About These Vegan Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies
These vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies are made with tahini, coconut oil, and vegan dark chocolate. Despite being vegan, they have the ideal chocolate chip cookie texture. This is a cookie that both vegans and non vegans alike will enjoy!
For more unique homemade chocolate chip cookie recipes on Hummingbird High, check out my Cookie Recipe collection! Popular recipes include this Elevated Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe and these Tender, Chewy, & Craggy Chocolate Chip Cookies With Powdered Sugar.
Why You Should Make The Recipe
These cookies are adapted from a popular vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe in my cookbook, Weeknight Baking.
However, the original recipe instructs you to use almond butter. However, to keep things “spicy”, I decided to switch it up to tahini. I loved the results so much that I decided to share the tahini version on Hummingbird High!
These cookies don’t use any “specialty” vegan ingredients.
Many alternative bakers rely on vegan egg replacers and other ingredients like vegan butter. However, I tend to avoid these ingredients. Don’t get me wrong! I have nothing against them. It’s just that I tend to bake conventionally (with butter, milk, and eggs) 99% of the time. I don’t want to buy an expensive bag of egg replacers and similar ingredients. I usually end up using a tablespoon and accidentally letting the rest go to waste!
So I wanted to develop a vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe with ingredients that could be repurposed for everyday cooking. And because of that, I relied on pantry staples of mine like nut butters, tahini, and coconut oil.
Wait, did you say tahini? I thought tahini was for savory foods.
When done right, tahini can add a nuanced and subtle toasted nutty flavor to sweets. My rule for using tahini in desserts is to think of it as a substitute for peanut butter. That means that tahini will work well in baked goods with ingredients like chocolate, nuts, bananas, and more.
A peanut butter anything recipe (like “peanut butter brownies”) can easily be a tahini anything recipe (“tahini brownies”).
Ingredients and Substitutions
Recommendations, Sources, and Substitutions
- All-Purpose Flour: You can use a 1-1 gluten free all purpose flour replacer to make the recipe gluten free. I like Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour or King Arthur Flour Gluten Free All Purpose Flour.
- Kosher Salt. Kosher salt is the best salt for baking recipes. But you can replace the kosher salt in the recipe with table salt. Just use half the amount listed in the recipe when you do!
- Coconut Oil. Coconut oil tends to be sold in two varieties: refined and unrefined (virgin) coconut oil. For these vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies, you can use either refined or unrefined (virgin) coconut oil. However, the different products will yield slightly different cookies. Using refined coconut oil will make the tahini flavor more pronounced. Using unrefined (virgin) coconut oil will make cookies that taste ever-so-slightly more like coconut. Both are delicious, so choose your own adventure!
- Tahini. Tahini is a sesame paste condiment frequently used in Middle Eastern cuisine. It is one of the main ingredients in dishes like hummus and baba ghanoush. In the last few years, adventurous chefs and home cooks have started using tahini in desserts like brownies and cookies like this recipe. Because of its texture and flavor, tahini works well as a substitute for nut butter in sweets.
The best places to buy tahini are fancy grocery stores like Whole Foods and organic food co-ops, or Middle Eastern markets. My absolute favorite brand of tahini—which I got hooked on when I visited Israel—is Al Arz Tahini, Seed+Mill, and Soom.
In a pinch, you can substitute the tahini in the recipe with the same amount of any kind of nut butter. Think: almond butter, peanut butter, cashew butter, and more. Just note that your resulting cookies will no longer taste like tahini. Instead, they will have a subtle flavor of whatever nut butter you chose. - Organic Brown Sugar. Brown sugar is available in two varieties: light or dark. Dark brown sugar is my personal preference; because it contains more molasses, I find it to be more flavorful. However, you can use either in this vegan tahini chocolate chip cookie recipe without altering its flavor too much.
- Vegan Chocolate. Chocolate can be considered vegan if there are absolutely no milk products (like milk powders or milk solids, two ingredients commonly found in chocolate) listed in its ingredients.
