Vegan Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies You'll Love Snacking On

Let me start with this: these cookies taste like coconut.

If coconut isn't your thing, feel free to move on to the next recipe.

If you love coconut as much as I do, stick around 🙂

Good. Glad you're still here.

Ever since I came back from India a few years ago, I've had a soft spot for coconut—and coconut flour in particular.

Something about that texture and tropical flavor makes my heart happy. My stomach, too.

These days, grocery stores carry all kinds of great products made from this wonderful nut:

Coconut cream, coconut milk beverages, coconut flakes, coconut flour, and more.

For this recipe, in case you're wondering, I used a coconut-almond milk beverage from Tnuva (a major Israeli dairy and soy brand), which also collaborated on the recipe, along with coconut flour.

About that flour: it can be a real challenge to work with, especially in vegan recipes.

Coconut flour doesn't contain gluten, so it doesn't bind the way wheat flour does. That makes baking with it tricky. It also soaks up a lot of liquid – in other words, it's a bit of a handful. Nutritious, though. I'll get to that in a minute.

My advice for using coconut flour in vegan recipes? Don't overcomplicate things.

Stick to simple recipes with 5–6 ingredients.

Use almond butter, peanut butter, or tahini to hold everything together. Add something delicious, like chocolate or nuts, and into the oven it goes.

My attempts to add extra steps and fancy techniques have ended in disappointment and a very full trash can.

So Why Bother With Coconut Flour?

One big reason I like coconut flour is its nutritional profile.

Take a look at these numbers!

100 g (3.5 oz) of coconut flour contains about 21 grams of protein, just 16 grams of carbohydrates, and a very generous amount of fiber.

It's also fairly calorie-dense: around 300 calories per 100 g (3.5 oz).

That makes it a handy way to add calories from a nutritious source to your everyday diet—especially for toddlers and endurance athletes, for example.

A Few Tips for These Vegan Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are soft and crumble easily. You can absolutely dunk them in a glass of your favorite plant milk—just proceed with caution.

They don't need much time in the oven, mainly because coconut flour has a tendency to burn. A little golden color is all you're after.

I used Tnuva's coconut-almond milk beverage, which adds a lovely, subtle coconut and almond flavor. Disclosure: Tnuva collaborated on this recipe. You can substitute Tnuva soy milk or almond milk.

I sweetened the cookies with maple syrup – you can replace it with the same amount of silan (date syrup).

I added a little dark chocolate in the form of chocolate chips – feel free to add your favorite nuts or finely chopped fruit, or use them instead.

Good-quality almond butter holds everything together and provides a source of fatty acids. You can swap in the same amount of tahini or peanut butter. Whole-sesame tahini can turn a little bitter during baking, so choose plain tahini made from hulled sesame seeds instead.

Nutrition Information by Noam Bachar (an Israeli Clinical Dietitian and Fitness Trainer)

Each 30 g (1.1 oz) cookie, from a batch of 15, contains:

• 141 calories
• 3 grams protein
• 12 grams carbohydrates
• 9 grams fat (including 1 gram saturated fat)

Looking for another chocolate chip cookie recipe?

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 grams of protein per cookie

Keyword coconut flour, gluten-free, chocolate, cookies

Prep Time 4 minutes

Cook Time 9 minutes

Yield 15 cookies

Calories 141 kcal

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup almond butter 200 g (7 oz)
• 1/3 cup maple syrup 100 g (3.5 oz)
• 1/4 cup Tnuva coconut-almond milk beverage 60 ml (2 fl oz)
• 1/4 cup coconut flour 30 g (1.1 oz; 6 tablespoons)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips 60 g (2.1 oz)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

2. In a deep mixing bowl, stir the almond butter and maple syrup together until smooth and evenly combined.

   

3. In winter, or if your kitchen is especially cold, warm the almond butter for a few seconds in the microwave or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of boiling water.

4. Add the vanilla extract, coconut-almond milk beverage, and salt. Mix well.

   

5. Add the coconut flour and baking powder. Mix thoroughly until the flour has absorbed all the liquid.

6. Stir the chocolate chips into the cookie dough.

   

7. With your hands, roll the dough into ping-pong-ball-size balls, then flatten them into cookies.

   

8. Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes.

9. Let cool for about 15 minutes.

   

10. The cookies keep in the refrigerator for 2–3 days.