These vegan butter cookies are a classic holiday cookie, but you’ll love them so much you’ll make them year-round. They are soft and buttery and melt-in-your-mouth!
These vegan butter cookies are one of our favorite vegan Christmas cookies! Dipped in melted vegan chocolate and topped with sprinkles they are the best holiday treat.
Of course you can make them all year round though and you’ll want to once you try them!
They’re also really easy to make. There’s no chilling of the dough or any extra steps so they’re pretty fast too, though you DO need to wait for them to cool before you dip them in melted chocolate.
The recipe is sort of similar to vegan shortbread cookies, but shortbread cookies tend to have more ‘snap’ to them. These are really soft.
If you love these Christmas cookies then you’ll also love our vegan snickerdoodles, vegan gingerbread cookies, vegan snowball cookies and vegan frosted sugar cookies too. You’ll also love our vegan biscotti and vegan vanilla wafers.
Ingredients You’ll Need For These Cookies:
Ingredient Notes
- Vegan chocolate – you can use vegan chocolate or vegan chocolate chips. This is to melt down so you can dip the cookies in melted chocolate.
- All purpose flour – should be measured correctly. If you accidentally over-measure your flour in this recipe, the dough will be too thick. So either weigh it out on a food scale, or use the spoon and level method. Spoon it into your measuring cup (don’t scoop it, and don’t pack it into the cup) and then level it off with a knife.
- Vegan sprinkles – the sprinkles are optional. Nonpareil sprinkles (the little balls) work best for these cookies.
- Coconut oil – is melted with the vegan chocolate and just helps thin it out a little so it’s easier to work with.
- Soy milk – can be switched for a different non-dairy milk.
How To Make Vegan Butter Cookies
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
- Add vegan butter and white granulated sugar to the bowl of your stand mixer and cream them together until smooth.
- Add soy milk and vanilla extract and mix them in.
- Add all purpose flour and salt and mix in with a spoon into a cookie dough.
- Place half of the cookie dough into a piping bag with a large piping tip (ideally an Ateco 826, 827 or 849 piping tip) and pipe swirl shaped cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Repeat with the second half of the cookie dough and pipe the cookies onto a second parchment lined baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies at 375°F for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden on top.
- Let the cookies cool down and firm up directly on the baking trays and when completely cool, add the chocolate topping.
- Add vegan chocolate or chocolate chips and coconut oil to a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals, bringing it out to stir every 30-seconds until melted.
- Dip the cookies in the melted chocolate and then place them back onto the parchment lined baking tray.
- Decorate with sprinkles.
- Place the cookies into the fridge for around 15 minutes for the chocolate to set.
- Your cookies are ready to serve!
Baker’s Tips
Piping tip. If your piping tip is too small, it will make piping this thick cookie dough difficult if not impossible. So it’s really important to use a large piping tip. The Ateco 826 or 827 will work great. We used the Ateco 849 which is the largest one we have on hand, and it worked really well.
Pipe half the cookie dough at a time. Add roughly half the cookie dough to your piping bag at a time. If you add it all, you will put too much strain on your piping bag. It’s also handy because then you can pipe half the cookies on one tray and half on the other, which brings us to our next point:
Spread the cookies over two baking trays. It’s ideal to spread the cookies over two parchment lined baking sheets. The cookies don’t spread much, but you still want them to be well spaced so that they don’t bump into each other while baking. I prefer to bake one tray of cookies and then bake the next tray, rather than baking both trays at the same time.
Decorating. We love dipping them in chocolate and topping with sprinkles, but you can of course do different things! Leave them plain or dip them in chocolate and then sprinkle with chopped nuts, or simply decorate them by adding maraschino cherries to the middle of the cookies.
Make Ahead Option
If you’d like to make these cookies ahead of time, then you can make them up to the point that you pipe the dough onto your baking sheets, then simply cover and refrigerate them on the baking sheets for up to 2 days. Then bake as usual.
Alternatively, pipe the cookies onto the baking sheets and then freeze them for 2-3 months. You can bake directly from frozen, just allow an extra couple of minutes of baking time.
Storing and Freezing
Keep your cookies stored in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days or in the fridge for up to a week.
Baked cookies (with or without chocolate) freeze very well for up to 3 months.
More Delicious Vegan Cookie Recipes
- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Vegan Ginger Cookies
- Vegan Chocolate Cookies
- Vegan Oatmeal Cookies
- Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
- Vegan Sugar Cookies
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Vegan Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup Vegan Butter (225g)
- ¾ cup White Granulated Sugar (150g)
- 5 Tablespoons Soy Milk or other non-dairy milk
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
- 2 ¼ cups All Purpose Flour (281g)
- ½ teaspoon Salt
Decorating (Optional):
- 6 ounces Vegan Chocolate (170g) or 1 cup Vegan Chocolate Chips
- 1 teaspoon Coconut Oil
- Vegan Sprinkles Nonpareil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Add vegan butter and white granulated sugar to the bowl of your stand mixer and cream them together until smooth.