For these cookies, I used Valrhona Guanaja 70% Feves. Although it is vegan in that it does not contain any milk products, Valrhona lacks the ability to officially label it as such since it’s made in a facility that processes milk and white chocolate (neither of which are vegan, obviously). But there are a ton of other “unofficially vegan” chocolate bars too—Trader Joe’s Pound Plus 72% Dark Chocolate Bar, Guittard Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bars, and Lindt 70% Cocoa Dark Chocolate are good examples of vegan chocolate bars that are available in most grocery stores.
But if you’re looking for STRICT vegan chocolate (and is certified as such), check out Raaka Chocolate—all their chocolate is 100% vegan!
Wait, I thought all coconut oil was vegan. Why do you specifically write “vegan coconut oil” and ask me to find a vegan brand?
While coconut oil is indeed “vegan” in that it contains no animal products, some brands use non-vegan methods to harvest the coconuts to make their oil. What does that mean? Several companies enslave monkeys. They force them to work under extremely harsh conditions to pick the coconuts needed to make their products.
I know it’s a bummer to talk about these issues on a food blog. But if you want to do the vegan thing right, it’s also worth considering the methods in which your food is produced. And the truth is, many coconut products that label themselves actually aren’t vegan in that context.
But PETA, thankfully, provides a list of monkey slave-free coconut products. They recommend this “truly vegan”, cruelty-free coconut oil brand: Native Forest Organic Virgin Coconut Oil.
Wait, why do you instruct me to use organic brown sugar for these vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies?
Ah, yes. Time for another fun fact: sugar made from sugarcane isn’t vegan. To make some sugar from sugarcane, manufacturers filter the sugar cane through bone char made from cattle bones. Doing so decolorizes the sugarcane and helps turn it into sugar’s bright white color. Unfortunately, this process also applies to brown sugar. Many manufacturers make brown sugar by adding molasses to their white sugar product.
Fortunately, there are a lot vegan sugar options. Sugar made from coconuts and sugar beets are NOT processed with bone char. Therefore, sugar made from those sources is 100% vegan. Unfortunately, many manufacturers do not specify whether their sugar comes from sugarcane or sugar beets.
But thankfully, there’s an easier way. The U.S. Department of Agriculture mandated that organic sugar CANNOT be filtered through bone char. What does that mean? All organic sugar brands are 100% vegan. So when making these vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies, opt for an organic sugar brand like Wholesome. You can buy their products at their online store, Amazon, and Thrive Market.
Troubleshooting and FAQ
I don’t own a scale. How many cups is 10 ounces (284 grams) vegan dark chocolate?
Uh-oh! In a pinch, 10 ounces (284 grams) dark chocolate is roughly equivalent to 1 ⅔ cups roughly chopped chocolate.
My cookie dough feels SUPER greasy. The dough feels too loose to scoop. What did I do wrong?
Nothing!
I mentioned earlier that, if the coconut oil is still too warm when added to the rest of the ingredients, the dough will feel greasy and loose. This is especially the case if your kitchen is hot or if you’re making these cookies in the summertime.
As a result, I instruct you to chill the entire bowl of cookie dough in the refrigerator for 10 minutes while you preheat the oven. Doing so will help the dough firm up. After 10 minutes, check the dough. If it still feels too loose, give it another 5 to 10 minutes in the fridge.
However, I don’t recommend chilling it for longer—doing so will harden the cookie dough too much and make it really hard to scoop!
My cookies spread way too much. They look much thinner and more brittle than yours. What did I do wrong?
Ah. First things first, scroll up and read the preceding question and come back. Now—did you skip the chilling period and bake the cookies right away, when the dough felt super greasy and loose? If so, that means that the coconut oil was still too hot from being melted. Coconut oil that’s too hot causes the cookies to spread out way too much in the oven, creating thin and brittle cookies.
Alternatively, if you chilled the cookie dough and your cookies still came out too thin and brittle, you may have an ingredients issue. Did you stir your tahini properly? If not, it’s likely that you used only the oily part of the tahini, causing the cookies to spread too much.
