Olive Oil Chocolate Chip Cookies

Everything we love about chocolate chip cookies but this time, no dairy and no butter! Olive oil (or any flavorless oil if that’s your preference) takes butter’s place in these crispy edged-chewy middle cookies.

Recipe Origins

A few months ago my brother asked me for a chocolate chip cookie recipe without butter. I thought of this olive oil cookie recipe but it’s not really meant to hold up chocolate and would probably make very flat cookies with that addition. I directed him to a ‘olive oil chocolate chip cookie’ recipe from another blogger I’d made a few years ago but he pointed out it had butter in it too. I sent him another one but it was a bit fussy for him so I was like, well, I suppose I could develop one?

At first I thought I’d small batch the recipe but that would require using an egg sub or portioning an egg, and I found that I liked them best with the whole egg since it added the water and the richness of flavor to the dough.

These are, honestly, just delicious. I didn’t miss the butter at all and the texture was spot on with crispy edges and a chewier middle. Paired with dark chocolate it’s a winning combination. I’ve started to make these whenever I have a ccc craving, just because they’re easy (no softening or creaming butter) and they just deliver exactly what I want from a cookie.

Recipe Ingredients

Olive oil: You will taste the olive oil in the cookies so use something you like! Extra virgin olive oil has a stronger flavor but a ‘light’ or just virgin olive oil will be more mild.

Sugar: We’re doing a mix of brown sugar (you can use light or dark) and fine granulated.

Vanilla: use a good quality pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste.

Egg: One large egg.

Flour: all purpose flour of a medium protein content (like 11%).

Chocolate: I think dark chocolate is great here, paired with the olive oil. Use good quality chips or chop up your favorite eating chocolate bar.

How to make olive oil chocolate chip cookies

Whisk together the egg and sugars.

It’s going to start out dark and thick but as you whisk, and keep whisking, it will turn light and airy

Slowly whisk in the olive oil; as you whisk pour it in. Then once it’s all in, whisk well to ensure it’s fully emulsified.

Stir in the flour and baking soda (here I’d switch to a rubber spatula otherwise the dough just gets caught in the whisk) but don’t bother fully mixing it in just yet

Add the chocolate then stir until you don’t see any flour bits

FAQ on Olive Oil Chocolate Chip Cookies

Should I use Chocolate Chunks or Chocolate Chips?

Big chocolate puddles come from a chocolate bar that was chopped up, and smaller round bits are from chocolate chips. What’s the difference besides shape?

If you’re chopping up a chocolate bar you’re getting chocolate sans ‘anti-melting’ ingredients so it’s smoother. It’ll melt quicker in the oven and push the dough out so it spreads more. Chocolate chips, designed to not fully melt, mostly hold shape in the cookie. The cookies will spread a bit less with chocolate chips.

Most importantly? Choose something you like to eat! Taste the chocolate before you add it to the dough.

How long should I bake the cookies?

Cookies that are less brown and have spread less, have spent less time in the oven. They tend to be more evenly baked, and I pulled them out before they really started browning on the edges. The result was edges that weren’t very crispy and had a little less of that ‘toffee’ flavor.

The bigger, darker cookies (actually scooped the same size!) were baked for another 2 minutes. This led to a more generous spread, crispier edges and took us further down the maillard reaction so the taste was deeper and more toffee like (more delicious tbh!).

Watch the cookies and decide what you want: take them out early if you want a softer chewier cookie, or give them a couple more minutes if you want more crisp or even crunch.