Easy Copycat Vegan Pillsbury Pumpkin Sugar Cookies
Soft, chewy, and quite literally identical in taste and texture, these copycat Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies are made with the simplest slice n’ bake cookie dough. And no eggs nor dairy is needed!
You’ll never believe these easy copycat Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies are vegan:
I know I’m not the only one who took a bite of the raw dough before baking a batch of Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies as a kid. Oh my gosh, was it delicious.
Sadly, Pillsbury does not make any vegan version of these wonderful holiday slice n’ bake cookies. So of course, I set out to recreate the iconic nostalgic cookie, and the results are uncanny.
These copycat Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies taste quite literally identical to the classic Pillsbury holiday sugar cookie. And yet they’re entirely eggless, dairy free, and vegan.
What’s more, we’re using the simplest of ingredients (just 6 to be exact!). And no palm oil nor canola oil, using a trick that I implement in my classic sugar cookies and drop style sugar cookies as well!
Bake these as is or even bake them in the viral chocolate chip cookie Pillsbury cookie mega cookie style using my Better Than Tollhouse Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies!
How did we achieve the same flavor as the iconic Pillsbury cookie dough?
The ingredients for the Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies are as follows:
“Enriched Flour Bleached (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Sugar, Palm Oil, Water, Canola Oil. Contains 2% or less of: Eggs, Baking Powder (sodium aluminum phosphate, baking soda), Salt, Yellow 5 & 6, Artificial Flavor, Blue 1, Sodium Benzoate (preservative).” – Pillsbury website.
The ingredients are fairly simple when you break it down: flour, sugar, palm oil, water, canola oil, eggs, baking powder, salt, food coloring, and artificial flavor.
Well, of course, we can’t do with the eggs, but luckily, we actually don’t need them. And we can do without the palm oil and canola oil as well. Yet, somehow, with the combination of ingredients I gathered, we’ve recreated the flavor, even without the artificial flavoring. And just with 6 simple ingredients:
- Flour: Nothing has changed here for the first ingredient- regular all purpose flour will do! If you’re not in the U.S., this would be called plain flour. You can also use gluten-free 1:1 baking flour, but make sure it contains xanthan gum. My personal preference is King Arthur measure for measure (I don’t have much success with Bob’s).
- Powdered sugar: This is a trick I learned from my childhood best friend’s mom when we would make sugar cookies in large batches to give out as gifts. Powdered sugar is a much better sweetener than regular sugar, as it mixes into the dough more evenly. It also often contains cornstarch, which will add to that pillowy texture.
- Vegan butter: Instead of palm oil or canola oil, we’re swapping in vegan butter. For the best taste that resembles Pillsbury, I recommend Miyoko’s sea salt vegan butter. It’s DELICIOUS. However, these will work with Plant Crock (which is nut-free).
- Baking powder: To help the cookies puff up just a touch.
- Dairy free milk: Just a tablespoon or two to help the dough come together. You don’t want to add too much, or they’ll spread too much in the oven.
- Sea salt & Vanilla extract: Yes, I know, this is technically 7 ingredients, but salt and vanilla I always count as flavor enhancers. They’re the simple components you always have on hand, and aren’t real, specialty ingredients.
In Britt’s Kitchen: My Guide to Vegan Food Coloring:
It has taken me years to figure out what vegan food colors work best in baking, and what are best for decorating.
As you might have deduced, some food colors, because they’re plant-based, tend to fade in color once baked. This doesn’t bode well for having copycat Pillsbury Halloween cookies with beautifully vibrant orange and green colors.
Well, we did some testing, and I have several options that I recommend:
- Whole Foods 365 Brand with another vegan red coloring: These colors will work for the yellow and blue making the green, but the red fades too much. That’s why I recommend using an alternate red food coloring to pair with these two.
- Ann Clark Food Coloring Gels: I really love this brand; however, they are definitely not plant based (though vegan certified, so they’re cruelty free!). The colors are super vibrant. This is the red food coloring I recommend pairing with the Whole Foods 365 Brand.
- Suncore Foods Superfood Powders: This will take some finagling with the dough, but you can achieve really beautiful colors. However, the dough might have a bit of the flavor of whichever powders you’re using to tint them. I recommend using the beet powder and turmeric or sweet potato powder for orange, and the emerald pandan leaf for green.