You may have also used too much sugar. It’s easily to accidentally pack in too much brown sugar in a measuring cup. See the next question below for more info on how to properly use measuring cups!
Can I freeze vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies?
Yes! You can freeze the vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies in the following ways:
- Freeze the UNBAKED vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies.
Follow the recipe instructions to make the cookie dough and scoop them out into cookie dough balls. Place the cookie dough balls in a small sheet pan. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 1 hour, or until the cookie dough balls are frozen solid. Transfer the cookie dough balls to a zip-top bag and freeze for up to 1 year.
To bake the frozen cookie dough balls, follow the recipe instructions to preheat the oven and arrange the cookie dough balls on a sheet pan. There’s no need to thaw the cookies beforehand—you can bake from frozen. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges have set but the centers are still gooey. - Freeze the BAKED vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies.
Individually wrap any leftover chocolate chip cookies in two layers of plastic wrap, then a layer of aluminum foil. The aluminum foil will prevent the cookies from absorbing any other flavors or odors in the freezer. When ready to serve, transfer to the refrigerator to chill overnight. Rewarm in the microwave or in the oven at 350°F for 5 minutes before serving.
Best Recipe Tips
Ingredient Tips
- Tahini tends to separate like natural nut butter—the oil floats to the top while the rest of the tahini stays at the bottom. For best results, you’ll need to stir the tahini well before using it in this recipe.
- This vegan tahini chocolate chip cookie recipe requires slightly more prep time than my other cookie recipes. That’s because you’ll need to chop up the chocolate, melt the coconut oil, and make sure the tahini is well-stirred. I recommend melting the coconut oil first to give it time to cool slightly while you prep the other ingredients. And if you want to save yourself time, I recommend investing in chopped chocolate that’s ready for baking—like these Valrhona feves!
- I used Valrhona Guanaja 70% Feves (which is also available in smaller bags on Amazon). Feves are little 1-inch discs of chocolate; I love using them for baking because you get the same results as using a chopped chocolate bar, but without any of the work. I know they’re on the pricey side, but they’re definitely worth it, I promise. If you’re still unconvinced and end up using a vegan chocolate bar, you’ll need to chop up the chocolate into ½- to 1-inch pieces. I suggest avoiding chocolate chips for this recipe; it’ll be hard to find vegan chocolate chips, but even if you do, chopped chocolate always makes for tastier (and prettier!) cookies anyway.
Technique Tip
- For this recipe, it’s especially important to WEIGH YOUR INGREDIENTS, especially the flour! This particular recipe is especially sensitive to variations in cup measurements—if you use too much flour (which can happen if you don’t fill your measuring cups properly), the cookies will be too puffy and won’t crack and fall like mine.
If you don’t have a kitchen scale, the best way to measure out flour with measuring cups is to do the following: 1) fluff up your flour by stirring it with a whisk or fork for a minimum of 30 seconds; 2) use a spoon to scoop the fluffed-up flour into the measuring cup until the flour forms a small mound on top of the cup; 3) use a bench scraper or a butter knife to level off the mound so that the flour is flush with the top edges of the measuring cup. - The fastest way to portion cookie dough is with a cookie dough scoop. Most cookie recipes work best with either a 3-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop (my personal fave for cookie recipes!) or a 4-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop.
Make Ahead Tip
- Like my recipe for regular (that is, non-vegan!) chocolate chip cookies, you can freeze the cookie dough for these vegan chocolate chip cookies and save them for baking later. Make the dough and form it into balls as directed. Place on a parchment-lined sheet pan and freeze for 1 hour, or until the cookie dough balls are hard enough to be transferred to a zip-top bag without losing their shape. Seal the bag and freeze for up to 3 months. When ready to bake, bake as directed, but add 3 minutes to the total Bake Time for a total of 15 minutes.
Video Tutorial
Click on the left and right hand sides of the frame to move through the different recipe steps.
