Whole Food Plant Based Cookie Base

I’ve been eating mostly plant based, and my parents have chosen to do the same for the health benefits. That said, we all have a sweet tooth sometimes and a longing for a cookie or a cake, and this cookie base works really well for scratching that itch. Bonus points - it’s also a sourdough recipe! Whether you want to make it a discard recipe or to ferment the batch, it works either way.

Not just Vegan

Most vegan cookie recipes are not whole food. They just substitute egg for flax egg and butter for coconut oil or a processed plant “butter”. Then they use sugar or maple syrup, and while they are both vegan they are NOT Whole Foods. I wanted to use real food to make cookies, and God led me on this little journey for a sweet treat without the guilt.
My first success with this was my gingerbread bars, and they were a huge hit - my other half couldn’t stop eating them.

The Base

This is a free downloadable, printable PDF of the cookie base with these swaps. Enjoy! Get creative and share how you made changes to it to make it your own in my Fresh Milled Flour Methods group.

Cookies and cakes are made from creaming the butter and the sugar, then adding eggs, extract and finally the dry ingredients. I chose to use coconut butter instead of butter, dates and a little date syrup for the sugar, and my stiff sourdough starter to maintain a consistency similar to the original version, and it worked out really well! This lends to a cookie with just a hint of sweet. The fresher your starter the better - just risen starter works best but if you want a stronger sourdough flavor opt for a starter that hasn’t been fed in a few days. That is what I did today.

Peanut Butter Option

I would definitely use freshly risen stiff starter for peanut butter cookies because a hungry starter will overpower the sweet or the dates and peanut butter otherwise unless you add chocolate chips - then it goes right back to slightly sweet to scratch that itch.

Note

• Chocolate chips are not whole food plant based. They are processed but like my Nana says, “you do you, honey!”
• Don’t make these cookies for folks addicted to the white flour, sugar loaded cookies. These are best suited to those who like a more healthy adult style palate like my son. He loves all the grown up foods most kids don’t enjoy. These cookies were also on the list.

Get Adventurous

I sure do hope you’ll give them a try. These were good enough to create their own PDF download as a WFPB drop cookie base.