Vegan Halloween Sugar Cookies
A simple recipe for vegan Halloween sugar cookies to wrap up the month of October! A little Nightmare Before Christmas, maybe a little more Beetlejuice. Regardless, they’re pretty easy to make (compared to the Halloween cake anyway) and come out perfectly crisp, yet are also buttery and tender.
You can use this recipe for any non-Halloween related baking as well, they keep their shape and are great for decorating with royal icing. They’re also easy to flavour with lemon zest, orange zest, almond extract, spices, etc. A super versatile cookie to customize for any occasion.
How to make striped vegan halloween sugar cookies
Once the doughs are done and have chilled for an hour or overnight, you’ll have to roll them out into rectangles with a thickness of about 1 cm/0.4 inches. You can roll them out on a lightly floured surface or between two pieces of parchment.
Then, using a guide (I used ribbon) that’s about 1.5 cm/0.6 inches wide, cut them into long strips with a pizza cutter. Working on a board for easy refrigeration, place the strips close to each other, alternating between chocolate and vanilla dough. Press them together with a bench scraper as you go.
If at any point your dough softens too much, place the board in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Once all the strips are put together, roll out the entire thing, only in the direction of the stripes, to a thickness of 7 mm/¼ inch. This will also fuse them together. Then all that’s left is cutting out your shapes!
What to do with the leftover sugar cookie dough
Obviously, the striped pattern can only be rolled and cut out once. But you can have a whole other cookie pattern from the same doughs by just marbling the scraps together after.
Simply form a ball with the leftover doughs, then fold it onto itself a few times until you’re satisfied with the marbling. Roll out, cut out, and voilà!
Can you make these Halloween sugar cookies with oil instead of vegan butter?
The short answer is no. Trust me, I’ve tried. It doesn’t yield the right dough texture and is greasy but also dry and crumbly while being rolled out. I was still able to bake them and get an edible cookie obviously, but they weren’t quite right.
Since the oil can’t be creamed with the sugar, it never quite incorporates into the dough. Plus, it adds no leavening which results in a dense and cracker-like cookie. The act of creaming the butter with the sugar incorporates air and without that the sugar cookie stays very compact.
Any vegan butter will do (not the tub ones though, those are too soft and cause more spreading), even homemade, which is what I like to use and used for this recipe. I find Earth Balance to be quite salty so if you use that one, simply leave out the pinch of salt in the doughs.
If you make this recipe please let me know in the comments! All feedback is very much appreciated and I would love to hear from you! You can also tag me on instagram @the.quaint.kitchen or use the hashtag #thequaintkitchen to share your creations!
Vegan Halloween Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Vanilla Dough
- 120 g all-purpose flour
- ½ + ⅛ tsp baking powder
- 62 g vegan butter
- 65 g white granulated sugar, make sure it’s vegan
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 22 g water, room temperature
Chocolate Dough
- 100 g all-purpose flour
- 20 g cocoa powder, sifted
- ½ +⅛ tsp baking powder
- 62 g vegan butter
- 72 g white granulated sugar
- pinch of salt
- 30 g water, room temperature
Instructions
Vanilla Dough
- Whisk together the flour and baking powder and set aside.
- In another bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and salt.
- Add the vanilla and water, and continue creaming. The mixture will probably split, that’s normal.
- Stir in about 2-3 tbsp of the flour mixture to homogenize the dough, then stir in the rest. This can be done by hand to avoid overmixing.
- Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for 1 hour or overnight.
Chocolate Dough
- Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and set aside. Then it’s the same method as the vanilla dough.
Baking
- Follow the instructions in the post for the striped pattern.
- Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.
- If after cutting out the cookies and placing them on the sheet they’re on the softer side, put the tray in the fridge for about 20 minutes.
- Bake for 13-15 minutes or until they’re very lightly golden around the edges.
- Transfer them to a wire rack right away to stop the baking.
Notes
- *Disclaimer: I have a tiny not-so-great oven, so your bake time may vary from mine.
- I strongly suggest making recipes by weight, if you make them by cups I can’t guarantee that you’ll get the same results.
The dough was a disaster even after spending the afternoon in the fridge. The dough kept tearing when I rolled it out with the rolling pin. I had to add a lot of flour to get it to hold together. Otherwise the taste was good in the end
I’m so sorry that happened Servane! I’m happy you liked the taste of it though! I’ve never had issues with this dough but if you’re sure everything was weighed properly (not with measuring cups which are less accurate) some other things could have affected your results!
I used homemade vegan butter for it but I’ve also used store-bought vegan block butter which also works, but if you used a “margarine” style vegan butter/tub vegan butter, that will affect the texture of the dough due to its higher water content so it will be softer and MUCH more fragile, especially since there’s also water added in the recipe. So it would makes sense why adding more flour is what helped your dough!
The type of flour can also affect the dough, I use all purpose flour but even that can vary depending where you are, so if your flour was lower in protein (like pastry flour) it won’t bind the dough as well and it’ll cause it to be more delicate. Although that’s less likely the issue in this case I think.
Once again I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but I hope that might help you figure out why though!