Get the Recipe: Vegan Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups (9 ounces or 255 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ cup (4 ounces or or 113 grams) vegan refined OR unrefined (virgin) coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly
- ⅓ cup (3.15 ounces or 89 grams) well-stirred tahini (see baker's notes)
- 6 Tablespoons (3 ounces or 85 grams) water
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ cups tightly packed (9.35 ounces or 265 grams) organic light OR dark brown sugar
- 10 ounces (or 284 grams) vegan dark chocolate (at least 70% cacao), from whole féves or a high-quality chocolate bar, chopped into ½- to 1-inch pieces
Equipment
- a 3-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop
Instructions
- Whisk the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Mix the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, use a rubber spatula to mix together the coconut oil, tahini, water, and vanilla until combined, about 1 minute.
- Add the sugar, dry ingredients, and chocolate. Mix in the sugar, then gradually mix in the dry ingredients until just combined. Add the chocolate all at once, and mix until the chocolate is evenly distributed throughout, about 1 minute.
- Chill the dough while prepping the oven and sheet pans. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two half sheet pans with parchment paper.
- Assemble the cookies. Use a 3-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop to portion the cookie dough into balls and place them at least 3 inches apart on the prepared sheet pans.
- Bake the cookies. Bake one pan at a time for 12 minutes, until the edges have set but the centers are still gooey. The cookies will look puffed when you pull them out of the oven, but will fall and crack into the perfect cookies as they cool. Cool the cookies on the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes, or until the edges and bottoms of the cookies feel firm to the touch. Repeat with remaining cookie dough balls.
- Serve and store. Serve warm or at room temperature. The cookies can be stored, in an airtight container at room temperature, for up to 3 days.
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Weeknight Baking:
Recipes to Fit your Schedule
Over the past several years of running Hummingbird High, I kept a crucial aspect of my life hidden from my readers: I had a full-time, extremely demanding job in the tech world. In my debut cookbook, Weeknight Baking, I finally reveal the secrets to baking delicious desserts on a tight schedule.
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SO GOOD
My new go to cookie recipe! Deliciously gooey every time. Everyone that encounters this cookies LOVES it! Leaving them on the sheet pan helps them stay together and makes a difference. Thank you 🙂
This is absolutely delicious. I’ve never had such a success before making cookies. No one could believe they were vegan. I made this in summer heat, and as the recipe said, the dough was OILY! I brought the dough to a dinner party and everyone thought it was going to be a disaster. It looked like an oily, crumbly mess! But the magic happened in the oven, and the cookies were insanely good. I did half the chocolate portion because i find dark chocolate too potent, and I think I could have put even less, so feel free to cut it too if you’re in the same boat. I’m even thinking doing another batch omitting the chocolate altogether! Great great recipe that I’ve shared with 3 friends already.
these cookies are the GOAT. I have tried so many chocolate cookie recipes, different ratios of white to brown sugar, browning the butter, etc., and NONE compare to the flavor these have!!! even if these cookies took 24 hours to make they would be worth it, which is insane because at this point the dough takes me less than 10 minutes to throw together.
Great recipe! I would like to point out the absurdity of calling certain coconut oil non vegan due to the enslavement of monkeys while not even mentioning human slavery in your part on chocolate. https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us
Hi Michelle,
Just made these cookies. Subbed gluten free flour for AP. They have come out amazing. As a south Indian I an no stranger to coconut oil, but never used it to bake. It is amazing how that combined with the tahini took this to a whole new level of yumminess.
I have tried specific recipes which are gluten free and have not come close to this flavour and texture.
Well done!
If you have the patience to scroll FOREVER on this page to reach the actual recipe it’s a good one.
These are simply the best, most reliable cookies I’ve ever made.
If you follow the weight measurements, they will be perfect every time. I use a cookie scoop that usually makes about 3 dozen cookies. I do use fewer chocolate chips because I like a higher cookie-to-chocolate ratio but otherwise, follow the recipe perfectly.
