The recipe I've been wanting to create for this blog since I started is FINALLY here. Praise be for the best dessert offered to mankind- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake! This isn't just any ordinary vegan cookie cake recipe. This is the most delicious and soft vegan chocolate chip cookie baked like a cake, topped with naturally colored vegan frosting, and sprinkled with rainbow confetti sprinkles. Life is too short not to have your cake and make it colorful too!
My Birthday cake requirement
Before I dive into some tips & tricks for this cookie cake recipe, I owe you more on the back story behind my love for cookie cake. Truth is, this obsession goes back way back to when I first discovered Wegman's cookie cake as a child.
Being born on July 6th, my birthday has pretty much always been overshadowed by July 4th celebrations. I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me when I was younger, but as time went on I made a pact with myself that I knew would always lead to a happy birthday. As long as I had a birthday cookie cake covered in frosting and people to share it with, that would always be the perfect celebration for me!
How to make the best vegan cookie cake
As you can imagine, I can't eat Wegman's cookie cake anymore, so I had to create my own dairy-free & eggless cookie cake to celebrate this year! This chocolate chip cookie cake is really just a large soft cookie baked like a cookie cake pizza! Here are the tools and ingredients you need to make this recipe:
First, Use a Springform Pan:
For this recipe, I used a 9" Springform pan. You could probably get away baking in a cast-iron skillet or even using a 10" pan and reducing the baking time by a few minutes if you don't have a springform pan on hand. I really like using a springform pan for this recipe because it's easy to remove the outside of the pan, frost the cake, and easily slice it.
Second, Assemble Your Cookie Cake Ingredients:
Some good vegan butter (Earth Balance or Miyokos are my favorites), vegan chocolate chips, organic sugar, organic brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, all-purpose flour, ground flaxseed, almond milk, and vanilla bean paste or extract are all you need.
From there, just cream the butter and sugar together, add in the vanilla and almond milk, and stir in the dry ingredients until a thick vegan chocolate chip cookie dough forms!
After that, you'll press the cookie dough into the pan and bake it for 26-28 minutes until browned on the outside and soft on the inside.
Lastly, Make The Vegan Vanilla Buttercream & Add Sprinkles!
I first perfected my vegan buttercream recipe when I made these Vegan Lemon Olive Oil Cupcakes.
To make this cookie cake frosting, I used that base recipe but took half of my frosting and turned it a pretty purple-pink color! To decorate this cookie cake, I mixed in freeze-dried dragonfruit pitaya powder to ⅓ of the frosting for a naturally died frosting!
After putting a thin layer of white frosting over the entire cake, I added the pink and white frosting to opposite sides of a piping bag and piped a super fun frosted edge. You can definitely add as much or as little frosting as you want to this Birthday cake cookie, but I tend to go on the side of frosting the whole cake!
As the last step- just add sprinkles!
If you're never experienced the pure unadulterated joy of eating a birthday cookie cake- let this recipe change your mind! I may have single-handedly eaten half this Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake myself this year and I don't regret a single bite. Enjoy!
-TSG
If you're looking for other Vegan Birthday Dessert Ideas, Check out these recipes:
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Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Ingredients
Cookie Cake
- 1 ¼ cup all purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ½ cup cold vegan butter
- ¼ cup organic white sugar
- ½ cup organic brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp ground flaxseed
- 2 Tbsp almond milk
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- ½-3/4 cup vegan chocolate chips *more or less depending on preference
Vanilla Frosting
- ½ cup cold vegan butter
- ⅓ cup vegan shortening
- ½ Tbsp coconut cream *optional- just the cream, not milk
- 2 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- 1 cup organic powdered sugar
- 1 Tbsp pitaya powder *optional, to make ⅓ of the frosting pink
- 2 Tbsp rainbow sprinkles
Instructions
First, Make the Cookie Dough
- Preheat your oven to 350F. Then, add the all-purpose flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder to a large mixing bowl and sift together. Set aside the bowl.
- Add the cold vegan butter and sugar to a standing mixing bowl. Whip together until creamed for about 2-3 minutes. Then, add in the flaxseed, almond milk, and vanilla bean paste/extract to the bowl and mix to combine.
- Next, add the bowl of dry ingredients to the standing mixer and mix together until a dough forms. As a final step, add in the chocolate chips and mix by hand to combine.
Bake the Cookie Cake!
- Add the dough to a greased 9" springform pan and use a spatula or your hands to press the dough flat. Add to the oven and bake for 26-28 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely before frosting.
Once Cooled, Make the Frosting
- Begin by adding your vegan butter, shortening, vanilla bean paste/extract, and coconut cream to a large mixing bowl and whip to combine. Once whipped, slowly add in your powdered sugar ½ cup at a time and whip until a smooth frosting has formed.
- Take the frosting out of the mixing bowl and add ⅔ of the frosting to one bowl and ⅓ of the frosting to another. In the bowl with ⅓ cup frosting, mix in the pitaya powder.
- Cover the cookie cake with a thin layer of the white frosting. Then, add the remaining white frosting and pink frosting to opposite sides of a piping bag and pipe along the outer edge of the cake. As a final step, sprinkle the 2 Tbsp of rainbow sprinkles on top. Cut into 8 slices and enjoy!
Notes
- Cookie Cake will keep in the fridge for up to 1 week. The cake can be frozen for up to 1 month, just let the cake defrost at room temperature for 1 hour before eating.