- Add soy milk and vanilla extract and mix them in.
- Add all purpose flour and salt and mix in with a spoon into a cookie dough.
- Place half of the cookie dough into a piping bag with a large piping tip (ideally an Ateco 826, 827 or 849 piping tip) and pipe swirl shaped cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Repeat with the second half of the cookie dough and pipe the cookies onto a second parchment lined baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies at 375°F for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden on top.
- Let the cookies cool down and firm up directly on the baking trays and when completely cool, add the chocolate topping.
- Add vegan chocolate or chocolate chips and coconut oil to a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals, bringing it out to stir every 30-seconds until melted.
- Dip the cookies in the melted chocolate and then place them back onto the parchment lined baking tray.
- Decorate with sprinkles.
- Place the cookies into the fridge for around 15 minutes for the chocolate to set.
Notes
- All purpose flour – should be measured correctly. If you accidentally over-measure your flour in this recipe, the dough will be too thick to pipe. So either weigh it out on a food scale, or use the spoon and level method. Spoon it into your measuring cup (don’t scoop it, and don’t pack it into the cup) and then level it off with a knife.
- Piping tip. If your piping tip is too small, it will make piping this thick cookie dough difficult if not impossible. So it’s really important to use a large piping tip. The Ateco 826 or 827 will work great. We used the Ateco 849 which is the largest one we have on hand, and it worked really well.
- Pipe half the cookie dough at a time. Add roughly half the cookie dough to your piping bag at a time. If you add it all, you will put too much strain on your piping bag.
- If you don’t have any suitable piping tips then the best method would be to scoop the cookie dough using a small cookie scoop (roughly 1 ½ tablespoons per cookie) onto your baking sheets and then flatten with a fork before baking.
- Spread the cookies over two baking trays. It’s ideal to spread the cookies over two parchment lined baking sheets. The cookies don’t spread much, but you still want them to be well spaced so that they don’t bump into each other while baking. I prefer to bake one tray of cookies and then bake the next tray, rather than baking both trays at the same time.
- Decorating. We love dipping them in chocolate and topping with sprinkles, but you can of course do different things. Leave them plain or dip them in chocolate and then sprinkle with chopped nuts, or simply decorate them by adding maraschino cherries to the middle of the cookies.
- Make Ahead: If you’d like to make these cookies ahead of time, then you can make them up to the point that you pipe the dough onto your baking sheets, then simply cover and refrigerate them on the baking sheets for up to 2 days. Then bake as usual. Alternatively, pipe the cookies onto the baking sheet and then freeze them for 2-3 months. You can bake directly from frozen, just allow an extra couple of minutes of baking time.
- Storing: Keep your cookies stored in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days or in the fridge for up to a week.
- Freezing: Baked cookies (with or without chocolate) freeze very well for up to 3 months.
- Nutritional information includes chocolate and sprinkles.
Wondering if I could adapt and not use piping, and instead just use a round tablespoon full to drop and add sprinkles on top. Trying to replicate butter cookies from the bakery i grew up with 🙂
You are welcome try that Margi! 🙂
Christmas cut-out butter Cookies were always our family favorite. This recipe fairly replicates the flavor for vegans. We used 3 cups flour and the rest of the ingredients as stated in the recipe.
Is the butter added cold? Room temp? Melted? Thank you!
Straight from the fridge if it’s a tub style butter, slightly softened if it’s a stick style butter.
Can these be made gluten free?
I haven’t tried it but I think a gluten free all purpose blend should work great. 🙂
I made them gluten free and vegan and they completely flattens don’t try with gluten free flour
I made these cookies today to try out for possible Christmas dinner treats with friends. They were awesomely delicious. They will work as spritz cookies too. I made 1/2 batch and it worked great. I’ll make a full batch Friday to bring to our gathering.
Awesome! Thanks so much for the great review Andrea!
When I saw the email for this recipe I wanted to make these cookies right away! The recipe was so easy to follow and the cookies were a huge hit at our holiday party last night. I only wish I had doubled the recipe!
Fantastic! Thanks so much for the awesome review!
Hi there is it possible to roll this kind of dough and cut cookies with Christmas cookie cutters? My little boy insists on doing some.
Hi Natalie, sure, but in that case I would recommend reducing the non dairy milk a bit (I would start with 2 tablespoons non dairy milk and see how you go, if you need more add it 1 tablespoon at a time) so that you have a drier dough that will roll out better. Since we pipe this we make the dough fairly wet. Otherwise check out our vegan sugar cookies that are meant to be rolled out.