This post contains affiliate links. Please see our disclosure policy.
Vegan Sugar Cookies – super easy and perfect for any occasion.
These Vegan Sugar Cookies! Small crunchy delicious cookies perfect for the holidays, without any gluten or gum, soy or palm oil.
Last week was quite cloudy and dreary and my motivation was slipping. I was wondering about what to do in the new year and was coming up empty. So I was trying to veganize a few more Indian holiday sweets to keep the brain cells going.
I was working with coconut flour last week on some other Indian sweets recipes for next year’s festivals(there are so many different desserts from different parts of India!). The coconut flour was sitting out on the counter, and I had a feeling that it would work beautifully in gluten-free vegan sugar cookies.
And it did work amazingly to reduce the quantity and hence the stronger taste of brown rice flour.
These sugar cookies are crunchy, crumbly, sweet, flavored with vanilla and coated up in chocolate.
Use your favorite frosting, add sprinkles to the dough, make fun shapes!
I took a few to the Bake sale at Vegan Haven in Seattle, along with some Jar gifts and some Chewy Chocolate Chip cookies. If you picked up any of my goodies from the sale, do drop me a line:)
Pretty, small vegan sugar cookies, perfect for gifting or your holiday cookie exchange.
Ingredients for this Vegan Sugar Cookies recipe:
- Brown and white rice flour: rice flour gives the vegan sugar cookies that crumbly melt in the mouth texture very similar to what cornstarch does.
- Cornstarch: these starches are used for thickening and binding.
- Coconut flour: the best flour to use for all cookies that need to be scooped and shaped. Coconut based flour soaks up quite a lot of liquid and expands. It’s also why more flax eggs and liquid need to be used with coconut flour recipes. Keep that in mind if substituting another flour.
- Flax meal: I use golden flax meal for more even-looking sugar cookies.
Tips and Substitutions for this Vegan Sugar Cookies recipe:
- Flour is a tricky measure to get perfectly accurate but very important when it comes to baking! If using cups, use the spoon and level method.
- For decoration, dip them into melted dark chocolate or make a natural food coloring by mixing icing sugar and beet juice!
- Along with the vanilla extract, you could also add a little almond extract. Just a touch! If you use too much you will get a bit of a marzipan flavor and not everybody loves that.
- You can use arrowroot starch instead of cornstarch
- If you do not have coconut flour, you can use cashew flour or oat flour instead.
How to make this Vegan Sugar Cookies recipe:
1. Whisk all the dry ingredients.
2. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl to combine.
3. Add to the dry ingredients and knead everything into a stiff dough. This dough can be refrigerated for 2 days. It probably can also be frozen.
4. Pat the dough down, roll out and cut the cookies into the desired shapes. Gather remaining dough and pat it down again to cut up cookies or shape some into balls and flatten them.
5. Chill the shaped cookies for 15 minutes in the refrigerator or 10 minutes in the freezer.
6. Bake at pre-heated 375 degrees F for 12-13 minutes. Cool completely then frost or dip in melted chocolate.
How to store vegan sugar cookies?
Should there be leftover cookies, keep them in a sealed container or cookie tin at room temperature and consume within a few days. Alternatively, store them in a sealed container in the fridge where they will stay good for up to a week.
Can these cookies be made in advance?
This dough can be refrigerated for 2 days. You can probably also freeze the cookie dough and then let it thaw overnight in the fridge and then use it as normal.
You can also freeze the baked cookies. Freeze them before frosting and then thaw them overnight in the fridge and then frost them.
More gluten-free holiday recipes from the blog:
- Coconut Macaroons
- Single Serving Gingerbread cake Mix in a Jar
- No Bake Candy Cane Truffles
- Sweet Potato Blondies with chocolate chips
- Creme Brulee
- Molten Lava Cakes
- Amaranth Coconut Fudge Candy
- Chocolate and Blueberry Creme Whoopie pies
Gluten-free Vegan Sugar Cookies - Chocolate Dipped
Makes 34 small 1 inch cookies, probably 16-18 medium sized.
Ingredients
Dry:
- 1/4 cup brown rice flour
- 1/4 cup white rice flour
- 1/4 cup cornstarch, or use other starch like arrowroot
- 1/4 cup coconut flour, or use cashew flour or oat flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup ground raw sugar or any other finely ground sweetener
Wet:
- 1/4 cup oil, I used organic canola
- 3 Tbsp almond milk or other non-dairy milk
- 1 Tbsp flax meal
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- In a bowl, add all the dry ingredients and mix well. In another bowl, mix the flax meal with non-dairy milk and let sit for 2 minutes. Add in the vanilla and oil and whisk to combine. Add to dry and mix. Knead well for 2-4 minutes to form a smooth dough. Spray water on the dough if it does not come together easily(not more than 2-4 sprays).
- Pat the dough down and use cookie cutters to cut desired shapes. I only have rounds :). I used 1 inch round cutter as it looked cute, and got about 34 cookies. Gather remaining dough, pat down and cut more cookies or shape into balls and flatten. Place the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet, cover with another parchment and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes(or 10 minutes in the freezer).
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Bake for 13-14 minutes(a few minutes longer for larger cookies) until the edges just about start to get golden. Move the cookies around from outside to inside at the 11-minute mark and bake for 2-5 minutes more depending on the cookie size. Let cool completely. Serve as is or dip in melted chocolate or top with favorite frosting.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness in November 2019.
These vegan sugar cookies are being shared at ricki’s wellness weekend.
I really liked these ! Baking is a hit or miss for me and these came out great the first time ! I put frosting on mine
Awesome!
Can’t teste the normal” gluten free taste”.
Nice!!!!
Hi tried this. Aftertaste was of raw gritty rice. Can you please tell me how to fix this for next time.
Probably the brand of rice flour or the rice flour was a bit coarse rather than fine. Use oat flour instead
These looks amazing and I love that you dipped them in chocolate – it’s the holiday season after all! I bet my family would devour them.
Just made two batches of these. I used coconut oil (melted) and all white rice flour. I put mini chocolate chips in the second batch and dipped the first batch in chocolate. These are excellent! I also didn’t bother to refrigerate the dough because it’s cold in here anyway. Thank you…great recipe!
yay!!
Can I use all purpose flour instead of all the different flours?
try these instead https://www.veganricha.com/2015/09/vegan-coconut-oil-shortbread-cookies-with-pumpkin-pie-spice.html
Can I substitute the gluten free flours for white flour?
that might make a crunchy cookies.Try a mix of regular flour and almond flour