No eggs, no butter, no problem. Sure, vegan automatically means no dairy butter. But these butterless vegan sugar cookies are made without butter of any kind. In fact, you could call these wacky cookies since you can make them straight from the pantry!
Butterless Vegan Sugar Cookies made Straight from the Pantry
This simple recipe produces soft sugar cookies and uses oil instead of butter. This helps to guarantee consistent results. With dairy-free recipes that call for butter alternatives, the results can vary in taste and texture based on the brand you use. But with oil, there is far less variation.
The juice in the glaze provides a hint of flavor and gives it a pretty hue. Here are some juice color options:
- Pastel Green – lime juice
- Pastel Yellow – lemon juice
- Yellow Orange – orange juice, tangerine juice
- Light Pink – pink grapefruit juice
- Pink – blood orange juice (pictured), cranberry juice, pomegranate juice
- Purple – blueberry juice
You can also use the juice in place of the milk beverage in the cookies. The acid in the juice will cause the cookies to rise a touch more.
This butterless vegan sugar cookies recipe with photo was shared with us by Pompeian.
Special Diet Notes: Butterless Vegan Sugar Cookies
By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, peanut-free, soy-free, vegan, and vegetarian.
For nut-free vegan sugar cookies, use a nut-free almond extract (yes, they exist!) or omit the almond extract.
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup extra light olive oil or grapeseed oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- 2 to 3 tablespoons unsweetened dairy-free milk beverage, as needed
- 1 cup powdered sugar, plus additional if needed, for thickening
- 2 to 3 tablespoons fresh orange juice or juice of choice (see post above)
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- Fruit for garnish (optional)
- Sugar, for topping (optional)
- Preheat your oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Add the oil and extracts, and stir until crumbly dough forms.
- Add 2 tablespoons of the milk beverage and stir until a soft dough ball comes together. Add up to 1 tablespoon more milk beverage if the dough is too dry.
- Place the dough ball on a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough out to ¼-inch thickness. Using floured biscuit cutters or cookie cutters, cut out cookie shapes and move them to your prepared baking sheet. Gather any remaining scraps into a ball, and repeat this step until the dough is used up.
- Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes. They will just start to look golden. Do not overbake the cookies. Let the cookies cool completely.
- In a medium bowl whisk together the powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons juice, and salt until smooth. Add more juice as needed to thin the glaze. If it becomes too thin, whisk in more powdered sugar.
- Glaze the cookies and top with fruit and/or a pinch of sugar, if desired.
More Butter-Free, Dairy-Free Cookie Recipes
The Best Dairy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
Vegan Sweet Potato Cookies
Mamma’s Big Batch Breakfast Cookies
2 Comments
Would you recommend making this with GF flour?
The recipe hasn’t been tested gluten-free, so I can’t advise it.