Before making the dough, make the flax egg and chop up the dark chocolate bars. Set aside.

To make the dough, add the room temperature vegan butter, white sugar, and brown sugar to a mixing bowl. Then, use an electric mixer to cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy (about 1 minute).

Next, add in the flax egg and vanilla bean paste and mix together for about 20 seconds.

Then, add in the all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Make sure to add the flour first and then add the other ingredients on top. Then, use a fork to gently sift the baking powder, baking soda, and salt into the flour. Once sifted, mix everything together until a thick cookie dough forms.

Add 2 oz of the chopped chocolate to the cookie dough and gently fold in with a spatula to evenly distribute throughout the dough. Then, cover with plastic wrap and add the bowl of dough to the fridge to chill for 30 minutes- 1 hour. The dough can also be refrigerated up to 24 hours.

Then, use a cookie scoop to scoop out 12 evenly sized cookies (about 40-45 grams per cookie) and place on the baking sheet. Make sure to space the cookies at least 2 inch apart on the tray and do not flatten them as they will spread while baking. All of the cookies will not fit on one baking sheet, so I recommend baking 6 cookies at a time on one tray vs. putting two trays in the oven at the same time.

For really big chocolate pools, take an additional 1 oz of chocolate and chop it up. Then, add the chunks to the top of the cookie dough balls right before baking.

Bake for 11-13 minutes until bottoms are lightly browned and the cookies are cooked through but have slightly soft centers. The cookies will continue baking after they are removed from the oven so the centers should still be soft, but not glossy or raw, when they are removed from the oven.

Remove the cookie tray from the oven and immediately tap the tray on the counter to produce a more “wrinkly” cookie and help deflate the cookies. For round cookies, use a round cookie cutter (or large mug in my case!) that is slightly larger than the cookie and swirl the cookies around inside to form them into a round cookie. This step will only work if you do it while the cookies are still warm.

Let the cookies cool on the baking tray for about 5 minutes. Then, top with flaky sea salt and enjoy!