molasses
- 2 Tablespoons (28ml) unsweetened coconut milk (almond or soy milk will also work)
- 1/3 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix!)
- 2 and 1/4 cups (275g) cups all-purpose flour (be sure not to pack your flour)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 and 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 1 and 1/2 cups chocolate chips (use vegan chocolate chips if vegan) divided
- Flaky sea salt optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees (F). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl using a handheld electric mixer, beat the coconut oil, both sugars, and vanilla on medium-speed until smooth; about 2 minutes. Add in the molasses, coconut milk and pumpkin puree and beat on low speed until well combined. Turn mixer off.
- In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice; whisk well to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients into the wet mixture and, with the mixer on low speed, beat until ingredients are combined. The batter will be very thick! Fold in 1 and 1/4 cups of the chocolate chips.
- Scoop three tablespoon sized mounds of dough onto the prepared cookie sheet, leaving a few inches between each cookie. Bake for 9 to 10 minutes, or until the edges are golden and the centers are soft but set. Press remaining chocolate chips on top of warm cookies, and sprinkle with sea salt, if using. Cool cookies on the baking sheet for 30 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.
So chewy and delicious
These are moist and delicious!
I used Bob’s Red Mill gluten free “1:1 baking flour” and they turned out great! They are also delicious with dried cranberries and pecans instead of chocolate chips just to mix things up. They freeze really well too. Love this recipe!
Thank you for the recipe! Are there any subs for the molasses?
These are delicious. Wait for them to cool fully – much better cool than fresh out of the oven! The molasses gives a deep flavor reminiscent of ginger snaps, and I don’t think these are really pumpkin forward, but they’re so chewy and soft, so good, and definitely not cakey.
I’m not giving full stars because as one other reviewer mentioned, they really ought to provide the amounts by weight as well. For baking, I much prefer measuring by weight. Not only is it more accurate, it’s also so much easier to put the bowl on a scale, add the needed weight of the ingredient, tare it out, add the next ingredient, etc and not have to worry about measuring it out as well. I’m quite surprised a baking website like this isn’t including weights.