This recipe for the perfect frosted vegan sugar cookies is soft, chewy, fluffy, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious!
The best vegan sugar cookie recipe
With no butter, no eggs, and no dairy required, people are always amazed at just how wonderful these buttery sugar cookies taste.
Plus, unlike many other vegan sugar cookie recipes, this one can be made with only basic cookie ingredients.
In fact, you may already have everything in your kitchen needed to make the chewy vegan cookies for dessert tonight.
And yes, the recipe totally works with cookie cutters!
Also try these Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Vegan Lofthouse sugar cookies
Have you ever tried a Lofthouse sugar cookie?
These soft homemade vegan sugar cookies are sure to remind you of the cake-like decorated sugar cookies you can find in the bakery section of your local grocery store.
They are perfect for Valentine’s Day dessert, festive Christmas cookie trays, birthday parties, holiday parties, or simply just because.
The recipe is also easy to customize.
I will often add a few drops of almond extract, coconut extract, pure peppermint extract, or maple extract for a fun flavor twist.
Or turn them into vegan chai cookies by stirring a sprinkle of cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, ginger, and ground cloves into the batter before adding the liquid ingredients.
You might also like this Vegan Cheesecake – No Cashews
Ingredients for vegan sugar cookies
The cookies require no flax eggs or chia eggs, just everyday sugar cookie ingredients.
To make the recipe, you will need flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, oil or dairy free butter, nondairy milk, and pure vanilla extract.
Flour – Tested flour options that work include white all purpose flour, oat flour, and whole grain spelt flour, which is my favorite. Do not use almond flour or coconut flour.
For dairy free and gluten free sugar cookies, use oat flour. I have not tried all purpose gluten free flour, so be sure to report back for other readers if you experiment.
If you prefer a grain free and paleo option, try these Keto Cookies.
Sugar – As a cost effective option, I often go with regular white sugar here. Another granulated sweetener can be substituted if you wish, including refined sugar free coconut sugar, date sugar, or a no sugar option like xylitol.
Pure maple syrup and agave are options I have not tried yet and therefore cannot recommend.
Butter – These sugar cookies can either be oil free or made without vegan butter. Even when using real sugar and vegan butter, they only have about 70 calories each.
The oil version, which uses melted coconut oil or vegetable oil, will have more of a crispy, shortbread texture, while the plantbased butter version is softer.
Both options are really good, so it is entirely your choice.
Vanilla – For the best taste, choose pure vanilla extract. In these cookies and with baking in general, I recommend avoiding imitation vanilla or artificial vanilla flavoring.
Milk – Finally, milk of choice refers to any vegan milk alternative. You may use oat milk, soy milk, cashew milk, coconut milk, almond milk, rice milk, or whatever you have in the refrigerator.
Trending Right Now: Vegan Brownies
Easy step by step recipe video
Above – Watch the vegan sugar cookie recipe video
How to make egg free sugar cookies
Step one is to get out a large mixing bowl. Add all dry ingredients to the bowl.
Mix these ingredients very well before adding the oil, milk, and vanilla extract. Stir everything together to form a sugar cookie dough.
The dough should look dry at first. Keep stirring, and it will achieve a cookie dough texture after about a minute of stirring. You can also use a stand mixer if you own one, or simply stir by hand.
Either smush the dough into one giant ball and then roll into cookie balls, or transfer the dough to a gallon sized bag and form a ball from inside the bag.
If you are not ready to bake right away, you can make the dough ahead of time and refrigerate covered overnight or for a few days.
When ready to bake cookies, preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Fold the Ziploc in half, then roll out the dough inside until it takes up the entirety of the other half of the bag.
Cut open the bag, and cut out shapes with cookie cutters or form into cookie shapes with your hands.
Place the sugar cookie shapes on a baking tray. Bake on the center rack of a properly calibrated oven for eleven minutes.
The cookies should look underdone when you remove them from the oven. Let the pan cool for at least ten minutes before handling the cookies, because they continue to firm up as they cool.
To prevent the frosting from melting, make sure the cookies are no longer hot before adding any icing, sprinkles, or other toppings.
Prefer chocolate cookies? Try these Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Plant based sugar cookie frosting recipe
If you want to cut out the sugar cookies and add icing, feel free to use your favorite store bought or homemade buttercream or vanilla vegan frosting recipe.
Below is the vegan icing I used, adapted from my Easy Cinnamon Rolls.
