Soft and Chewy Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Half a cup of pumpkin puree left in the can is all these need. These vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies bake up thick and craggy, with dark chocolate melting into pools across the tops.
The spice is warm rather than loud, and the cookie itself isn’t very sweet, which is exactly why the chocolate lands so well.
Grab your baking sheet and let’s make it.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Neutral oil and a spoonful of cornstarch do all the work, so there’s no vegan butter, no coconut oil and no flax egg to hunt down.
- That half cup of pumpkin sitting in the open can finally has somewhere to go.
- No creaming and no waiting around for butter to soften, because the fat goes in as a liquid.
- The cookie base is restrained on sugar, which leaves room for the chocolate and suits anyone who finds pumpkin desserts too sweet.
- Thirty minutes in the fridge is what keeps them thick instead of flat.
When and Who This Is For
These land right in the middle of pumpkin season, when the oven is on more often and someone in the house has started asking about fall baking. They’re the batch for a grey Sunday afternoon, or the one you bring when you know at least one person at the table doesn’t eat dairy or eggs and you’d rather not make them something separate.
They’re vegan, dairy free and egg free as written, though that rests entirely on which chocolate chips you buy, which I’ll get to in a moment. They aren’t gluten free, since the base is all-purpose flour.
Ingredients
Makes 18 to 20 cookies.
- ½ cup (120 ml) neutral oil, such as canola, sunflower or vegetable
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- ½ cup (100 g) light brown sugar
- ½ cup (120 ml) pumpkin puree
- 1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp (8 g) cornstarch
- 2 ½ cups (300 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp (5 g) baking soda
- ½ tsp (3 g) salt
- 2 tsp (4 g) pumpkin pie spice
- 1 cup (170 g) dairy-free chocolate chips
About those chocolate chips. This is the ingredient the whole recipe hangs on, and the standard bag on the shelf will quietly undo it. Plenty of semi-sweet chips contain dairy, and even some dark ones do. Turn the bag over and look for milk, milkfat, milk solids, nonfat milk, butterfat, butter oil, cream, lactose, whey or casein. Any of those and the cookies aren’t dairy free. Cocoa butter is fine, despite the name, because it comes from the cocoa bean rather than from milk. If you’re avoiding soy as well, check the emulsifier while you’re there, since most dairy-free chips use soy lecithin and only some use sunflower lecithin instead. And if you’re baking for an allergy rather than a preference, read the cross-contamination line too, because a number of brands make dairy-free chips on equipment shared with milk chocolate.
Neutral oil, and specifically NOT coconut oil. Any medium to high heat oil works here. Coconut oil is the one to leave alone, because it turns solid at fridge temperature and the dough spends half an hour in there, which changes the texture of the finished cookie entirely.
Pumpkin puree, NOT pumpkin pie filling. The cans sit side by side and look almost identical. Pie filling arrives pre-sweetened and pre-spiced, and this recipe already brings its own sugar and its own spice blend, so the two together make a very confused cookie. The label you want says 100% pure pumpkin.
Cornstarch. With no egg in the dough, the cornstarch does the binding. It also soaks up some of the water the pumpkin brings and softens the flour’s proteins so less gluten forms, which is why these hold a tall shape rather than spreading thin.
Pumpkin pie spice. Store-bought blend is fine. To mix your own, stir together 3 tsp (6 g) cinnamon, 2 tsp (4 g) ginger, 1 tsp (2 g) nutmeg and 1 tsp (2 g) clove, with ½ tsp (1 g) cardamom if you like. Multiply it and keep a jar going for the rest of your fall baking.
Instructions
- Combine the dry ingredients. Stir the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt together in a bowl and set it aside. Getting the cornstarch evenly distributed through the flour now matters, because a pocket of it later will result in a chalky patch in the finished cookie.
2. Emulsify the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, combine the oil, both sugars, pumpkin puree and vanilla. Beat on low speed for 1 to 2 minutes, until the mixture looks smooth and unified. Don’t shortcut this to a quick stir. Pumpkin puree is mostly water and oil is fat, so left to themselves they sit in the bowl refusing to mix. The beating is what brings them together.
3. Add the flour mixture. Stir it in until no dry streaks remain. The dough should be very thick but still soft. If it’s stiff enough to fight you, work in 1 to 2 tbsp (15 to 30 ml) of non-dairy milk.
4. Fold in the chocolate chips.
5. Chill for at least 30 minutes. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge. This step isn’t optional and it isn’t about firming up fat, since there’s no solid fat in here to firm. What’s happening is the flour drinking in the liquid, which thickens the dough so it holds its shape in the oven instead of running flat. Half an hour is where most of that benefit lands, so there’s no need to plan your afternoon around it. Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and line your baking sheets with parchment.
6. Scoop and roll. Take slightly heaping 2 tbsp (35 ml) portions, roll each into a ball, and set them on the sheets 2 to 3 inches apart.
7. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, until they’re well puffed and firm around the edges. Take the tray out and give it one firm tap on the counter. They come out of the oven domed and a little inflated, and that tap settles them into the thicker, denser cookie you’re after.
8. Cool on the sheet for at least 10 minutes before moving them to a rack. This one is a texture step, not just a handling step. Pumpkin cookies are soft and cakey straight from the oven and firm up into their proper chew as they cool, so judging them hot will only disappoint you.
Tips for Chewy Pumpkin Cookies
Measure the flour properly. Scooping the cup straight into the bag packs it down and can land you well over 300 g, and too much flour is the fastest route to a cakey cookie. Spoon it into the cup and level it off, or weigh it.
Don’t stretch the chill much past an hour. Thirty minutes gets you nearly all the benefit. Longer won’t ruin them, but you’ll be waiting for very little.
Swap the cornstarch for potato starch if that’s what you have. Tapioca starch behaves differently here and plain extra flour won’t do the job at all, so neither is a fair substitute.
For a more savory profile, try olive oil, either on its own or half olive and half neutral. It shifts the flavor noticeably, so it’s worth doing on a batch where you’re in the mood to experiment rather than one you’re serving to guests.
To add crunch, swap half the chocolate for ½ cup (50 g) chopped pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts. Worth knowing that this version is no longer nut free, so it’s not the one to bring if you’re baking around an allergy.
Storage. They keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days, or in the freezer for a month. Bring frozen ones back to room temperature before eating.
Ways to Use Them
A warm one with a mug of something is the whole point, and if you’re keeping it dairy free, the dairy free pumpkin spice latte with oat milk is the natural partner. It uses pumpkin puree too, so a single can covers the cookies and the drinks. On a colder evening, the dairy-free hot chocolate with almond milk does the same job.
They travel well, which makes them useful beyond the kitchen. A tray of plant-based pumpkin cookies tends to be the thing missing from a bake sale table, and they hold up fine in a lunchbox or a tin on the counter at work.
Because the dough freezes, you can also roll the balls, freeze them solid, and bake a few at a time when the craving turns up rather than committing to the full batch at once.
Questions You May Have About These Cookies
Can I use pumpkin pie filling instead of pumpkin puree?
Not for this one. Pie filling is already sweetened and spiced, and since the recipe brings its own sugar and its own pumpkin pie spice, you’d end up doubling both. Look for the can labeled 100% pure pumpkin.
Do I really have to chill the dough?
Yes. It’s the difference between a thick cookie and a thin one. Most recipes chill dough to firm up butter, but there’s no butter here, so the half hour is doing something else: giving the flour time to absorb the liquid and thicken the dough. Skip it and they spread.
Why did mine come out cakey?
That’s the classic pumpkin cookie problem and it comes down to moisture and lift. The usual culprits are a skipped or shortened chill, or too much flour from scooping the cup rather than spooning and leveling. Judging them straight out of the oven does it too, since they need those ten minutes on the sheet to set into their proper texture. Plenty of other recipes fix this by pressing the puree with paper towels first. This one doesn’t need that, because it uses only half a cup of pumpkin against two and a half cups of flour, and the cornstarch absorbs a good part of what’s left. That combination is what separates chewy pumpkin cookies from ones that puff up like little cakes.
What do I do with the rest of the can of pumpkin?
A 15 ounce can holds close to two cups, so half a cup barely dents it. Opened, it keeps about four days in the fridge. For anything longer, spoon it into an ice cube tray, freeze it, and bag the cubes so you can pull out a portion at a time.
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Before You Go
There’s a particular kind of feeling that settles over a kitchen when a tray of these comes out and everyone drifts in without being called. That’s most of the reason to bake at all. And there’s something worth having in a cookie that nobody at the table has to ask about first, that just gets passed around and eaten. If you make a batch, pin it somewhere you’ll find it again next October.
Soft and Chewy Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup neutral oil, such as canola, sunflower or vegetable (120 ml)
- ½ cup granulated sugar (100 g)
- ½ cup light brown sugar (100 g)
- ½ cup pumpkin puree (120 ml)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (5 ml)
- 1 tbsp cornstarch (8 g)
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour (300 g)
- 1 tsp baking soda (5 g)
- ½ tsp salt (3 g)
- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (4 g)
- 1 cup dairy-free chocolate chips (170 g)
Instructions
- Stir the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, combine the oil, both sugars, pumpkin puree and vanilla. Beat on low speed for 1 to 2 minutes until well emulsified.
- Stir in the flour mixture until fully incorporated. The dough should be very thick but still soft. If it is too stiff, add 1 to 2 tbsp (15 to 30 ml) non-dairy milk.
- Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes to reduce spreading.
- Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and line baking sheets with parchment.
- Scoop slightly heaping 2 tbsp (35 ml) portions of dough. Roll into balls and place on the lined sheets 2 to 3 inches apart.
- Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, until well puffed and firm around the edges. Remove from the oven and tap the tray once on the counter to settle the cookies.
- Cool on the baking sheet for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
