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5 from 1 vote

Chocolate and Black Olive Shortbread Cookies (Vegan)

The easiest vegan chocolate shortbread cookie made with olive oil, cocoa, and chocolate. The optional addition of black olives is interesting and sophisticated.
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Course: Dessert, Snack
Cuisine: American, Italian
Diet: Vegan
Keyword: Baking, Chocolate, Cookies
Servings: 10 cookies

Ingredients

  • 85 g flour
  • 15 g cocoa
  • 40 g sugar
  • 50 g olive oil
  • 5 g water
  • 30 g chocolate chunks or chips
  • 20 g sliced black olives chopped (or cured black olives, chopped small) optional (see notes)

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 F.
  • Mix the flour, cocoa, and sugar together. Add olive oil and water and mix until evenly hydrated. Add the chocolate chunks and sliced olives and form into a dough. If using canned sliced olives, make sure that the olives are very well drained and you are not adding additional liquid into the dough. See notes
  • Roll the dough into balls (around 1 tablespoon) and then flatten into disks slightly less than 1 cm thick. Set these disks out on a baking tray lined with parchment paper, making sure that the disks do not touch one another. However, note that the cookie dough will not spread in the oven (and will expand only very slightly) so there is no need to leave too much space in between. There should be 8-10 cookies.
  • Bake for 20-25 minutes. When done, the bottom of the cookies should be slightly golden. The tops of the cookies will still be somewhat soft when you take them out of the oven, but will harden as they cool. Once cooled, the cookies should be crunchy and sandy like a butter cookie.

Video

@hellenshouse

ONE BOWL easy vegan chocolate shortbread with black olives! This may be the easiest cookie recipe ever. Made with OLIVE OIL instead of butter. Easy to scale and fast - a small batch cookie recipe for when you need to satisfy a chocolate craving like right now. They’re salty and sweet, deeply chocolatey, and only a 3 or 4 on the low effort scale. The olives really bring an interesting touch but I understand if it’s too much for normie taste profiles. These cookies keep really well and are even better a day or two later as the texture evens out. Tag a grace or someone who should make these cookies! #veganbaking #vegancookies #oliveoil #shortbreadcookies #doublechocolatecookies #chocolatecookies #blackolives #savoryandsweet #saltysweet #veganrecipes #vegantiktok #oliveoilcookies #easycookierecipe

♬ All of Me - Billie Holiday

Notes

*If using canned sliced olives, I recommend either chopping the olives into small pieces before adding to the dough or using your hands to break the sliced olives apart into small pieces less than 1 cm big (unless if you prefer a soft cookie, in which case this can be skipped). This is important for canned sliced olives because of their moisture content. If the olive pieces are too big, they will add too much moisture to the cookies and the texture surrounding them will not be crunchy. For cured olives, the size of the olive pieces is less important.  
**If not using olives at all, you can replace with an equal amount of chocolate chunks/chips. If omitting black olives, add a pinch of salt to the dough.