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
Video
Notes
More Holiday Vegan Cookies
Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Question about salt- In the recipe it lists 1/2 tea, but in the video it says a pinch which I’d equate to about 1/4 tea. Which is it?
Also if using melted vegan butter salted or unsalted? Does it make a big difference? What is the best way to accommodate the listed salt in the recipe?
Instead of milk, does anyone know if I can swap that with water?
DO NOT SWAP MILK WITH WATER. That’s just gross.
Cookies are amazing. One question though. It says it makes 15 cookies an I get about 6 out of the recipe am I not doing something right?
Hi! I’m so excited to try these, they look and sound delicious. I was wondering can they be made with almond flour and brown sugar as well?
Hi! Just use this recipe for almond flour cookies instead. You can leave out the chocolate chips: https://lett-trim.today/keto-cookies-recipe/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi, just leaving this comment for future users.
I chose to use coconut oil.
The dough was crumbly and hard to work with. I smooshed the Ingredients together as best as I could. Put it in the fridge over night. Let it sit out for 1 hour next day because it was very hard. Sliced it… some stayed formed, some still crumbly but I smooshed it together. They kept their form after cooking.
I just didn’t like how I could not roll it out like typical dough so you could cut shapes.
I think maybe it depends on the oil. I wonder if I had tried vegan butter if it would have been more dough like.
They still taste great and have nice texture after cooking.
Best sugar cookie recipe ever, not just for vegan cookies but for all cookies!
These vegan sugar cookies and vegan cream cheese frosting are delicious. I have a lot of icing left over. How long will it stay in the fridge?
Where is the frosting recipe???
Scroll almost all the way back up, kind of a ways back up. It isn’t written in the typical recipe format. It is between two pictures of the frosted cookies titled (for lack of a better term) Frosted Sugan Cookie Recipe. I pasted it below.
“Below is the one I used, adapted from my Easy Cinnamon Rolls Recipe.
Beat room temperature 8oz store-bought or homemade vegan cream cheese with 4oz 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.”
Lovely cookies! My dough was a bit dry at first so I added about 2 tablespoons of applesauce. Oh boy! These are amazing.
I also made the cream cheese icing but excluded the butter, and this was really fun and tasty to decorate with my kids.
Thank you Katie!
Thank you for trying them!