These soft and chewy vegan molasses cookies are made with oats, whole wheat flour, avocado oil and baking spices. They’re the perfect holiday season treat!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
which means it’s Christmas cookie baking season!
I love to bake up holiday treats and share them with loved ones, and it’s even better when I can incorporate a few swaps in to make them a bit of a healthier treat.
Vegan Molasses Cookies
This recipe puts a dairy free spin on traditional molasses cookies. It also features a few better-for-you ingredients than your typical Christmas cookies. But I promise you, they’re a crowd pleaser full of delicious flavor!
The base of the cookies are oat + whole wheat flours, making them a bit heartier than your run of the mill molasses cookies. You can buy pre-made oat flour or do what I usually do, which is throw some old fashioned oats in a high powered blender or food processor and pulse until it’s a mostly ground mixture.
To achieve that moist cookie texture, this recipe uses a mix of plant-based butter and avocado oil. While avocado oil is not as widely used as olive oil, it’s packed with heart healthy fats, has a very mild taste, and is great for baking.
Of course, a few of the must-use ingredients in molasses cookies are molasses, cinnamon, and ginger, and these vegan molasses cookies are no different. I tested out the recipe using both Whole Foods 365’s Blackstrap Molasses and Grandma’s Original Molasses, the latter is which is probably the most popular molasses brand around.
What I found was that I prefer the Grandma’s brand of molasses better for its more mild taste. I think this is a matter of preference, but if you don’t think you want your cookies to have a super bold molasses flavor, go with a brand that has a more mild taste like Grandma’s.
Arguably the hardest part of making these cookies is waiting for the dough to chill in the fridge! Don’t skip this though, as it’s a crucial step in getting these cookies to bake perfectly.
The Recipe
Happy baking!
Soft & Chewy Vegan Ginger Molasses Oat Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup oat flour
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 TSP cinnamon
- 1/2 TSP ground ginger
- 1/4 TSP nutmeg
- 1/2 TSP fine sea salt
- 1 1/2 TSP baking soda
- 1 TSP baking powder
- 1/2 cup vegan butter softened
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup cane sugar plus another 2-3 TBSP for rolling the cookies in
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 1/4 cup avocado oil
Instructions
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flours, spices, fine sea salt, baking soda and baking powder.
- In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the vegan butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
- Add in the molasses and avocado oil, and whisk again until combined well.
- In 2 or 3 batches, mix the dry mixture into the wet mixture. Stir until combined well.
- Wrap the dough bowl in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours. Can chill overnight if you choose.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a large baking sheet with cooking spray or parchment paper.
- Place a few TBSPs of cane sugar in a small bowl.
- Spoon out 1 rounded TBSP of dough and roll it into a ball. Roll in the sugar and place on the baking sheet. Repeat this process to form about 2 dozen cookies. Make sure to space them a few inches apart on the baking sheet.
- Bake 12-14 minutes, until the bottoms have turned lightly brown.
- Allow the cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire cooling rack.
- Enjoy! Store the cookies in an airtight container.
Nutrition
Looking for more vegan holiday dessert ideas? Check out these recipes:
I absolutely love ginger! The holidays can’t officially begin until the ginger cookies come out. 🙂 These look fantastic. And I’ve never thought about it before, but the oat + whole wheat flours make perfect sense in these cookies since they’re meant to be chewy. These wouldn’t last long in our house at all!
These cookies are absolutely delicious!!
Thank you!!
They taste divine!!!!! Although I think I overcooked them, since mine are crispy and not chewy at all…. After 12 minutes in the oven, the dough appeared uncooked in between the cracks, so I thought they needed more time…. I am guessing that is how they are supposed to look like to be chewy! I will not extend the cooking tome next time I make them. I am still enjoying them immensely with my cut of tea, by the fire!
Thanks for your comment! Yes, for them to turn out chewy, they’ll appear a tad undercooked when you take them out of the oven, and then they’ll firm up a bit on the baking sheet while cooking. I actually overcooked these when I baked them over the holidays myself, but I enjoyed them crunchy as well!
I made a slight change and used a whole mashed avocado in place of the butter and avocado oil. Really love the texture with a crunch from the cane sugar exterior and chewy moist gingery finish. They had to be pressed down into disks ( I did it 1/2 way through baking time) for a cookie appearance but cracked beautifully. Delicious!
Oooh subbing in avocado sounds like a great idea to me. Yes, it probably altered how they spread during baking, but I’m glad they came out delicious!