Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are the BEST vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! They’re thick, chewy, soft, lightly spiced, and loaded with real pumpkin flavor and plenty of vegan chocolate chips!

Soft, Chewy, & Thick Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Fall is here, and we couldn’t be happier filling our houses with the delectable scents of apple cinnamon bread, easy pear crisp, and these vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! These vegan pumpkin cookies are not only perfectly soft and thick, with a crisp outside and chewy middle (not cakey), but they’re loaded with real pumpkin, are super simple to make, and are the perfect way to embrace the season!

Rather than letting the increasing energy costs slow us down (yet), we’re using it as the excuse to use the entire oven every time it’s switched on. Meaning double or triple batches of all our favorite goods to freeze for later or making a combination of fall-based treats like these easy pumpkin chocolate chip cookies alongside vegan pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and vegan pumpkin bread. As a bonus, baking helps to keep your house warm, too!

Even better, canned pumpkin puree allows you to enjoy these dairy-free pumpkin cookies year-round if desired. Though, with the combination of regular sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon (or pumpkin pie spice), these vegan pumpkin spice cookies are the embodiment of fall and require no eggs or dairy to be delicious.

The recipe requires only 10 inexpensive pantry ingredients, one bowl, and minimal hands-on effort to prepare. Best of all, it’s adaptable too. Increase or decrease the batch size, replace the vegan chocolate chips, add to the cookies, or tweak the recipe to become gluten-free, refined sugar-free, etc.

Once baked, these soft pumpkin cookies make for a delicious afternoon snack or a welcome addition to potlucks, parties, and gatherings like Halloween and Thanksgiving (45 Vegan Thanksgiving Recipes here!

The Ingredients

This easy vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe relies on just 10 inexpensive, simple pantry staples for a budget-friendly fall treat.

To make refined sugar-free pumpkin cookies, use coconut sugar in place or brown sugar and organic cane sugar to replace the white sugar. However, these both are more costly.

Other Vegan Pumpkin Cookie Recipe Add-Ins

• Orange zest: From one orange.
• Coffee: 1-2 teaspoons of espresso or instant coffee powder make delicious pumpkin spice latte cookies.
• Coconut: 2-3 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut for texture and flavor.
• Crystallized ginger: Very finely chopped and just a little for added heat.

Our favorite combination for subbing the vegan chocolate chips is using pumpkin seeds or walnuts with dried cranberries. They’d taste great with some vegan white chocolate chips, too.

• Cinnamon sugar: Roll the cookie dough in a coarse cinnamon sugar mixture to make pumpkin snickerdoodle-style cookies.
• Vegan icing: Combine powdered sugar, maple syrup, plant-based milk, and a little vanilla or cinnamon to drizzle over the vegan pumpkin cookies.
• Vegan frosting: Pumpkin and vegan cream cheese frosting pair wonderfully, and it’s easy to veganize, too. Combine powdered sugar with vegan cream cheese and a little vanilla – that’s it.
• Vegan chocolate: To double up on chocolate in these vegan chocolate chip pumpkin cookies, drizzle some dairy-free chocolate over the cooled cookies (semi-sweet, sweet, or white chocolate).
• Flaky salt: A tiny sprinkle over the cookies balances and enhances the sweetness and flavors within these vegan pumpkin cookies.

How to Make Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies?

Preparing these easy vegan pumpkin spice cookies couldn’t be much simpler and requires just a handful of steps, one bowl, and minimal effort.

Step 3: Divide the vegan cookie dough into generous spoonfuls to transfer to the prepared cookie sheet, flattening the dough gently with the back of a spatula. Bake the vegan pumpkin cookies for between 12-15 minutes until they become golden-orange in color and are crisp along the edges. Then, remove them from the oven and transfer them to a cooling rack to cool for a minimum of 30 minutes before enjoying!

These dairy-free, eggless pumpkin cookies don’t spread much in the oven, so you’ll need to flatten them into your desired thickness and shape before baking.

Lightly greasing the spatula can help avoid sticking when flatting the dough.

For prettier cookies, you can press a few more vegan chocolate chips into the top of each cookie immediately after removing them from the oven while they’re still soft.

FAQs

Top Recipe Tips and Notes

• Flatten the cookies: They don’t spread in the oven, so flattening/shaping them beforehand is important.
• The cookie size: You can easily increase or decrease their size and the baking time accordingly.
• Be careful not to overbake the cookies: They may look soft, but these vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies firm up as they cool.
• Don’t skip the cooling time: They’re delicious warm, but their firmness, chewiness, and flavor only improve over time, making them even better after an hour or two of cooling (and even better on day two!).

How to Store Vegan Pumpkin Cookies?

Store the cookies in an airtight container with parchment paper between the layers for 2-3 days (or 4-5 in the fridge). Note that they will soften over time this way. For a slightly crisper cooker, only loosely cover them.

To freeze them, either wrap the cookies individually or in stacks with parchment paper between them. Store them in the freezer for up to 3 months. Allow them to thaw at room temperature (for about 15 minutes) or warm up gently in a microwave in 10-second intervals to enjoy.