Easy Vegan Shortbread Cookies Recipe

Name: Easy Vegan Shortbread Cookies Recipe
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 340 g All Purpose Flour, About 2 Cups; 3/4 Cup Cane Sugar; 1/2 Teaspoon Salt; 1 Cup Vegan Butter (See Note 1); 1 Scant Tablespoon Coconut Oil; 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract; 1/8 Teaspoon Almond Extract, optional but great flavor; 1/2 Cup Walnuts, Chopped Fine, optional (See Note 4)

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Easy Vegan Shortbread Cookies are a cozy classic you need to try! These delicious cookies are sugary, nutty, and flavorful with a golden brown crisp to them and a buttery mouth texture. With just 8 ingredients, this recipe is great for both the holiday season and as an anytime snack!

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Hey Internet, Paul has a bit of a baking obsession now. While Paul has helped developed baking recipes for us before, like these Vegan Protein Cookies and Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies, we now have a ton of bakes either planned or tested. And these vegan shortbread recipe is just the start of them. There's more cookies, muffins, and even pies and cakes coming soon and we hope to have them out soon so you can start planning out your fall baking recipes.

These cookies are for anytime of the year but they are also great for the holiday season, just like any cookies in our opinion. If shortbread cookies aren't your cup of tea, we have a bunch of other plant-based cookies that you can try. These Vegan Matcha Cookies are a great way to perk yourself up and they make for great vegan Christmas cookies. We also have our No Chill Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies if you want a fast cookie recipe. And if you want a lot of chocolate, there's Vegan Double Chocolate Chunks Cookies we love to make! We also have these Vegan Ginger Cookies with Maple Icing that are really good!

But anyway, if you're looking for more plant-based cookies, this vegan shortbread cookies recipe is an easy one to start with! These buttery cookies are simple to make yet are so rich and cozy. The vegan versions of classic shortbread recipes make use of vegan butter sticks replace the dairy that's normally used. They act a lot like dairy butter; they can be frozen, softened and melted. They can also be used to cream with sugar and flour, which is what we'll be doing to make our shortbread dough. Plant-based butter is really useful for lots of vegan recipes!

What's great about this simple recipe is that there's lots of room for customizations. While we filled our cookies with walnuts, there are so many other combinations you could try with a simple shortbread cookie. You could go fruity with a lemon glaze, some jam as filling, or some orange zest. You can cover them with turbinado sugar before baking, or add a vegan royal icing to them afterwards. Shortbread is very versatile like that.

This vegan shortbread cookie dough makes excellent vegan sugar cookies, or you could use it as the base for vegan twix bars (that's a good idea, hmm...) or you could also use them in our Vegan Banana Pudding recipe or Vegan Tiramisu!

But enough about those cookies. Now is the time for vegan buttery shortbread cookies. So grab your favorite cookie cutter and let's get started!

Why You'll Love These Veganized Classic Shortbread Cookies

Super Easy Recipe: Combine everything, roll out the dough, cut your cookies, and then bake!
Cozy Cookies: With vanilla, almonds, and buttery goodness, you'll feel nice and comfy. These pair great with some warm milk, hot chocolate, or tea.
Make it Your Own: Mix in different fillings into your dough! Almonds, dried fruit, chocolate, the list goes on. Plus, you can make icings and other toppings too.

Ingredients

Pick up the following simple ingredients for these vegan cookies the next time you're at your local grocery store. See the recipe card at the bottom of this post for full ingredients, instructions, and accurate nutrition information (to the best of my ability; please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or healthcare professional if you have specific dietary needs or need to meet certain daily values of any nutrient). I give substitutions for the ingredients in the section below this one, so most people can still make this recipe!

340 g All Purpose Flour, About 2 Cups spooned and leveled (see section below on measuring)
¾ Cup Cane Sugar
½ Teaspoon Salt
1 Cup Vegan Butter: We used Country Crock and Earth Balance brands to test our cookies and both worked great for us.
1 Scant Tablespoon Coconut Oil
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
⅛ Teaspoon Almond Extract, Optional but adds nice flavor
½ Cup Walnuts, Chopped Fine, Optional

Substitutions

All Purpose Flour: Gluten-free Measure for Measure Flour should work in place of the all purpose flour but we have not tested trying to make these cookies gluten-free. You could also try almond flour to add an additional layer of nuttiness to the bake but we haven't tested it and you might have to play with the recipe.
Cane Sugar: Powdered sugar AKA icing sugar also works for this recipe (tested). Other granulated sugars, like coconut sugar (not tested), should also work well as a replacement.
Vegan Butter: While it's not a perfect replacement, coconut milk can work as a vegan butter substitute (not tested). With all that coconut flavor, you may wish to skip the coconut oil then. You also may need to adjust the ratio of wet to dry ingredients.
Walnuts: Replace with any other nut, seed, chocolate chips, dried fruit, etc.