- Sweetapolita Gels: Sweetapolita (one of my favorite sprinkles companies because they offer the best vegan rainbow sprinkles!) has just launched their food coloring gels. And yes they just so happen to be vegan! There are already orange and green gels here, so you won’t even need to mix the colors.
Now for mixing the colors, I recommend squishing the colors into the dough like you would play dough. Use food-safe gloves, and you’ll squish the dough as you would play dough, mixing the color until it’s thoroughly throughout.
How to shape pumpkin sugar cookies:
For the full written instructions and ingredient measurements, see the bottom of this post in the recipe card. You can also hit the “jump to recipe” button at the top of this post! Here, we’ll go over a brief overview of the steps, along with providing visuals for a better understanding of the recipe.
You can see how I make these cookies in my video here.
What to do with extra dough scraps:
So you might have some leftover cookie dough afterwards. All three are able to saved and re-rolled to be cut out into marbled cookies. Or just plain sugar cookies if you’d like!
I try to use up as much of the orange and green cookie dough as I can for even more Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies. In my experience testing these, this has led to maybe a tablespoon or two of plain vanilla dough leftover at the most.
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Easy Copycat Vegan Pillsbury Pumpkin Sugar Cookies
- Prep Time: 45
- Chilling Time: 180
- Cook Time: 15
- Total Time: 4 hours
- Yield: 24 1x
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
Soft, chewy, and quite literally identical in taste and texture, these copycat Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies are made with the simplest slice n’ bake cookie dough, and no eggs nor dairy is needed!
Ingredients
Cookie Dough:
- 1 cup (226 g) vegan butter, room temperature
- 2 cups (240 g) organic powdered sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 2 1/2 cups (313 g) all purpose flour*
- 1–2 tbsp dairy free milk
- 1 pea-sized drop vegan red food coloring*
- 4–7 drops vegan yellow food coloring, divided*
- 1–2 drops vegan blue food coloring*
Equipment:
- 1.5″ pumpkin cookie cutter*
- large bowl
- 2 small bowls
- Whisk or hand mixer
- Silicone spatula
- Plastic wrap or parchment paper
Instructions
- Prep: Measure out all ingredients, except for the food coloring. Read through all instructions before beginning. If you don’t have a pumpkin cookie cutter, see below instructions for making these cookies without a cookie cutter.
- Make the dough: In a large bowl, use a whisk or hand mixer to cream the vegan butter until fluffy, about 1-2 minutes. Then add in the powdered sugar, vanilla extract, baking powder, and sea salt, and mix again until well combined. It will resemble a buttercream frosting. Then add in the flour, followed by 1 tablespoon dairy free milk. Use a silicone spatula to fold the flour into the wet ingredients, adding another tablespoon of dairy free milk only if you really need it. The flour will take a bit of work to fully incorporate, and that’s okay/normal. It will come together.
- Color the dough: Divide the dough in half, then divide one half of the dough in half again (to have 2 quarters of dough). Remove one quarter of the dough and place it into a small bowl (this will be for the orange food coloring). Then divide the remaining quarter of dough in half, and take the now eighth of dough and place it into another small bowl (for the green food coloring). The dough in the large bowl should have 1/2 the full batch of dough + 1/8 of the dough remaining.
- Orange: To the bowl with the quarter dough, add 1 drop of vegan red food coloring plus 3-4 drops of vegan yellow food coloring. Use food-safe gloves to mix the coloring into the dough like play dough. You can also use a separate spoon or spatula, but it takes a bit more time for the color to evenly distribute. Adjust the color accordingly to your preference.
- Green: To the eighth cookie dough, add 1 drop vegan blue food coloring and 3-4 drops vegan yellow food coloring. Use food-safe gloves to mix the coloring into the dough like play dough. You can also use a separate spoon or spatula, but it takes a bit more time for the color to evenly distribute. Adjust the color accordingly to your preference.
- Wrap and chill the cookie dough: Wrap each cookie dough (vanilla, orange, and green) in separate plastic wrapped discs. Place the cookie dough into the fridge to chill for 2 hours.
