Vegan Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies

Name: Vegan Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 20 cookies
Ingredients: 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour; 1 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp water; 1/2 cup hazelnuts (processed into a fairly fine powder); 1/4 cup raw cacao powder; 1 tsp pure vanilla extract; 1/2 tsp baking powder; 4 tbsp vegan "butter"; 1/2 cup unrefined sugar (like turbinado); 1/2 cup semisweet vegan chocolate chips

By Vaishali | Updated on December 6, 2018 | Posted on December 1, 2018 | 18 Comments

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The holidays are the most wonderful time of year to indulge in your cookie addiction. And when the cookies are wholegrain, have twice the chocolate and the goodness of hazelnuts, do you really need an excuse? Bake up my nine-ingredient Vegan Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies today, and eat one — or a dozen!

I made these Vegan Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies for my favorite little man — my son, Jay. But as their rich, intensely chocolate-y, deep fragrance permeated the house, and as I took my first bite, I simply didn’t want to share. Not very mom-like, I know, but, erm, human?

Chocolate and hazelnuts are an easy and natural flavor combination, as anyone who’s spread a spoonful of Nutella on toast knows. And in these cookies there’s an armload of hazelnuts and two armloads of chocolate, in the form of raw cacao powder and semisweet chocolate chips.

You need just nine ingredients for this recipe. And what also gladdens this mom’s heart is that the cookies are wholegrain, and with unrefined sugar sweetening them, I know this is a treat I can add to Jay’s lunchbox without any qualms.

Also, I don’t think I’ve made an easier cookie– there was no mixing the dry ingredients and mixing the wet ingredients and combining them, and all that. You just throw the ingredients in one by one — in the right order, of course — and you’re done.

If you’re a parent, do you ever get the feeling that what your child is eating is beyond your control, especially at school? Not a day goes by when a teacher does not hand out candy or Cheetos for reward, or another student hands out donuts or cupcakes for his or her birthday. Once, Jay got a Pizza Hut coupon as a prize for completing an assignment — he was thrilled, of course. Me, not so much. And don’t even get me started on school lunches — the best vegan option in our suburban D.C. school district is a salad, so we pack his lunch every day.

Since we’re venting about schools and their absolute lack of understanding of nutrition, how about all that meat that gets casually thrown into the process of educating the kids, huh? There are many young vegetarians out there today, but apparently our schools are the only ones who don’t know it. At Thanksgiving, Jay’s Saturday School teachers actually showed his class a video on cooking turkey. The other day, he informed me that all foods that have protein are animal foods, because a teacher said so. And one fine day, when he was in first grade, he came home with a sheet of homework that asked him what his favorite food was: chicken nuggets or a cheeseburger. With some guidance from Desi, my baffled and very vegetarian boy struck out the cheeseburger and replaced it with a veggie burger — which he does love.

Now for those Vegan Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies. I first posted this recipe in March 2016, but older recipes have a way of getting lost, and given how amazing these cookies are, I wanted them to be back front and center in time for the holidays. Hope you try ’em.

And if you have any school nutrition horror stories, I wanna hear!

Here are some tips on making the perfect vegan Double Chocolate Hazelnut Cookie:

I used whole wheat pastry flour to make these cookies, but mix it up with half unbleached all purpose and half regular whole wheat, or all unbleached all purpose flour.
Try another nut. Almonds would be great in these cookies. Or you can just add in some almond or coconut flour. Use half a cup.
If you don’t want to use vegan butter, swap it out for any vegetable oil, like avocado or coconut oil.
If you can’t find raw cacao powder, use regular baking cocoa. It’s all good.
Don’t have a stand mixer or don’t want to use it? You don’t really need one to make these cookies. Mix the ingredients in the order listed in a large bowl. Before you mix, make sure your butter is at room temperature so it mixes easily with the sugar.

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5 from 3 votes