Soft and Chewy Cut-Out Vegan Sugar Cookies

These soft and buttery vegan sugar cookies easily come together with a 6 ingredient simple cookie dough that bake into the perfectly sweet, thick and chewy cut-out cookies!

Perfect for decorating or enjoying with a smear of buttercream frosting- this is a tried and true family favorite recipe!

Your new favorite vegan Christmas cookies

If ever there was a number one Christmas cookie, I truly think it would be these vegan sugar cookies (no shade to the other 100 vegan cookie recipes I have on the site).

As a vegan baking cookbook author, I know that a perfect recipe comes with much testing and trial and error. Well, I’ve finally perfected the recipe to taste JUST like the sugar cookie cut outs you grew up with as a kid.

In fact, these sugar cookies inspired my holiday vegan sugar cookie dough stuffed cupcakes!

And yet you’d never know that there isn’t an ounce of real butter in the cookie dough. The cookies roll out perfectly to be cut by any of your favorite fun holiday cookie cutters, and they look just gorgeous with a mear of colored vegan buttercream or go all out with my favorite simple vegan royal icing.

These easy sugar cookies are so incredibly simple and made with just 6 really straight forward ingredients: vegan butter, powdered sugar, dairy free yogurt (or applesauce), flour, vanilla extract and baking powder. That’s really it!

And yes, these cookies are perfect for freezing and shipping!

6 Simple Ingredients:

Let’s go over the key ingredients you need in making eggless and dairy free vegan sugar cookies:

• Vegan butter: you can use a nut-free vegan butter or coconut oil if desired. You can even make your own vegan butter! The most important part is that you’re using room temperature butter– this helps the ingredients to emulsify more, and create that soft chew to the cookie!
• Powdered sugar: powdered sugar will give these sugar cookies a ridiculously yummy flavor that’s reminiscent of your grandma’s homemade cookies. Plus, a more of a traditional look. Make sure that you’re using organic powdered sugar, as this will be vegan (not all granulated sugars are vegan!). I sometimes use coconut sugar here, which is why there’s specs of caramel coloring throughout the cookies. Just keep this in mind!
• Dairy free yogurt: this will replace eggs in traditional sugar cookies. You can also use applesauce or flax egg (just ground flaxseed with water). But I recommend yogurt. See my guide on vegan egg substitutes here!
• All purpose flour: you can also use gluten free 1:1 baking flour if you need gluten free vegan sugar cookies.
• Baking powder: not baking soda. Baking powder will help give these sugar cookies a slightly puffy look and keep them from spreading.

Overview: How to make perfectly vegan sugar cookies:

Here’s how to make this easy vegan sugar cookie dough:

1. Cream together the vegan butter and sugar: this is very similar to buttercream. You’ll also add in the vanilla extract and almond extract here, as well as the dairy free yogurt.
2. Sift in the flours and baking powder: then you’ll use a rubber spatula- a silicone spatula is key! – to fold together the dry ingredients. This will take about 3-4 minutes. The rubber spatula makes it much easier to incorporate the flours into the creamed vegan butter.
3. Chill the dough: form the dough into a disk and chill for 30 minutes.

Then we’ll cut out the sugar cookies:

1. Roll out the dough: lightly flour a clean surface and rolling pin and roll the dough to be 1/4″ thick.
2. Cut out the sugar cookies: you can use any sugar cookie cutters here!
3. Transfer the sugar cookies to a baking sheet: I recommend using a super thin spatula to do this.
4. Chill the cookies while the oven preheats.
5. Bake the cookies! You’re looking for a lightly golden color around the edges.

Once the cookies are completely cool, we’ll move onto decorating them.

Vegan Royal Icing

This is my all time favorite part of the whole sugar cookie baking process: decorating the cookies.

But first, we need to make the vegan royal icing. This egg-free royal icing is super simple. All you need is:

• Aquafaba (or chickpea water)
• Powdered sugar
• Vegan food coloring

Next, you’ll simply add the aquafaba and powdered sugar to a bowl, and mix with a spoon or whip with a hand mixer until light and fluffy.

By using a hand mixer or an electric mixer, you’ll notice it really helps to prevent any clumps of powdered sugar and gives you a really smooth royal icing.

Finally, you’ll divide the royal icing into separate bowls if you’re using vegan food coloring. I recommend a gel vegan food coloring, such as the one that Whole Foods makes.

Remember that if you’re not using a bowl of royal icing right away, cover the bowl with a damp cloth to prevent it from hardening.

How to decorate sugar cookies

The biggest tip I have for decorating sugar cookies is don’t try to make them perfect.

We are not a professional bakery. We are humans trying to have some holiday fun and cheer. If you try to make them perfect, you’ll just not have fun decorating these, and it can be quite frustrating. And you’ll be surprised: when you’re not trying to make them perfect, these sugar cookies will actually come out looking really beautiful!

You can also spread a bit of homemade vegan frosting for an easy sugar cookie decoration that’s super fun and easy for kids as well.

Have fun with decorating these sugar cookies. I recommend watching a few fun YouTube videos on how to decorate the shape you’ve made to get some ideas. You can also look up cookie designs on Pinterest to get some ideas.

I have a few selected patterns in the free cookie baking guide I created for my mailing list, and you can get access to it here:

Can I omit the almond extract?

Absolutely. If you’re nut free or don’t particularly like the taste of almond in your sugar cookies, feel free to add in an equal amount extra of vanilla extract. In fact, they’ll taste very similarly to my copycat Pillsbury holiday cookies!

You’re just going to absolutely love these easy vegan sugar cookies! The dough is just so simple, and everyone will have fun decorating them. They’re perfect for Christmas cookie boxes, cookie exchanges, and even as a treat for Santa!

If you make these cookies, let me know down below in the comments section, as well as giving it a rating so that others may find it.

As always, I absolutely love to see your beautiful creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there.

Happy sugar cookie baking!

Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!

If you make this recipe, please be sure to leave a comment and a rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ below. This helps others to find the recipes! As always, I absolutely love to see your beautiful creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there as well!

How to make vegan sugar cookies video:

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