- This cookie cake comes out soft and chewy. For a crispier cookie cake, replace the brown sugar 1:1 with white sugar
- For a chewier cookie cake, substitute the all-purpose flour 1:1 with bread flour
jojo says
I made this for a vegan friend, but the rest of the party attendees were not vegan. Everybody loved both the cake and the frosting. The crust turned out perfectly browned/slightly caramelized, while the center was perfectly chewy. From my non-vegan perspective, this was the best cookie cake I've ever had - a tie with a cast iron non-vegan cookie cake I tried a different time. I think this recipe, made in a cast iron, would take all cookie cakes to the next level. Thank you!
jojo says
I used a 9" ceramic pie dish. Could be my oven, or my choice of bakeware, but: I baked it for 28 min, then turned the oven off, but based on the color, decided to keep it in there/let it "rest" in the heat for another 2-3 min before taking it out.
Also, the frosting was amazing, but becomes quite soft at room temperature. After adding coloring, I found it helpful to refrigerate a few hours before working with it. Kept the whole cake in the fridge until ready to serve.
Thank you again!!
Megan says
Thank you so much for the review- I'm thrilled everyone liked it 🙂 You can definitely make it in a cast-iron next time as well!
stephanie says
Hey Megan! I'm hoping you'll see this in time. I just signed up to make my niece a cookie cake for her 13th birthday this weekend, but she and my daughter are severely allergic so they need it to be vegan so I'm so thankful I found your recipe.
Do you think this would work on a sheet pan? I need it to be big for a crowd. Any tips you can share would be much appreciated, thank you so much!!!
Megan says
I bet it could be made on a sheet pan, but you'd likely have to double or triple the recipe. I haven't tried it myself so I don't have any tips but as long as it's the same thickness as the normal cookie cake, the baking time should be similar. If it's thinner, you'll just want to bake the cookie cake for less time. Hope that helps!
Avery says
Hi Megan,
Happy birthday! I’d like to make this soon and just wanted to confirm that the ground flaxseed meal isn’t pre-mixed with water to make a”flaxseed egg” before being added to the other ingredients. Am I reading that right?
Megan says
Yes it doesn't need to be pre mixed- it's added in just the ground flax seed then also using the 2 Tbsp of almond milk
Jasmine says
I made this for Cowy’s birthday who is my little plush cow who turned eleven. 🥳🐮 He loved it and of course my family loved it too! ❤️ I didn’t use all the vanilla frosting, but it does store well for any other future treats you want to top off with some vanilla frosting. 🤗 It slices well and doesn’t crumble very much so it’s the perfect treat for any celebration! Overall, it’s a good ol’ classic chewy chocolate chip cookie, but giant! 😃🍪
Khadija says
Hi I wanted to make a vegan cookie cake and this recipe sounds amazing, do you think I could use it to make a two layer cookie cake?
Megan Horowitch says
Definitely! You may want to make the cookie cakes the day before stacking them so they have enough time to cool but I don't see why it would not work :).
Kathryn says
Hi Megan! this looks amazing, definitely going to make for my bf's birthday this weekend! Question - could I bake this in a cast iron skillet instead of a springform pan for a cookie skillet vibe?
Megan Horowitch says
yay happy early birthday! If the cast iron skillet is the same size as the 9"pan it should work. If it's smaller or larger, the cooking time will vary. This cookie cake isn't meant to come out gooey like some skillet cookies, so just make sure you use some cooking oil so it doesn't stick and you can remove it. Let me know how it goes!
Emilie says
Hi! What do you think would happen if I used soy milk? Looks delicious! Excited to try it 😀
Megan Horowitch says
Any plant-based milk can be subbed for almond milk so soy milk should work perfectly. Hope you love it!
Alix says
Made this for a small get together & we loved it! Even my non vegan friends said it was one of the best cookie cakes they had! They actually raved about the icing and ate quite a bit without the cookie cake! So easy & wonderful!
Victoria says
Hi! This looks unbelievably good!! Have you ever doubled this recipe and stacked the cookie cake into two layers lol? I am hoping to make this for 5 people but wanted it to be denser but only have a 9'' pan!
Megan Horowitch says
I haven't tried that, but I don't see why it wouldn't work- sounds delicious! Would love to hear how it goes if you try it out 🙂
ShortGirlTallOrder says
So glad you liked it- it's the best when people are pleasantly surprised it's vegan! I don't have a calorie estimate right now but if you copy and paste the ingredients into MyFitnessPal or a similar app it should be able to pull it 🙂
Emily says
Made this for my own dessert at my nephews bday party for myself Nd offered to many other non vegans and they all loved it and were shocked it was vegan! I was wondering if there is an estimate of the calories per serving?
Matt B says
Made this for my wife's birthday and she LOVED it! Said it tasted just like Mrs. Fields 😀
ShortGirlTallOrder says
Thank you so much for the feedback Matt 🙂 and Happy Birthday!
Ciarra says
I can't wait to make this for my Birthday next month! Amazing recipe as always, Megan!
ShortGirlTallOrder says
thank you so much Ciarra!
lilly says
Hi,
Looking forward to making this. I've never used a spring form pan, anything in particular to note? I saw some videos online and people put it in another pan with water? Can I just grease it like regular and use it like regular? Do I need to wrap it in tin foil?
-New To Spring
ShortGirlTallOrder says
Hi there! You can grease it like a regular pan (butter or coconut oil works well) and it does not need to be wrapped in tin foil. If you decide to use a regular pan, I'd recommend parchment paper over tin foil, but a springform pan makes for easier removal without the need for either of these! The one thing to note is just to be careful when releasing the pan as it will be hot :). Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions!