Baking + Sweet, Cookies, Dairy Free, Recipes, Snacks + Sides, Vegan, Vegetarian · March 22, 2021

Blueberry Cookies | Vegan & Naturally Blue!

Name: Blue(berry) Cookies | Vegan & Naturally Blue!
Prep time: 6 min
Cook time: 15 min
Ingredients: 135 grams all-purpose flour (about 1 cup); 1/2 tsp baking powder; 1/8 tsp salt; 76 grams unsalted vegan butter, softened (about 1/3 cup. I like Country Crock plant-based olive oil butter); 90 grams granulated sugar (about 1/3 cup and 1 tbsp); 80 grams frozen blueberries (about 1/3 cup); 70 grams white chocolate chips, chopped (about 1/2 cup)

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These blueberry cookies are the best cookies that I have every made. There. I said it. I have chosen a favorite child and I have ZERO regrets.

But why do I love these so much? Simple: they are vegan, jam-packed with blueberries, soft on the inside but crispy on the edges, they melt-in-your mouth, and they are deliciously sweet from all the white chocolate. It’s as if a blueberry muffin and the best chocolate chip cookie you ever had got married. TLDR: The are just plain GOOD.

If you’ve been around for a while, you know I am a total cookie queen, and I just can’t stop experimenting with new ways to make chocolate chips cookies. This might be my most untraditional yet, but that’s what makes it the best!

Plus, the best part about these cookies is how quickly they come together. You only need a few pantry staples, plus some frozen blueberries and that’s it! You’ll be 20 minutes away from cookie heaven. And the fun color makes this recipe a total winner for kids…or for people like me who are childless millennials who just love cookies 😉

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the recipe, here are all the things you’ll need:

kitchen tools i recommend for this recipe

A stand mixer or an electric mixer – this is super important for this particular recipe. This is because you need the high speed of an electric mixer to break up the blueberries and essentially “mash” them into the wet ingredients. You can try to do this by hand, but I’ve found it never yields the same result. Plus an electric mixer is the absolute best for aerating the butter in a cookie recipe. “Aerating” is where you cream together the butter and sugar and essentially whip in air, creating more lift in a cookie. If you are looking to get serious about baking, I highly recommend investing in an electric mixer! You can find my stand mixer and hand mixer recommendations linked here!
Parchment paper – If you watch my TikToks (which you should, they are so fun!) you know I am a huge fan of parchment paper. It keeps your pans clean, it is the perfect way to create a non-stick surface, plus it is the best for cookie baking! A lot of times when you don’t have a nonstick pan, you need to spray or grease a cookie sheet to make sure nothing sticks, but even that greasing can mess with the cookies! To play it safe, I recommend stocking up on some parchment paper in the kitchen. You can even get it pre-cut to match the size of your baking sheet. Too easy!
Cooling rack – A cooling rack is an essential piece of baking equipment if you ask me, and not just for this recipe! The reason is, when you take a hot pan out of the oven, the cookies on the pan continue to cook even when they are out of the oven’s heat. This is because of the residual heat from the pan. So when you move them to a cooling rack, you minimize this aspect of the baking process and have more control over how the cookie bakes. You can find my favorite cooling rack here.
Kitchen scale – Ok, ok, I’m not going to rant about this any longer, but you know I love grams! For the best results in any cookie recipe, you gotta switch to measuring ingredients by weight (or at least try to!) I’ve listed out cups and grams in the recipe, but here’s a great (and affordable) kitchen scale if you think you are ready to invest.

Now that we have all the tools out of the way, let’s talk the good stuff! Let’s talk ingredients.

ingredients you will need to make the Blueberry cookies

135 grams all-purpose flour – here we are again with the grams! Now when I measure flour, I find that a 1/4 cup scoop ranges between 35 grams and 50 grams (it can really be all over the place!) So if you are using cups, I’d say that a lightly packed cup is about 135 grams of flour. Lightly packed means you scoop out the flour, shake off the excess and then carefully level off the top with a knife, no packing down in the cup needed! Of course, it will be more accurate if you measure with grams, so just keep that in mind as you make this recipe!
1/2 tsp baking powder – I need to make a whole post about the difference between baking powder and soda, I have so much to say! But for now, all you need to know is that this recipe NEEDS baking powder. Baking powder only needs liquid to form a reaction, whereas baking soda needs an acid. This recipe doesn’t have the acid needed for a reaction, so in order to get any lift in your cookie, you gotta go for the baking powder!
1/8 tsp salt – this is a larger amount of salt than my normal recommendation of “just a pinch” – but don’t worry, this isn’t a salty recipe! In fact, this recipe is so sweet that it needs the extra touch of salt to offset the sweetness. Plus it really brings out the blueberry flavor of the dough, just trust me on this one!
76 grams (or 1/3 cup) vegan butter – Now I know some people will ask, and yes, you can totally use a regular butter for this recipe. I just love using plant-based butter because it makes this recipe completely vegan! It’s the perfect way to make another impact minimizing recipe.
90 grams (or 1/3 cup) granulated sugar – I only use white sugar in this recipe because I find brown sugar tends to get in the way of the blue color and the blueberry flavor. Plus white sugar mixes better with the blueberries and tends to clump less due to the lower moisture content. A win in my books!
80 grams frozen blueberries – I love frozen blueberries. I think they are more flavorful, have a better color and have a wayyyy better texture than fresh. Plus when they are frozen they are just like nature’s tiny popsicles! The reason why I use frozen in this recipe (as opposed to fresh) is because when you thaw frozen blueberries, they become soft, jammy and sweet, and are the perfect addition to the wet ingredients.
White chocolate chips – Not only does white chocolate look the best in these cookies, I think it tastes amazing. But I know not everyone is a white chocolate person, so you can always sub this with slivered almonds, pistachio bits, dried blueberries, flaxseeds or butterscotch chips, really anything!

