In my opinion, shortbread cookies are absolutely essential at Christmas time, even if you eat a plant-based diet! Try this recipe for plant-based shortbread cookies for your plant-eating friends and family, or just for yourself!
The thing about cooking for a plant-based diet is that there’s an easy substitute for basically any traditional ingredient for about 95% of all recipes that you might want to make. I’m ashamed to say that it took me this many years to realize that there might be an easy way to make plant-based shortbread as well! Shortbread was definitely one of those things that I thought wouldn’t work when modified because traditional shortbread just contains so. much. butter. But guess what? I just made the most perfect shortbread of my life and it was completely made of plants! I know a lot of people get nervous about cooking for their vegan friends and family around the holidays, but this just goes to show that it’s really not that big of a deal. Just a few easy substitutions here and there and you can basically make all of your favourite traditional recipes.
What to Cook for Plant-Based Family Members
If you have plant-based friends and family coming for the holidays and you want to make something special for them, or if you’re cooking for the holidays for the first time since switching your diet away from animal products, this is a good, basic recipe to have in your bag of tricks. 🙂
I’m making it my little mission to share some easy, plant-based, good-home-cooking-style recipes over the next little while to make the whole idea of cooking for family without using animal products a little more approachable, so go ahead and subscribe to my email newsletter if you need some more ideas. 🙂  I’ll add some links to some of my favourites that I’ve already shared below as well.
Making the Plant-Based Shortbread Cookies
I gave myself a little pep-talk before starting this experiment. I told myself that there was a good chance that these cookies might not work out at all and to not feel too disheartened if that turned out to be the case. I thought the dough might be really messy and sticky and hard to work with. I thought the cookies might really spread out when they were baked and just be really ugly too. But neither of those things happened!
The dough was really easy to roll out and not sticky at all. The cut-out shapes were easy to lift out and move onto the baking sheet and not a single cookie was burnt when I took them out of the oven. Not a single cookie!
The ingredients are very similar to a traditional shortbread recipe. I used:
- All-purpose flour (I use whole wheat or spelt most of the time in baking, but for these I went with the all-purpose)
- A plant-based butter substitute (I used earth balance buttery spread)
- Confectioner’s sugar (also known as icing sugar or powdered sugar)
Super simple!
Printable Plant-Based Shortbread Cookies Recipe
Here’s the most perfect shortbread cookie recipe you’ll ever make! 🙂
In my opinion, shortbread cookies are absolutely essential at Christmas time, even if you eat a plant-based diet! Try this recipe for plant-based shortbread cookies for your plant-eating friends and family, or just for yourself!
- 3/4 cup Plant-based butter substitute (such as Earth Balance)
- 3/4 cup Confectioner's sugar
- 1.5 cups + 2 tbsp All-purpose flour
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Preheat oven to 325. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugar and butter substitue and mix on medium speed until well combined and smooth.
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With the mixer on low, slowly add in the flour, a little at a time. Keep mixing until a nice dough forms.
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Roll the dough out to about 1/4" thick and cut out with your favorite shapes. I got about 18 cookies out of this recipe. Prick each cookie two or three times for an authentic shortbread look.
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Place the cookie shapes on a parchment-lined baking sheet (or use a silpat) and bake for 11.5 minutes.
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Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for five minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Make sure you pin this to Pinterest or share it on Facebook so you’ll have it later when you need it!
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