Vegan white chocolate cookies with macadamia nuts

In my opinion, a good cookie should be thin and crisp on the outside but chewy and soft on the inside. Unfortunately, I have found many vegan cookies to be quite the opposite, rather big and cake-like.

That was until I discovered this vegan cookie recipe by Meera Sodha. She has managed to create a vegan cookie that is big and thin whilst also retaining its structure in the middle.

So I became a little bit obsessed with her recipe and found myself gradually tweaking it to experiment with flavours and the flour base. And this is where I ended up, with a vegan white chocolate & macadamia nut spelt cookie. Quite the mouthful, I know. So let me take you through the details of this incredible vegan cookie.

What are macadamia nuts?

I have been quite surprised by the number of people asking me this recently. I thought they were quite common, but apparently not as common as I first thought.

Macadamia nuts are like nature’s white chocolate drops. They are super creamy and buttery with a nice crunch, making them the perfect addition to a vegan cookie.

Are macadamia nuts healthy?

There are many health benefits of macadamia nuts. They are full of healthy fats (although try not to eat too many, as too much healthy fat is still too much fat). They are also full of vitamins, nutrients and fibre.

So that makes these cookies healthy right? Well, not quite. But we can pretend!

Baking cookies with spelt flour

I avoid most gluten products because they cause me loads of pain, but spelt magically does not!

So you may have noticed a bit of a spelt theme in my blog. Spelt flour is an ancient grain which is easier on the tummy than most plain and white flours. This is great if you have a sensitive tum like me.

In most recipes, I’ve made you can substitute spelt flour like for like with plain flour. The same goes for this recipe, it works perfectly!

So if you don’t have spelt flour to hand, you can use normal plain flour instead. Or maybe give gluten-free flour a go but make sure to let me know how it goes in the comments section below!

Baking a vegan cookie

Making cookies vegan is super easy nowadays. When I first went vegan back in 2015, discovering a great vegan cookie recipe was like discovering a new planet.

Since then, we’ve discovered plenty of vegan egg alternatives, like Aquafaba, flax eggs, chia eggs, and much more! My favourite egg replacer is aquafaba because of it works so well in cake recipes (like my vegan carrot cake muffins), but in this recipe I am using an emulsified oil mix to bind the cookie. I have found it keeps the cookie thin and crisp.

Are vegan cookies healthier?

Vegan cookies are still made with high fat ingredients and plenty of sugar. So they aren’t necessarily healthier. Vegan doesn’t equal healthy. Vegan ingredients, particularly fats, are as a whole more healthy than animal-based ingredients. But you should still eat these kinds of foods in moderation.

A vegan diet consisting solely of vegan cookies is 100% not healthy.

But a vegan cookie is definitely much better for you and the planet than a non-vegan cookie!