Fudgy Vegan Chocolate Brownie Cookies (2024)

These vegan chocolate brownie cookies will blow your mind. They’re fudgy, intensely chocolatey, and have the most gorgeous shiny, crackly crust. What’s more, they’re incredibly easy to make – and require no egg replacements or aquafaba.

Fudgy. A bit chewy. Intensely chocolatey. Just sweet enough to balance the bitterness of dark chocolate. Drop-dead gorgeous. With a shiny, crackly crust.

These are the things all proper brownie cookies should be (in my humble opinion). And these vegan chocolate brownie cookies tick all the boxes – and do so effortlessly.

There are no egg replacements in this recipe. No aquafaba to whip up. No strange ingredients – just everyday pantry staples. What’s more, this recipe doesn’t require a stand or hand mixer – you can make it by hand, just using a whisk (although a spatula or wooden spoon will do in a pinch).

And while you’ll get the prettiest results if you scoop the cookies with a cookie or ice cream scoop, you can also use just a good ol’ spoon.

All this is to say… this is a simple recipe, with simple ingredients and incredibly delicious results. After all, we’re talking about a treat that is a cookie and a brownie all at once – you know it’s going to be amazing.

Before we get to the bits and bobs of making these wonderful cookies – if you like what you’re seeing, subscribe to my newsletter to keep up to date on the latest recipes and tips!

How do you make vegan chocolate brownie cookies?

Making these vegan cookies is almost ridiculously easy. You only need 8 ingredients:

• dark chocolate
• sunflower oil (or other neutral-tasting oil)
• superfine/caster sugar
• water
• plain all-purpose flour
• cocoa powder
• baking powder
• a pinch of salt

(As always, you can find the full recipe, including the ingredient quantities, at the bottom of this post.)

The method of making these vegan chocolate brownie cookies is very similar to that of making my Ultimate Vegan Chocolate Brownies – you can check out that post for some handy step-by-step photos.

To make these vegan chocolate brownie cookies:

1. Melt the chocolate and oil together, then set aside to cool until warm.
2. Make a simple sugar syrup (more on its role below) by heating together the sugar and water, until the sugar is fully dissolved. Set aside to cool until warm.
3. Pour the sugar syrup into the melted chocolate and whisk until combined.
4. Sift in the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt) and whisk until combined and no flour clumps remain.
5. Scoop the cookie batter onto two lined baking sheets (I used a “2 tablespoon” cookie/ice cream scoop) and bake them, one baking sheet after the other.

And that’s all there is to it! How simple is that?!

What is the purpose of the sugar syrup?

In short, the sugar syrup replaces the whipped eggs + sugar mixture normally used in non-vegan brownie cookie (and brownie) recipes. It helps keep the brownie cookies moist and fudgy, while also giving them that amazing paper-thin, shiny, crackly crust.

I’ve outlined the process of discovering this sugar syrup method previously, in my Ultimate Vegan Brownies post. It’s really such a simple step – heating the sugar and water together – but it has completely changed the way I approach making vegan brownies and related treats, such as these wonderful cookies.

When making the sugar syrup, it’s incredibly important that you heat the sugar mixture until the sugar is fully dissolved but no further – the mixture shouldn’t start boiling, evaporating or caramelising.

How do you get the thin, shiny crackly crust on brownie cookies?

There are two factors that influence the formation of the thin, shiny crackly crust of vegan brownie cookies.

Firstly, the sugar syrup. This is responsible for the paper-thin, shiny layer on top of the cookies, which glimmers and reflects light in the most tempting of ways. It’s very important to keep the amount of water in the syrup low (so don’t be tempted to add more than is listed in the recipe).

Secondly, the baking powder. This is responsible for the crackly aspect of the crust. As the baking powder encounters the high heat of the oven (and reacts with the slightly acidic chocolate in the batter), it releases carbon dioxide which, together with steam evaporation, causes the cookies to expand. This, in turn, creates cracks in the crust, giving the cookies their characteristic appearance.

How do you keep brownie cookies fudgy?

The fudgy texture depends on a few things:

• the relatively large amount of chocolate
• substituting part of the flour with cocoa powder (which also gives a deeper chocolate flavour)
• using the sugar syrup (this locks in a lot of moisture and keeps the brownie cookies fudgy for days)
• being careful not to over-bake the brownie cookies (they’re perfectly baked after 9 – 10 minutes at 355 ºF/180 ºC; any more than than and you’re likely to dry them out too much)

How do you get perfectly round cookies?

To get perfectly round cookies (and this is true for these vegan brownie cookies, as well as for my Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies, Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies and any other cookies that come out of the oven soft and malleable), I like to use a round cookie cutter, slightly larger than the diameter of the cookies.

To correct the shape of the cookies, just use the cookie cutter to gently nudge the sides of the cookies towards the centre, until you get perfectly round cookies. It’s really as simple as that – and it makes the cookies even prettier.

These vegan brownie cookies keep well in a closed container at room temperature – after a few days, they tend to get a bit chewier (but without losing their fudginess), which I personally love, and their crust can lose some of its glossy shine.

I like to eat them as they are, but you could sprinkle them with a bit of flaky sea salt, sandwich them together with a scoop of ice cream or drizzle with some melted chocolate… the options are endless. Stuffing them with peanut butter or maybe salted caramel is next on my list of things to try – but that’s a story for another time.

Enjoy.

Troubleshooting (updated 24/12/2020)

Since publishing this recipe in May 2020, a few people have had trouble with it – the cookies not spreading and/or lacking their characteristic crackly, shiny crust. After some experimentation, it seems that this could be due to the following factors:

• The type of oil used – I’ve had 100% reliable and consistent results with this recipe when I use (organic) sunflower oil. Using vegetable oil, on the other hand, produces inconsistent results – one day, the cookie spread out in the oven and are nicely shiny, whereas baking them the next day gives cookies that are dull and don’t spread at all. Therefore, I strongly recommend you use sunflower oil to make this recipe, ideally an organic one.The main reason for this appears to be the water content of the oil: the sunflower oil I can get in the shops here in the UK seems to be lower in water than the vegetable oil (note that the water content is very low in both, but the small difference does seem to have an important effect).
• Making sure you use the sugar syrup and the melted chocolate when both are still warm – Don’t allow them to cool all the way to room temperature. You want both of them to be warmer than lukewarm but also cooler than hot.
• Scooping the cookie “batter” immediately rather than letting it sit on the kitchen counter – Don’t allow the cookie “batter” to sit around after you mix all the ingredients together. Scoop it IMMEDIATELY onto your lined baking sheets. If you allow it to sit on your kitchen counter, it will cool down too much and the chocolate in the batter will firm up and set, which will result in cookies that don’t spread as well and that lack their beautiful shiny crust.
• The consistency of the cookie “batter” – Your final mixture should have the consistency of thick brownie batter andnot the texture of cookie dough.

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