Chocolate Chip Quinoa Cookies
These delicious chocolate chip quinoa cookies are soft, nutty, easy to make in one bowl and the perfect way to use up leftover quinoa. This recipe is vegan, gluten-free and oil-free.
Quinoa Cookie Ingredients
Here are the main ingredients you’ll need to make these simple, healthy quinoa cookies:
- Oat flour. If you have oats on hand, you’re all set for oat flour. Just blend them up into a fine flour and you’ve got the oat flour needed for the recipe. You can use quick oats, rolled oats or old fashioned oats to make oat flour.
- Applesauce. You’ll need unsweetened applesauce to help bind, sweeten and replace oil in this recipe. Any brand works or you can use sugar-free homemade applesauce.
- Sugar. You’ll need a granulated sugar of choice to sweeten the cookies. I used organic cane sugar but coconut sugar, demera, sucanut or any other granulated sugar works. For a sugar-free cookie, you can use Lakanto Monk Fruit Sweetener. I have not tried this recipe with a liquid sweetener.
- Nut or seed butter. For nut-free cookies, use sunflower seed butter, otherwise almond, cashew or peanut butter all work great.
- Cooked quinoa. The star of these cookies is quinoa! It adds a wonderful soft texture and perfect, nutty flavour. It’s the perfect way to use up any leftover quinoa you’ve got on hand from other recipes, however, these are so tasty, go ahead and cook up some quinoa just to make a batch! White or red quinoa are both fine to use.
- Chocolate chips. I used Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips but for a lower-sugar cookie you could always leave them out or substitute them with chopped nuts such as walnuts or pecans. Chopped dark chocolate or cacao paste would also work.
Quinoa Cookies Recipe
These tasty, healthy quinoa cookies are an excellent choice for those with allergies as they’re naturally gluten-free, oil-free, vegan and can be refined sugar-free and nut-free.
They’re super easy to make too and while the cooking time is a little longer than most cookies, they take just minutes to prepare. You’ll love their soft texture and delicious, nutty flavour.
More Vegan Cookie Recipes
Love these quinoa cookies? Here are some more recipes you might like (all gluten-free!):
- 3-Ingredient Tahini Date Cookies
- Flourless Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Cookies
- Carrot Turmeric Oatmeal Cookies
- Healthy Oat Cookies
- Carrot Oatmeal Cookies
- Vegan Soft Pumpkin Cookies with Glaze
Chocolate Chip Quinoa Cookies
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 26 mins
- Total Time: 31 minutes
- Yield: 12
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
These wholesome, allergen-friendly cookies have the most amazing texture and perfectly sweet, nutty flavour.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (125 g) unsweetened applesauce
- 1/3 cup (68 g) organic cane sugar
- 1/4 cup (60 g) sunflower seed butter (or almond or peanut butter)
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup (100 g) rolled oats blended into fine oat flour
- 1.5 cups (190 g) cooked quinoa
- 1/2 cup (85 g) dairy-free chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Add the applesauce, sugar and nut or seed butter, baking powder and salt to a mixing bowl and stir until smooth and combined.
- Make some oat flour if you don’t have any prepared, then add the oat flour and quinoa and gently fold to combine.
- Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Prepare a baking tray with a quick spray of non-stick cooking spray or use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
- Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto the baking tray to make 12 cookies. You can use your fingers to shape them a bit but no need to be perfect.
- Bake for 26 minutes then remove from the oven and let cool on the pan for 2-3 minutes before gently transferring to a cooling rack. Let cool completely before storing. The cookies can be stored at room temperature for up to 4 days in an air-tight container, in the fridge for about a week or frozen for up to 2 months.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 159
- Sugar: 12 g
- Sodium: 99 mg
- Fat: 6 g
- Carbohydrates: 24 g
- Fiber: 3 g
- Protein: 4 g
Keywords: quinoa cookies, vegan quinoa cookies
I’m not crazy about peanut butter (or any nut or seed butter) taste in cookies. Is the nut butter taste very strong in the finished cookies? If so, is there a way to leave it out?
It’s not very strong in the final recipe. I would suggest almond butter for the mildest flavour. I haven’t tried this recipe without it. I used it to replace oil or butter, add moisture and help bind so I’m not how it would work without. Thanks!
I was a skeptic but I was wrong! These cookies are DELICIOUS! Even my two young boys and hubby loved them!
★★★★★
I made these this morning using almond butter, added a teaspoon of cinnamon, dried blueberries, dried hibiscus, coconut flakes, and toasted almonds to make the half cup instead of the chocolate chips. What a great cookie! They are delicious and they don’t fall apart lol thanks!! They were perfectly done at 26 minutes.
★★★★★
Thank you, Mary! I’m so glad you liked them. They sound delicious with those additions.
Can you use oats instead of quinoa?
