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These Vegan Cut Out Sugar Cookies are perfect for Christmas! The buttery soft and sweet cookie dough is cut into festive shapes, baked until they’re ever so slightly golden, and decorated with a simple yet sweet and colorful frosting.
You only need 10 simple ingredients to make this Vegan Sugar Cookies Recipe. Soft, buttery, and sweet, it’s no wonder why these cookies are a popular Christmas staple! Use cookie cutters to cut the cookies into seasonal shapes and decorate them with the easy 4-ingredient frosting for a festive touch.
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The Ultimate Vegan Christmas Cookie
Are you looking for a new holiday tradition? I can’t think of anything better than getting together with family and friends to decorate a batch of these Vegan Sugar Cookies with frosting. It’s a fun activity you can repeat every year!
My vegan version of these classic Christmas cookies begins with a perfectly sweet, buttery, and soft cookie dough. After chilling in the fridge, the dough is rolled out and cut into fun shapes. Use all of your favorite cookie cutters here—I went with Christmas trees, candy canes, snowmen, and snowflakes, but you’re more than welcome to get creative.
And no sugar cookie is complete without a little icing on top. The simple sugar cookie frosting in this recipe gives the cookies a festive finishing touch, as well as a pop of color no one will be able to resist. I mean, just look at those cute, festive cookies—I want one right now!
Ingredients for Cut Out Sugar Cookies
Just because these classic cookies are vegan doesn’t mean they require any fancy or hard-to-find ingredients. 10 baking basics are all you need for the cookies, plus a few more to make the simple sugar cookie icing:
- Butter: Opt for salted dairy-free butter and remember to take it out of the fridge well before you start baking so it has time to soften. Or, if unsalted butter is all you have on hand, go ahead and use it but add 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt to the dry ingredients in step 2 of the recipe directions.
- Sugar: A 50-50 blend of butter and sugar in the sugar cookie dough gives it its characteristic sweet flavor and buttery softness. Use regular granulated sugar (like cane or white sugar), not brown sugar or powdered sugar.
- Almond Extract: You only need a little to give the cookies a subtle buttery almond flavor – this is technically optional, but I think it takes these cookies from good to excellent!
- Flour: I developed this recipe with all-purpose flour and haven’t tested any alternatives for vegan gluten-free sugar cookies. If you’d like to experiment with the recipe, make sure you use a 1:1 gluten-free flour blend instead of a one-ingredient flour, like almond flour.
- Icing: Classic sugar cookies are decorated with royal icing, which is easy to use and hardens on the cookies. The easy vegan icing in this recipe is more beginner-friendly but still has a beautiful shine and is fun to customize with different colors. To make it, you’ll need powdered sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, water, and gel food coloring.
How to Make Vegan Sugar Cookies
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the milk, vanilla, and almond extract and beat again until smooth. Gently beat in the dry ingredients until just combined.
- Divide the dough in half, wrap each half in plastic, and flatten them into discs. Refrigerate the dough.
- Roll out one of the discs of dough and cut out the cookies with cookie cutters. Place the cut cookies on prepared baking sheets and bake until the edges are slightly firm. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough.
- While the cookies are baking, whisk the powdered sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, and water together until smooth. Stir in the food coloring.
- Decorate the cooled cookies with the frosting and sprinkles. Serve once the frosting is firm or store for later.
Caitlin’s Cooking Tips
- Start with the right tools: You can make some pretty darn good sugar cookies without these tools, but I promise they’ll make your life so much easier. I recommend using a rolling pin and a ruler when rolling the dough, a bench scraper for lifting the cut cookies and wrangling the scrap dough, and a variety of cookie cutters for a festive touch. And for those intricate designs, pipe the icing onto the cookies with a piping bag fitted with a small round tip.
- Make the cookie dough in advance: I recommend making the dough a minimum of 2 hours or even up to 3 days in advance. Refrigerating the dough is required, and by getting a headstart on this recipe, you’re giving the flour plenty of time to absorb any extra moisture and saving yourself from waiting around for the dough to finish chilling.
- Soft vs. crunchy cookies: I found that baking medium-sized sugar cookies for 8 minutes gave them a soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture. If you prefer crispier cookies, bake them for an extra 1 to 3 minutes.
- Perfect decorated cut out sugar cookies: When you want to learn how to decorate sugar cookies, rely on the outlining and flooding technique. As Sally’s Baking Recipes explains, this method begins by outlining the edges of the cookie with icing and waiting for it to harden before filling in the middle with more icing.
Serving Suggestions
Around the holidays, there’s never a bad time for a vegan sugar cookie. Trust me—whether it’s breakfast, lunch, or dessert, it’s socially acceptable to treat yourself to a few! Just make sure you save some to put out for Santa with an ice-cold glass of homemade almond milk.
Sugar cookies are also perfect for gifting. Pop a few decorated cookies in a tin with any of these other 18+ Vegan Christmas Cookies and give them out to family, friends, neighbors, teachers, or coworkers to show you care.
If you’re looking for more vegan Christmas cookies, you’ll also love these Perfect Vegan Gingerbread Cookies, these Vegan Snickerdoodles, and these Wholesome & Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies!