Beat room temperature 8 oz packaged or homemade vegan cream cheese with 4 oz vegan butter spread, 2 cups powdered sugar, and 1 tsp pure vanilla extract.
Add a little milk of choice as needed.
Or for a healthier option, you can frost the sugar cookies with melted Coconut Butter and add sweetener of choice as desired or even mashed banana.
I opted to garnish the finished cookies with rainbow sprinkles for presentation.
(Note: the cookies can also be rolled into balls an flattened a little before baking if you want thicker cookies instead of cut outs.)
*Here’s a similar recipe for Vegan Snickerdoodles
Vegan Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups flour (spelt, white, or oat flour) Or make these Keto Cookies
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup sugar (unrefined if desired)
- 6 tbsp oil or melted vegan butter
- 1 1/2 tbsp milk of choice
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- *If you want to frost the cookies, feel free to use your favorite icing. The frosting recipe I used is written out earlier in this post. And if you’re a visual person, be sure to watch the video above that shows how to make the cookies!Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients to form a dough. It will be dry at first but should turn into cookie dough within a minute of stirring. Either smush dough into a big ball and then roll into cookie balls, or transfer to a gallon-sized ziploc and smush into a ball from inside the bag. If desired, you can refrigerate the dough overnight or even for a few days. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 F. Fold the bag in half, then roll the dough out from inside the bag until it takes up the one half of the bag (as shown in the third photo in this post). Cut open the bag, cut out shapes, and place on a baking tray. Bake 11 minutes. They’ll look a little underdone, so let them cool and do not touch them for at least 10 minutes. Be sure the cookies are completely cooled before frosting them, or the frosting will melt.View Nutrition Facts
Notes
Have you made this recipe?
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More Holiday Vegan Cookies
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Mallie says
These were delicious and perfect for the holiday party I am planning to bring them to for a cookie exchange.
Clairissa says
I made these cookies for my Vegan husband and honestly I had low hopes. When I made the dough the dough was very crumbly and hard to form balls so I thought I probably messed it up or something. I made the recipe anyway and had my husband try it and myself and they were AMAZING!!!! Tasted exactly like store bought vanilla cookies. Super good will make again!!!
Anne says
Great basic sugar cookie recipe, both vegans and non vegans enjoyed.
Ginger says
As others stated, my dough was crumbly, so I added about 3 more tablespoons of butter and about 1 tablespoon of milk and then it held together. I baked mine until golden brown, which took a few extra minutes.
Sahara says
I needed to make vegan sugar cookies to decorate. I replaced the milk with water, used oil instead of butter, and used oat flour. It seemed a little too wet so I add a teeny bit more oat flour. They tasted chewy and yummy.
Erika Torres says
Hi! Would these work with a sugar substitute like monkfruit or erythritol? Thanks
Pat says
I’m needing an egg free sugar cookie to layer in a banana pudding. Would these hold up?
Elle B says
Would these work with a cookie stamp/embosser?
CCK Media Team says
Sure!
Summer Park says
I made these and pressed the entire dough ball into a cake pan for a fruit pizza base and it was absolutely phenomenal. I included a little almond and I used butter flavored shortening as my fat and plant based heavy whipping cream for my milk. It was so sweet and chewy. 10/10
Amb says
I made these gluten free and they turned out well. I did a double batch, and used half King Arthur GF measure for measure flour, and half brown rice flour. I used coconut oil and almond milk. In the end it was still crumbly so I added an extra tablespoon of oil and an extra tablespoon of almond milk. That seemed about right for the texture.
Rolling it out in the bag, it was still a little too thick. I will just roll it between two silicone mats next time. Took slightly longer for the first batch to cook through since they were too thick. Very delicious once baked through and cooked.
Danae says
This recipe is amazing if you add more oil or applesauce, if you’re trying to avoid the oil. The batter was extremely dry and crumbly and I could not get the dough ball until I added 3 tablespoons of applesauce.
Casey says
Great recipe. Easy and delicious. Used for Christmas cookies.
Barb Branigan says
I made these at Christmas for a friend’s granddaughter that has a diary, egg and peanut allergy and they said they were the best and no one could believe they were allergy free. I made cut out cookies and use a glaze frosting. For the milk of choice, I used Country Crock’s dairy free whipping cream. So glad I found this recipe
CCK Media Team says
This makes us so happy 🙂