Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
Vegan peanut butter cookies - these easy vegan cookies are so quick and simple to make in just one bowl and they taste amazing! They just use basic storecupboard ingredients and don't require any chilling before baking. They are crisp around the edges, soft in the middle and very peanut buttery! They are addictively good and go great with a cup of tea for dunking.
Servings 27 cookies
Ingredients
- 115 g (½ cup) vegan block butter (NOT the spreadable kind. I use Naturli Vegan Block) softened
- 100 g (½ cup) light brown soft sugar
- 100 g (½ cup) caster or granulated sugar
- 250 g (1 cup) smooth creamy peanut butter
- 3 Tbsp non-dairy milk (plus extra if needed)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- ½ tsp salt (use less if your peanut butter is salty)
- 200 g (1 + ⅔ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/gas mark 4. Line two baking sheets with baking parchment.
- Whisk together the butter, the light brown soft sugar and the caster/granulated sugar with an electric mixer until well combined.
- Whisk in the peanut butter, vanilla extract and milk until it is smooth and creamy.
- Whisk in the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt then add the flour and stir with a spatula until it forms a smooth, stiff dough with no dry patches. If it is too crumbly then you can add a drop more milk as needed.
- Roll the dough into golf ball sized balls (I weighed mine and did 30g per ball) and place them spaced apart on the lined baking sheets.
- Press the tines of a fork into the top of each ball of dough to flatten them, first in one direction then in the other to form a criss-cross pattern.
- Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes until pale golden if you like them on the softer side, or for 15-20 minutes until they are a deeper golden if you like them more crunchy (I go for 15 minutes). They will be quite soft when they come out of the oven but will firm up as they cool.
- Let them cool on the trays for 5 minutes then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. Once cold store in an airtight container at room temperature.
Notes
- For the best results make sure that you follow the recipe closely. As always, I highly recommend weighing your ingredients using the gram measurements (with a digital scale), rather than the cup conversions. Cup measurements are simply not accurate enough for baking and I cannot guarantee the best results if you use them. A gram is always a gram, but a cup won’t always measure out the same amount.
- The difference between a soft peanut butter cookie and a crunchy one is just a matter of how long you bake it for. If you prefer your cookies on the soft side then bake them for 10-12 minutes, until they are just pale golden around the edges. If you like a crunchier cookie then bake them for 15-20 minutes, until they are a deeper golden colour.
- If you want, you can roll the balls of cookie dough in granulated sugar before you flatten them.
- Try adding ½ - 1 tsp of cinnamon to the dough for extra flavour. (Add it at the same time as the baking powder/bicarb).