How to Store Sugar Cookies
Allow the cookies to cool completely and make sure the frosting has hardened (this can take around 3 hours) before transferring them to an airtight container. The cookies will keep for up to 5 days at room temperature.
I haven’t tested freezing the undecorated or decorated sugar cookies, but I imagine it will work well for up to 2 months.
Substitutions and Variations
- Butter Substitute: Softened refined coconut oil will work as a substitute for the vegan butter, although the cookies will be slightly drier.
- Nut-Free Option: Omit the almond extract from the recipe to keep it nut-free.
Recipe FAQs
Both are classic Christmas cookies made with lots of butter, but the two recipes are different. For example, shortbread dough is sweetened with powdered sugar, and sugar cookie dough uses granulated sugar. If you’re looking for a shortbread cookie recipe, try my Chocolate Chai Shortbread Cookies!
You must chill the sugar cookie dough before rolling and baking the cookies. If you skip this part, the dough will be too soft and sticky to roll out, and the sugar cookies will spread in the oven.
You can leave it out if you want, but the icing won’t be as shiny.
Enjoy! If you make this recipe and decide to share it on Facebook or Instagram, don’t forget to tag me @FromMyBowl + #FromMyBowl! I would also love it if you could leave a comment below with a recipe rating! Thank you for the support 😊
Vegan Cut Out Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
For the Cookies:
- 1 cup salted dairy-free butter softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract optional
- 2 tablespoons non-dairy milk
- 3 cups 360 all-purpose flour* spooned and leveled; plus extra for rolling
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt*
For the Icing: (optional, or use your favorite recipe!)
- 4 cups powdered sugar sifted
- 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
- 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 4-6 Tablespoons water divided (start with 4)
- Gel food coloring optional
- Sprinkles for decorating the cookies
Instructions
- Cream the Butter: Add the butter and sugar to a large bowl or stand mixer. Use a handheld mixer (or stand mixer) to cream the butter for 3 to 5 minutes on low speed, scraping the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary. Add the milk, vanilla, and almond extract (if using) to the bowl and beat again until smooth, about 1 minute.
- Dry Ingredients: Add the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to the bowl (use 1/4 teaspoon for sweet cookies, 1/2 teaspoon for more salty-sweet). Beat on low speed until just combined. The dough should be thick and not sticky; if it looks too dry, add additional milk 1 tablespoon at a time.
- Chill: Use a spatula to roughly divide the dough in half. Flatten each half into a flat disc over plastic wrap, then wrap tightly and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, up to 3 days. Chilling the dough is required for this recipe as it helps the flour to absorb extra moisture and prevents the cookies from spreading.
- Baking Prep: Preheat the oven to 350F and line 2 to 4 baking sheets with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
- Roll: Cover a cutting board or work surface with an extra silicone mat (optional, but prevents sticking) and a light dusting of flour. Remove one of the discs from the fridge (Note: if you have refrigerated the dough for more than 3 hours, let it sit on the counter for 30 minutes to soften). Place the dough on the work surface, sprinkle lightly with flour, then knead the dough a few times to soften it up. Dust your rolling pin with flour, then roll out the dough until it’s about 1/2" thick. Sprinkle the dough and/or rolling pin with extra flour as needed to prevent sticking. (Note: You can use your fingers to pinch the dough together when necessary. Any “cracks” that appear in the dough will show in the final baked cookies, so I recommend rolling until the dough is smooth)
- Cut the Cookies: Use cookie cutters to cut out your cookies; I find it works best to press down firmly, then wiggle the cutter a bit to fully separate the edges. Remove excess dough, then use a bench scraper or spatula to transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheet, spacing the cookies at least 1/2" apart from each other. You may need to use multiple baking sheets for each disc of cookie dough.
- Bake: Bake in the middle rack of the oven for 8 minutes for soft cookies that are 4” or less. If your cookies are larger, bake for 10 to 11 minutes; the cookies should be just barely golden on the bottom edge. If you prefer crunchy cookies, bake the cookies for a few minutes extra. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to let cool completely.
- Repeat: Knead the dough scraps back together, and repeat steps 7-9 with both the scraps and the second disc of dough until all cookies have been baked.
- Make the Frosting: Sift the powdered sugar into a large bowl and add the corn syrup, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of water. Whisk well until smooth; if the frosting is too thick add additional water in 1 tablespoon increments. Stir in the gel food coloring now, or divide the frosting into multiple bowls if you’d like to make multiple colors.
- Decorate: Transfer the frosting into piping bags (I like to use these re-usable ones) once the cookies have cooled completely. Decorate the cookies with frosting and sprinkles as desired.
- Store: Let the frosting set and harden on the cookies for at least 3 hours before storing in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
- Butter: You can also make these cookies with unsalted butter or softened refined coconut oil, though the cookies will be slightly more dry with coconut oil. If using either, add 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt to the dry ingredients in step 2.
Turned out great! Made them with my 4 year old to share with friends 😊 we accidentally missed the part about letting the icing set for a few hours and ended up only having about 45 min before we had promised to bring them to share but we thought they were still great 🤪
Yay! I’m glad the recipe was a success – and hey, slightly soft cookies taste just as delicious 😉
Made them with my non-vegan friends and we all loved them!
amazing! I’m so glad!