Tahini-Oatmeal & Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ooey, gooey, chunky, chewy Tahini-Oatmeal & Chocolate Chunk Cookies just rolls off the tongue… literally and figuratively. These are the best gluten-free, vegan oatmeal and chocolate chunk cookies I have ever had, but watch out, they are easy to go to town on these chunkers. When it comes to homemade vegan and gluten-free recipes, chewy cookies are almost like unicorns. Most attempts that I have made at baking both gluten-free and vegan cookies, although delicious, usually end up the same crumbly mess. So, I made it my mission to make vegan and gluten-free into chewy cookies. These cookies were the BOMB!
I had never tried tahini in a cookie mainly because it is not exactly a traditional ingredient used in sweets but tahini is a key ingredient in an extremely delicious Middle Eastern dessert called Halva. It is sweet with a deliciously addictive nutty flavour coming from the tahini. Since sweet and tahini is such a pleasant combination, I figured that this would work so well with oatmeal and chocolate.
Baking Vegan & Gluten-Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Baking these Tahini-Oatmeal & Chocolate Chunk Cookies as Gluten-Free and Vegan was no easy task. Baking vegan will require you to find a suitable replacement for eggs. I had to do a little research on this one because I can’t say that I was much of a gluten-free cookie ninja before this experiment.

So, what’s the secret ingredient in the witch’s cauldron, you ask? There are several important factors in this recipe’s chemistry, but one of the main components is moisture. Keeping your dough from being too dry will help them from them getting being too crispy/crumbly. Replacing regular sugar with brown sugar and maple syrup will make a huge difference in your moisture content. Also, adding a little agar to your flax eggs will make for a better, more binding “egg”. Agar is an all-natural vegan alternative to gelatin made from seaweed and will bind similar to eggs keeping your cookies from falling apart. This is a little tool that I have had up my sleeve for a while now, and it seems to consistently provide me with a denser, cookie, loaf, cake, the works. The cost of this is approximately 7-8$ CAD for a bottle that will last you a good 20-30 recipes. Lastly, storing the cookies in the fridge for an hour will let the ingredients bind together, making it the final touch to that chewy magic.


Tahini Oatmeal & Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Equipment
- Cookie Sheet
Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
- 2 cups All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour
- 4 tbsp Tapioca starch
- ½ tsp Xanthan gum
- 2 cups Rolled oats
- ½ tsp Baking soda
- 1 tsp Baking powder
- ¾ cups Chocolate chips or chunks + more for garnishÂÂÂ
Flax Egg
- 2 tbsp Ground flax
- 4 tbsp Water
- ½ tsp Agar powder
Wet Ingredients
- ½ cups Coconut oil or vegan butter/margarine
- â…“ cups Brown sugar
- ½ cups Tahini (sesame paste)
- â…†cups Maple syrup
- 2 tsp Vanilla extract
- 1 tsp Ground cinnamon
For serving
- 1 tbsp Corse sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325°F and line a baking sheet (or if you have 2) with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, mix in all your dry ingredients and mix till well combined.
- In a small-sized bowl prepare your flax eggs mix and set aside for 1-2 minutes.
- In a separate medium-sized bowl, cream your coconut oil or vegan butter/margarine, and sugar. Add your wet ingredients and flax egg and mix till well combined. Then add your dry ingredients and mix until all the batter is wet and sticky but not runny. It should be wet to the touch. If batter is too dry, add a tbsp or 2 of your milk of choice or until you have a tacky cookie dough.  Let your cookie dough rest for about an hour in the fridge.
- Spoon out the batter onto your baking sheet(s) I made my cookies wide and thick and used about a ¼ cup of the batter for each cookie but make sure that you space them out so that they don’t melt into each other. The recipe makes for approximately 15 cookies, so you’ll have to do them in batches; I put 6 cookies per cookie sheet. Flatten the cookies slightly with your palm and place some extra chips in the center for extra chocolatey goodness (optional). Bake for 16-20 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.ÂÂÂ
- Once you take them out of the oven make sure you wait a good 15 minutes before eating so that the ingredients have the time to work their magic and make it a more chewy experience. They tend to be a little crumbly strait out of the oven.
- Spinkle a few granules of corse sea salt on top to garnish. Enjoy!
Notes

Just curious… to make non-vegan you say to use “milk and eggs” but what are there amounts for these? Also, is tapioca starch still necessary when making not gluten free? Thanks 🙂
Hi amber, I have personally not tested the non gluten-free nor the non vegan versions but if you were to try it, I would love to hear your comments! I would do 2 egg, same quantity of dairy milk and no tapioca starch