Raw Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

Incredibly delicious raw vegan peanut butter cookies, made with just 1 bowl and 4 ingredients. They're healthy, quick to make and a real crowd-pleaser.
Dip these in melted chocolate and store in the fridge for a quick and easy snack. Alternatively, to keep these fully raw, you can dip them in to raw chocolate made with coconut oil, cacao powder and maple syrup.

Jump to:

• What You'll Need
• How to Make them
• Storage
• Recipe Tips
• FAQ's
• Recipe
• Comments

What You'll Need

Ingredients

• Coconut Oil - I add coconut oil to the melted chocolate to stop the chocolate from going too hard in the fridge. It also makes it lovely and silky, which is an added bonus.
• Dark Chocolate - You can use raw chocolate for this and melt it slowly on a low temperature. Alternatively you can use regular dairy-free dark chocolate. For a homemade option, combine coconut oil, cacao powder and maple syrup together and dip the cookies in the mixture. We've included a recipe for this in the 'Recipe Tip' section below.
• Dates – Fresh medjool dates work best. If they’re a little dry soak them in hot water for 10 minutes first. Alternatively you can buy large bags of pitted soft dates from a lot of health food stores and they're now appearing in more Supermarkets too. Here in the UK I sometimes buy bags of soft dates from GrapeTree. I incorporate dates regularly in to our food because they are full of Fiber, Iron, Vitamin A & Antioxidants. They’re also known to be a great food for pregnant women, especially when it comes to labour and delivery. You can read up more about that on the Nutrition Facts website.
• Gluten Free Oats - Gluten free oats are now available in most Supermarkets. However if you're struggling to find them you can visit your local Health Foods store, or buy them online, depending on your location.
• Ground Flaxseed - It's important here to use ground flaxseed and not whole. This is due to the fact they are more nutritionally bio-available once ground. Our bodies can't break down the outer casing easily. Ground flax is usually another easily accessible product from wholefood or health stores. Alternatively you can purchase this from multiple places online by simply searching in Google.
• Peanut Butter - You can use smooth or crunchy peanut butter for this recipe. We like to use crunchy, but it's solely personal preference with this one.

Equipment

• Food Processor
• Mixing Bowl
• Baking/Parchment Paper

How to Make them

• Mix the ingredients in a food processor until well combined. The 'dough' mixture should stick together when formed into balls.

• Roll the mixture into balls, then shape them into bite-sized cookies.

• Lastly, melt your chocolate in a glass bowl (see recipe card). Once melted, dip your cookies halfway in to the melted chocolate mixture, and lay on a sheet of baking paper. As the chocolate quantity reduces you may need to use a spoon to get enough on to your cookies.

• Leave them to cool in the fridge. And most importantly of all... Have some yourself, before the kids get a hold of them.

Storage

They can be stored for up to 2 weeks in the fridge, in an air tight container.

The Cookies will also keep for up to 3 months in the freezer. Just take them out about 15 minutes before serving, to allow them to soften before eating.

Recipe Tips

• If you find that your mixture is a little dry when it comes out of the food processor (this can happen if your dates aren't very soft) then put it back in and add some extra peanut butter, a tablespoon at a time. 1 or 2 tbsp's should be plenty.
• If you would prefer to make your own 'melted chocolate', then you can substitute using 3 tablespoons of cacao powder, 1 tablespoon of maple syrup and 1 tablespoon of melted coconut oil. 
• This recipe can also be made with regular oats, rather than Gluten Free ones, but then the cookies will obviously no longer be Gluten Free.
• The warmer the 'cookie dough' balls are, the more malleable they are. So if you're trying to shape these and they're starting to crack, try rolling them between your hands for 30 seconds or so to warm them up a little.

For the perfect Bain Marie:
Choose a saucepan with a diameter a bit smaller than a glass bowl you will use to melt the chocolate in. Make sure that the bowl can sit snugly on top of the saucepan but, crucially, doesn't come into contact with the water at any point. Then with water boiling add the chocolate to the glass bowl and stir gently until melted.

FAQ's

Recipe