Hmm. I haven’t tried this recipe with that much oats. I think they’d be a bit too dry made that way since the oats would absorb the moisture in the applesauce and nut butter. You could try 1 cup oat flour plus 1/2 cup oats (omit quinoa), or I’d suggest making one of my easy oatmeal cookies instead (like the 3-ingredient cookies, healthy oat cookies or peanut butter banana cookies) because I can’t guarantee how these will turn out without testing. Thanks!
The recipe is OK. The flavour is nice, however I’d put less sugar next time because the apple is a sweetener. I miss a good texture, I haven’t put peanut butter though – only some oil, which could explain.
What a great recipe! Loved these! Think I’ll try them again with raisins instead of chocolate chips.
Thanks Trisha! Glad you enjoyed them.
I am about to make these cookies and I was wondering how much dry quinoa do you use to make 1 1/2 cops of cooked quinoa?
Quinoa makes a little more than double once cooked, so I’d probably cook 3/4 cup if you have some extra you can eat it on its own or add it to a soup or salad or something.
I was looking for a recipe to use up the extra quinoa I had and stumbled on this. This recipe is very good. I really appreciate the extra details you give for substitutes. It answers the questions so we don’t have to ask them. I also appreciate you using metric because it avoids mistakes. Thank you very much for inventing this recipe and sharing it for us to enjoy.
★★★★★
Thanks for trying it! Glad you enjoyed them.
So delicious thank you!! I made the cookies smaller so they got done quicker. Love the crunchy taste with them. I can’t stop eating them!!😁 best part is they are full of protein and iron!
★★★★★
Looks delicious 😋 and they are in the oven!
★★★★★
Hope you enjoy them!
AMAZING!! These were super easy to make. Literally made them while in a meeting LOL – multitasking to the max. The texture is fantastic. Crunchy yet soft and chewy. No one would know there’s quinoa in these. And not that I’m not a fan of quinoa. I am. But just mentioning it bc you’d never know! Definitely making these.
★★★★★
Haha, I like the sounds of that meeting! I agree, the quinoa just kinda melts into these. So glad you enjoyed them!
I loved this! Thank you for providing weight measurements. I substituted an equal amount of sweet potato puree for the applesauce and used brown sugar and stevia baking blend instead of regular sugar. I was able to get all 12 cookies on a half sheet baking sheet because I didn’t think they would spread much, and they didn’t.
★★★★★
Loved these. The texture is so good and you can’t taste the quinoa at all. I can’t wait to make again. Thank you!
★★★★★
These are SO GOOD! I made them for my son, trying to sneak in the quinoa, but I may end up eating them all myself!
I only had a quinoa blend (red, black, yellow) and I used 1/3 cup chocolate chips with honey peanut butter and it was still delicious!
★★★★★
Always a bonus when you can sneak some healthy ingredients in! So glad you enjoyed them…I hope your son does too! Thanks for letting me know.
These cookies were delicious! Do you normally blend one cup of oats and only fold in the sifted parts or do you add every part of the 1cup blended oats before baking? I only added the sifted “flour” part of the oats after blending and they were still amazing but wonder if I should have added the bigger pieces as well to make the cookies more fluffy?
★★★★★
I’m glad you enjoyed them. I add 1 cup of oats to my blender to make the flour then add all of it to the cookies. I don’t sift it but my blender makes it really fine to begin with. It’s totally fine if there are some larger pieces of oats in the flour though. Thanks!
is the cup of oats before it is blended or after it is oat flour?
Before. 1 cup of rolled oats, blended. Thanks!
Made these for my co-workers…couldn’t believe they were so good with quinoa!!
★★★★★
I am not one who usually like quinoa in anything sweet or mixed into yogurt etc. but I decided to try them and am in LOVE!
★★★★★
Yes! I love these too! I was surprised how good they were.
I really want to make these. We are trying out a lactose free world for my daughter after years of stomach issues. However, for some reason apples make her stomach hurt too. Any advice on what to substitute for applesauce? Thank you!
You can try it with mashed banana, however, I haven’t tested them. Let me know if you do. Thanks!
Dena, my daughter also has issues with her gut since she was a baby, and we have been avoiding dairy (cheese is the worst) for a couple of years now. Google low fodmaps for IBS, it explains why your daughter is having problems with apples and dairy. I am not following the low fodmap diet with my 6 year old because she is too young, but it’s good to have an understanding of what is causing the gas and pain. Some other big triggers are lentils, beans, garlic, onions, and peaches. If you are open to it, I would recommend seeing a Naturopath to look into it and get some guidance, we have seem a huge improvement with my daughter! She has been treated for SIBO and apparently it can go hand I hand with IBS. It’s so hard to see them suffer constantly with it, I hope you can find some answers!
Can’t wait to make these!! Are the oats measured BEFORE or AFTER they’re blended into a flour?
They’re measured before blending! Thanks and enjoy 🙂