How to Measure Flour Properly

On many of our baking recipes we include this short section on how to measure flour. In the country we live in, it is common to measure by volume and not weight. This can allow for huge inaccuracies in measurement (too much or too little) and can affect how the recipes turn out. While we include the volume measurements in our recipes for our readers, we urge readers to pick up a cheap food scale and weigh their flour to ensure accuracy which gives a much better likelihood that the recipe turns out.

We want to measure our flour by weight, not by volume. When you scoop flour out of a bag or tin with a measuring cup, you're packing it in there and not necessarily getting the same amount each time.

What's better is to use a food scale with a tare function (allowing you to zero out the scale after you've put the bowl on it so your bowl isn't playing a factor in your equation). This allows you to dirty fewer dishes too!

Working in grams, put your bowl on the scale and zero it out. Scoop the flour into the bowl until you reach the desired measurement.

If you do not have a scale and want to make the cookies now, try the spoon and level method: Over a spare bowl, Use a spoon to scoop flour out of a bag into the measuring cup, then use the back of a butter knife (the straight side) to level off the extra flour into the bowl. Pour the measured cup into your baking bowl and pour the extra in the spare bowl back into the flour bag. Repeat as needed until you have the amount of flour the recipe calls for.

How to Make Vegan Shortbread Cookies

Prepare: Preheat your oven to 350 F (175 C) and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Add Dry Ingredients: To a large mixing bowl, or a stand mixer bowl if you prefer, add the flour, sugar and salt. Whisk together until they are fully combined.
Add Wet Ingredients: Next add the vegan butter, coconut oil, and the vanilla and almond extracts to the bowl. Cream by hand using a firm silicone spatula or wooden spoon, with a hand mixer, or a stand mixer. The dough's texture should be like moist sand and you should be able to form it into a ball.
Fold In Walnuts (or other add-in) if using: Add your chopped walnuts and make sure they are evenly incorporated into the dough. You want fine pieces to make the cookie cutting face easier.
Roll Out: Prepare a surface, such as a cutting board or granite counter top, by sprinkling on flour on it and spreading it around. Cover your rolling pin with some flour as well. Next take a portion of your dough (we do half) and form it into a ball. Place the ball on a surface and then gently roll it out. You want your dough to be roughly ⅓ to ½ inch thickness, depending on how tall you want your cookies (the taller they are, the longer they take to bake, just so you know).
Cut and Re-Roll: Using a cookie cutter, cut out shapes in the dough. We used a round 3 inch cutter to get our amount of cookies. Place each cookie on your prepared baking trays. If you have trouble removing them from the surface, use a cookie spatula to help lift them off. When you run out dough to cut, reform your scrap and repeat steps 5 and 6 until you use up all your dough.
Alternative to Rolling Out: Form a long log and slice. We tried this but thought the cookies turned out nicer when we did the rolling method.
Bake: Add your cookies to your oven and bake for 15 to 18 minutes, or until the bottoms of your cookies are lightly browned. You can check them by lifting them with a cookie spatula.
Cool and Enjoy: Set cookies aside on either a stovetop, wooden board, or trivets. Let cool for at least 15 minutes before tasting them.

Storage Instructions

Once they have cooled, add the shortbread cookies to an airtight container or a sealable food storage bag. They should last about 5 days on the counter. Like many desserts, you can freeze them and they will keep for months.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I don't have a cookie cutter?

You can use an upside down drinking glass or, after rolling out your dough, you can cut it into rectangles. Use a sharp knife and make sure you're not cutting on something you don't want damage!

Why should I have a gentle touch when rolling out the dough?

We found that the dough stuck less to the rolling pin when we used a light touch. Plus, there so much vegan butter that you don't need to press that hard to shape the shortbread dough.

What can I do if I have extra dough left?

We made ours into an extra, if a bit ugly, cookie. Either squeeze it onto a baking tray or put it in an air fryer.

Could I use an air fryer?

Yes! We would recommend a temperature of about 325 F (160 C) as for about 10 to 12 minutes as air fryers force air into the cookies, cooking them faster.

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