Soft Sugar Cookies with Vegan Royal Icing

This is the best sugar cookie recipe: soft and buttery while keeping its shape. These delicious Soft Sugar Cookies with Vegan Royal Icing are the perfect opportunity to spend time with your family while decorating cookies!

What immediately comes to mind when you think of the Christmas season? Is it eating festively decorated sugar cookies while watching cheesy Christmas movies too?!

Last week my fiancé and I put up our Christmas tree and as soon as I had the glow of colorful Christmas lights illuminating our home, I knew I had to put on my favorite Christmas pajamas and stuff my face with these beautifully decorated (by Taylor) Soft Sugar Cookies with Vegan Royal Icing. Trust me if I was the one who had decorated these cookies it would have looked like a child came to help us with the blog! However, I did put on the decorative glitter balls and I did it perfectly....okay, fine. I ruined three cookies and then Taylor had to fix them for me. Apparently my long nails aren't very good at delicately placing tiny sprinkles. Whoops!

This recipe is one that Taylor and I have been talking about for years! Ever since we were children our mom would bake huge batches of sugar cookies during Christmas time. Us four sisters would spend an afternoon decorating all the Christmas themed shapes and use a tremendous amount of sprinkles to make each cookie unique and special. We would laugh so hard at all the gingerbread men that we gave red eyes or the snowflakes drowning in green sprinkles.

When I became vegan, eating sugar cookies at Christmas time was something I really missed. When I would try a new recipe to replicate that soft and sweet dough, it would never turn out. I started to feel incredibly discouraged that I would never have that feeling of staying up late eating Christmas cookies while a string of holiday movies played on my television. So, when Taylor said she was determined that this was the year she would make vegan sugar cookies with icing, I was ecstatic! However, I never thought they would remind me so much of the cookies I grew up eating every Christmas. This recipe will definitely be a staple in my home, where my future children can help me decorate the cookies just like I did growing up.

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Soft Sugar Cookies with Vegan Royal Icing

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Yield: approximately 18 cookies

Prep time: 10 minutes

Bake time: 12 minutes per batch

Author: Kitchen Potatoes

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Ingredients

Cookie Dough

· 2 cups all-purpose flour

· 1 cup granulated sugar

· ¼ cup cornstarch

· 2 tsp vanilla

· 1 cup vegan butter

· ¼ cup vegan milk

Vegan Royal Icing

· ½ cup aquafaba

· ½ tsp cream of tartar

· ½ tsp almond extract

· ½ tsp vanilla

· 3 cups icing sugar + an additional 1 cup if needed

· Vegan food coloring of your choice

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Method

Soft Sugar Cookies

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, and cornstarch.

3. Add butter in large chunks and thoroughly blend with a pastry cutter or your fingers.

4. While stirring with a fork, slowly add non-dairy milk to the mixture. If your mixture is crumbly, add more milk, ½ a tablespoon at a time, until a dough is formed.

5. Form dough into a ball and place between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll dough to approximately ½ inch in thickness. With cookie cutters or a cup, cut out cookies, reworking the scrap dough back together and rerolling it out until you have used all of the dough.

6. Place on prepared baking sheet and bake for approximately 12 minutes. Remove cookies from oven once the cookies are set and lightly browned on the bottom, while the tops of the cookies will remain pale in color.

7. After removing them from the oven, transfer cookies onto a wire rack to cool. Then begin your Vegan Royal Icing or, if you are looking for a quicker alternative, try topping these cookies with our Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting.

Vegan Royal Icing

1. Once cookies have cooled, begin making the royal icing by placing aquafaba, cream of tartar, almond extract, and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer.

2. With the whisk attachment, begin to beat on high speed, stopping every minute to add icing sugar, a cup at a time until the icing resembles the consistency of liquid glue.

3. Once the icing resembles the consistency of liquid glue, beat the icing on high for 15 minutes.

4. If dying your icing, separate the icing into bowls and mix in the dyes of your choice.

5. Transfer some of your icing to a piping bag with a small tip, seal (I use a rubber band) and set aside. This icing would be firm and best for piping borders and details.

6. Transfer some of your remaining icing to a bowl and thin with cold water, ½ a teaspoon at a time until you have reach the desired consistency for flooding,* then transfer this icing to a piping bag with a slightly larger tip. Place remaining icing into a container, cover, and set in the fridge until you are ready to use.

7. Frost cookies and let the icing set before adding any additional icing details and before serving the cookies. Enjoy!

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Notes:

* To cover a cookie with royal icing, outline the cookie with the firmer icing (see reference photo A). Then fill this area with the thinned icing, also known as flooding (see reference photo B). Use a toothpick to spread the icing evenly. Let the icing set and dry out until layering more icing details.

Photo A:

Photo B:

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