These are so easy and my go-to when I want something sweet!
I am obsessed with these cookies. I’m not even vegan and they’re still my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe. So melty and delicious and maintain their great texture over days – if you can hold yourself back from eating them all immediately 🙂
We made this recipe this morning, but the cookies yielded were only about 15 since the recipe called for a 3 tablespoon cookie scoop. Perhaps the recipe would yield the 25 cookies if we had used a smaller scoop? The cookies still came out delicious and lovely.
It’s Palestine* btw
These were so oily that they wouldn’t even hold a shape. I was so excited to try this. Measured everything. Bought really nice (and pricey) bars of chocolate for it, organic sugar, weighed everything exactly and literally threw my money away. I was actually baffled early on because I was putting I was weighing everything out measuring cups and the coconut oil cup measurement was half a cup. But when I weighed it out into grams, it was over a cup of coconut oil and I was concerned that the difference in volume was so huge when I weighed it out. And sure enough, these cookies were just mush. I’m going to freeze it (because the coconut oil will at least solidify) and use it for an ice cream topping just to not complete waste my money, but I don’t even eat ice cream like that so I assume that eventually I’ll just toss this. I was honestly so disappointed I cried. I’d baked them because I had company over and after letting them cool for 40 minutes on a rack I finally had to accept that there was no way something with this much oil was ever going firm up and I had no dessert to offer my guest.
These were very good. However, I do think this comment is silly:
“to keep things “spicy”, I decided to switch it up to tahini. I loved the results so much that I decided to share the tahini version on Hummingbird High!”
Another blog tried it first (i am a food blog), and you yourself even commented there on how it was a “genius variation”. They seemed to go way out of their way to promote you and your book, and it’s a real shame you couldn’t even give them a nod for the idea.
This recipe is phenomenally delicious and addictive! I would also like to make a batch that could include peanut butter and still have tahini in them. If you can take time to tell me how toam nd the recipe for the addition of peanut butter, I’d be most grateful. Thanks for such a delightful recipe.
So good!
I weighed every ingredient and the dough was so oily. I refrigerated it for double the time and still was too wet to roll into balls. Ended up adding a little more flour and seemed to help a bit. I feel like you could completely omit the coconut oil, with the amount of tahini that’s in this. They ended up being super big and thin. The flavour was really good though.
The best! Everyone asks me to share the recipe when we bring them.
Very tasty! I followed the recipe pretty much exactly but substituted the coconut oil for the same amount of a vegan “butter” as I couldn’t find refined coconut oil and I used a mix of dark and light brown sugar. So good and perfectly crispy on the edges – will definitely make again!
These are my favorite to make and to eat! I own a coffee shop and I serve these cookies there. They are WIDLY popular! Always the first to sell out. I must say I have made these cookies with and without a scale. Without a scale the measurements are off. My cookies WILL NOT spread. With using a scale my cookies spread perfectly everytime! So for those of you who are not using a scale, it is a game changer! I will keep this recipe in my forever memory
Love these! They are soft and flavorful and delicious. So easy too.
My adult daughter recently became vegan, and she said these are the first “real” chocolate chip cookies she has had since then. She absolutely loved them.
I am considering subbing a nut butter for the tahini sometime — we could try peanut butter cookies, almond butter, cashew butter, etc. Very exciting possibilities!
I am so disappointed. So much time and ingredients wasted. This is literally a pool of fat on my baking sheet. They don’t firm up, not even in the fridge. As others stated, waaay too much oil.
Hi Judith—sorry to hear that, sounds like something went wrong! Did you make any changes to the recipe’s ingredients/quantities?
Absolutely amazing!
This is my only cookie recipe. Why make worse cookies when you can make the best ones?
Everyone asks me for the recipe, though most become discouraged by the length of the notes and all the tips – but I think that’s the magic! Weighing ingredients is actually EASIER (if you have a scale).
I now consider it mandatory to have some frozen dough ready to go at all times – these bake up so perfectly from frozen!