Perfect Vegan Sugar Cookies (2024)

Dec 8, 2016

4.98 from 108 votes

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Make these perfect vegan sugar cookies! You only need 9 simple ingredients. They're soft, sweet, buttery, and super yummy. Use cookie cutters to make fun shapes and decorate them however you like! Easy and delicious baking fun. Easy and tasty baking for the holidays!

This vegan sugar cookie dough works beautifully for any kind of cookie cutter. If you want to attempt detailed snowflake cookie cuttersor simpler kid-friendly Christmas cookie cutters, these cookies will hold up.If it's not the holiday season, you can use any kind of cookie cutter to create whatever shape you like, hearts, animals, letters, or numbers, making them perfect vegan sugar cookie for any time of year!

What I love most about these vegan sugar cookies is that they are not only great for cookie cutters, but they actually taste good.I find so many cut-out cookies are just hard and flavourless. The key that I learned from Sally's Baking Addictionis to use both vanilla extract and almond extract to really enhance the flavours. The result is sweet, light, soft, buttery, and totally addictive (Sally was right about that addiction thing).

To make perfect vegan sugar cookies:

Whisk together all of the dry ingredients.

Mix together the chia or flax with the water in a small bowl and let thicken. Then add that along with the remaining wet ingredients to a bowl, and beat the wet ingredients together until they are soft and fluffy.

Then add the wet into dry and mix until a dough is formed.

For the vegan butter, I used Earth Balance Buttery Spread, but I have found that sometimes the moisture levels in vegan butters are different, so if your dough does not come together, add up to 1 tablespoon of water until the dough just comes together.

Collect the dough into a ball, and place it between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll the dough out until it's ¼ inch thick. Put the parchment paper covered dough on a baking tray and pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes, or in the fridge for 30 minutes. This cools the dough, so the cookies are easy to cut out, and they will hold their shape in the oven.

Once cooled, remove the top piece of parchment and cut out your cookies. Re-roll the remaining dough and cut out more cookies, cooling the dough if needed. Bake the cookies until just lightly golden underneath. Let cool completely before icing.

To make the icing, mix together the powdered sugar and 2 teaspoons of plant-based milk or water. Add more liquid as needed until desired consistency is reached. Mix in vegan food colouring as desired.

Use a piping bag or a plastic bag with the corner cut off to decorate your cookiesas you like! Have fun 🙂

ICING TIPS:

For an extra white icing, I find using full-fat coconut milk as the liquid in the icing works best.
The icing recipe makes enough to lightly decorate the cookies. If you want to heavily decorate them (like I did), double the recipe.
Try not to eat them all before you finished icing them!

Common Questions:

What food coloring is vegan? Most food coloring listed as "natural" is vegan because they are derived from plants. There is an exception though: carmine. Carmine is not vegan as it contains "cochineal", which is derived from bugs. Be sure to read and research the ingredients list before purchasing just to be safe 🙂
Can I freeze sugar cookies? Yes. The best way to freeze sugar cookies is to wait form them to thaw, then either freeze them wrapped on a baking sheet in a single layer, or in an air-tight container. If stored in the freezer correctly, they should last for about 3 months.
Are these sugar cookies gluten-free? Unfortunately, this is not as it recipe contains all-purpose flour.

If you try this recipe let us know by leaving a comment, rating it, and don't forget to tag @itdoesnttastelikechicken on Instagram.
Bon appetegan!
Sam Turnbull.

4.98 from 108 votes

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