- Form the pumpkin log: Remove all cookie dough from the fridge. Set aside the vanilla cookie dough to just rest at room temperature. For the orange and the green, we’ll form a log to use our 1.5″ cookie cutter. Take the orange cookie dough and shape it into a long log that’s about 1/2″ wide and 1 1/4″ in height (about 10-12 inches in length). It will look long and semi-flat. Use a rolling pin to roll the top to get it smooth (see video here). Then take the green, and shape the cookie dough into a long log again that’s about 1/2″ thick, and this time, about 1/4-1/2″ in height (about 10-12 inches in length). Line up the green cookie dough along the orange cookie dough, so you have one large log with green and orange cookie dough.
- Cut the pumpkin cookies: Take your pumpkin cookie cutter, and start to cut the pumpkin cookie shapes along the log, lining the stem of the pumpkin up with the green, and the orange for the main pumpkin. Place each pumpkin cookie stacked on top of each other (either stacked up tall or lengthwise, lining up- see photos in blog or video). Any scraps, you can reform into a smaller orange and green log, and begin cutting again. You can also use some of the scraps to connect the log all together if the stems need to be lined up more or there are gaps between the orange pumpkin shapes, being careful to maintain the integrity of the pumpkin shape. Once the cookie dough is used up, carefully wrap the log of pumpkin cookie cut outs in one of the plastic wrap pieces, and place into the freezer to chill for 20 minutes.
- Roll out the vanilla cookie dough: While the pumpkin cookies are chilling and setting together, we’ll roll out the vanilla cookie dough. Lay the plastic wrap from the vanilla cookie dough flat. You can take one of the extra plastic wrap pieces from the remaining cookie dough discs and place it on top to roll out the vanilla cookie dough. You’ll roll the dough to be about 12″ by 4-5″ long. Remove the top plastic wrap piece and discard. We’re going to slice the cookie dough a bit to help mold the pumpkin cookies perfectly into the vanilla.
- Finish shaping the Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies: Remove the pumpkin sugar cookies from the freezer, and place the log onto the vanilla cookie dough right in the middle, aligning the length of the log with the length of the rolled out cookie dough. Pick up each side of the vanilla cookie dough, and practice wrap the pumpkin cookies, seeing where the dough will overlap. Then use a sharp knife, and slice off the overlapping pieces. Take those pieces and roll them to be two long 12″ logs. Place those logs on either side of the pumpkin stems. Press them into the pumpkins to shape the pumpkins into one large cylinder (so that the stem’s integrity is maintained when we roll it into one large cookie dough log). Then wrap the vanilla cookie dough over the pumpkin sugar cookies, gently rolling the log so that the vanilla cookie dough presses into the pumpkin cookies and forms one large log. Wrap the log again in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes to 1 hour in the fridge.
- While the dough is chilling: Preheat the oven to 375, and line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Slice the cookies: Remove the cookie dough from the fridge, and slice the cookie log into 1/4″-1/3″ thick cookie slices. Place the cookies onto the baking sheets, spacing them about 2″ apart.
- Bake: Place the cookie sheets into the oven to bake for 12-14 minutes, or until the edges of the cookie dough are slightly golden. Remove the cookies from the oven, and allow them to cool for 5-10 minutes before enjoying.
- Enjoy! Enjoy your copycat Pillsbury pumpkin sugar cookies, and store any leftover dough for up to 2 weeks well wrapped in the fridge or 3 months frozen in the freezer!
Notes
Food coloring: See blog post for tips on different vegan food colors.
Pumpkin cookie cutter alternative: If you don’t want to purchase a pumpkin cookie cutter, you can also roll the the orange cookie dough into a large 12″ oblong log (semi-flat cylinder, similar to the shape of a pumpkin). Take a skewer and press it into the top of the oblong log. Then roll the green cookie dough into a 12″ long log. Place the green cookie dough where the indent of the skewer is. Then wrap the cookie dough in plastic wrap again and freeze.
Gluten free: Use King Arthur Measure for Measure gluten-free flour.
Would this recipe turn out right if I make it non vegan? Example: using dairy milk instead of non dairy as well as regular butter?
Hi Ashlyn! I can’t guarantee is as I have not tried this recipe with anything but vegan ingredients (since I truly am vegan!). However, I know for other recipes, some of my readers will make my recipes using dairy products, and of the most part it works!
perfect
This recipe always turns out great!
Would almond flour work?
Unfortunately not in this recipe, I’m so sorry! You’ll have puddles for cookies if you just use almond flour!
Made these for my vegan household and they turned out perfect!