The Pro-tip for mixing these cookies

These cookies start out like any other cookie recipe, but there is one big difference with the wet ingredients: where you would normally mix in the egg, we are mixing in the thawed blueberries. Now, blueberries have a lot of moisture, so they don’t love the idea of emulsifying with the butter and sugar. And that’s where the electric mixer comes in.

The most important thing to do is beat in the blueberries on the highest speed, and make sure they are fully combined.

Mixing the wet ingredients on high speed is doing three things:

It is mashing up the blueberries into a purée, creating the color and the texture we want in the cookie.
The mixing is essentially forcing the berries to combine and emulsify with the butter and sugar, making a cohesive mixture.
The high speed will beat in a bit more aeration to the butter+sugar+berry mixture, which is integral to a fluffy cookie!

So as you mix, you might think “is this too much speed, is this too aggressive?” and the answer is nah, girl! Beat those berries to a pulp!

After mixing the wet ingredients, the hard part is over, and all you need to do is add in the dry ingredients!

WHY THIS COOKIE DOUGH LOOKS DIFFERENT THAN OTHER COOKIE DOUGHS

This cookie dough will be very soft and slack compared to other doughs, and that’s totally normal! Don’t panic, this is just because of the higher moisture content from the berries. Now the reason this dough can be a little more flexible than a normal cookie dough is because fruits and veg behave differently in baking. Fruits tend to hold structure more, so even though the dough feels too soft, it won’t act like a dough with too much moisture.

But a loose dough can be tricky to handle, so I definitely recommend chilling the dough for about 30 minutes before scooping it into cookie dough balls. I prefer to chill my dough in the freezer (bc I am an impatient queen) but the fridge also works!

Unlike my other cookie recipes, I don’t recommend forming your dough balls first, and then chilling the dough. This is because this dough has a hard time holding its form when it hasn’t been chilled yet, and we want perfectly circular mounds in order to make perfectly circular cookies!

Other flavors and fruits you can use in this blueberry cookie recipe

When it comes to blueberry FAQ – I always get get the question “can I do this with other berries?”

And for this recipe, of course! While I 110% prefer making this cookie with blueberries, you can also do it with:

Strawberries
Raspberries
Cherries
Currants

I haven’t tested any other combinations out, but if you try one and you like it, please let me know in the comments!

Substitutions for allergens/special diets

And I would never forget my allergen babes. If you are gluten intolerant, a 1:1 GF blend from the store is the perfect sub for this cookie. And to make sure that the recipe is fully vegan, be sure to use a vegan white chocolate chip substitution. I get my favorite brand from Pascha.

Tips for how to prepare these cookies ahead of time and store them for later

The best thing in the whole wide world is knowing that in 15 minutes you can have a soft, gooey, ready-to-go cookie. So here is how to prep this dough so you can store it in the freezer, and the pop in the oven whenever you need it!

After mixing the dough, chill it in the fridge for 30 minutes like you normally would – this will just help the dough be easier to form when you are shaping your final cookies!
After the dough is chilled, scoop the dough into balls weighing 35 grams each – this is a slightly smaller cookie size, but it makes them much easier to freeze. Plus you can place them on top of each other to fit in a smaller airtight container that takes up less space!
Place the balls on a sheet of parchment paper, just touching each other on the corners – make this look just like the store-bought Tollhouse cookie dough, with each piece just touching, but easy to pull apart.
Fold the parchment paper over the cookies, then place in either a ziploc or an airtight container – fully wrapping the dough in parchment paper will make them much easier to remove from the container later, plus it will eliminate any sticking!
Store in the freezer for up to 6 (!!) months – and now whenever you want a cookie, you can grab a few balls from the freezer and bake them fresh!

And I teamed up with the Blueberry Council (crazy, right??) for this recipe, so please go check out their site! They are the keepers of all-things-blueberry, so I was so excited to work with them on this.

And if you try this recipe, please let me know what you think in the comments, or tag me on insta! I’d love to see your blue(berry) cookie creations!

Watch the recipe video here: