Coconut Sugar Cookies

This is a wonderful one-bowl vegan sugar cookie recipe, made with spelt flour, coconut sugar, and coconut oil. If you love cutout cookies but want a more wholesome version, you’ve found it.

I make these every year for Christmas, and most often have them plain without any complicated icing toppings. If you use pretty cookie cutters, there’s no need to pipe patterns on top.

These store very well, so they can be made in advance for gifting or serving closer to the holidays. Make them now and freeze for later. With just 10 ingredients including the spices, it’s incredibly simple, with no chilling time or electric mixer needed.

Ingredients

• Spelt Flour: light or white spelt (type 630). I don’t recommend using whole-grain flour for this recipe.
• Coconut Sugar: this adds a lovely caramel flavour and beautiful colour to the cookies.
• Arrowroot: arrowroot powder or flour acts as a binding agent. Sub half the amount of cornstarch if preferred.
• Coconut Oil: or another light-tasting oil, see substitutions below. Use refined coconut oil to avoid any slight coconut flavour.
• Milk: I always use oat milk, but other non-dairy types like cashew are also good. Mixing milk with the oil imitates butter (which contains water).
• Spices: ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Step by Step

Tips and Notes

Bake the cookies one pan at a time, rolling and cutting the next batch while the previous one bakes. Having two pans ready means you can be putting the next one into bake while the previous cools, so everything runs smoothly.

You can use parchment paper several times, so don’t worry about replacing it in between batches. I use mine until it’s completely crispy.

Add more flour when kneading if required to prevent sticking, but don’t go overboard. If you prefer, roll the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper.

These cookies don’t need to be refrigerated before baking. If you want to make the dough ahead of time, it can be refrigerated (well covered, for up to 12 hours) but should be brought back to room temperature before rolling and cutting.

They puff up quite a bit in the oven but shouldn’t spread. If anything you might lose the form slightly when you move them onto the pan to bake – use an offset spatula or knife to lift the cookies onto the baking sheet.

While coconut oil sugar cookies are a bit different from butter and white sugar versions, they have more flavour and are arguably easier to make. You could top them with icing, or drizzled chocolate, but they’re great plain too. If you want the powdered sugar look without using white sugar, sprinkle a little coconut flour on top.

Substitutions

As always, white flour can be substituted for spelt with no change to the amount (though weighing is recommended).

This is a coconut sugar cookie recipe, so I haven’t tried it with other sugar types.

Change the spices based on your personal preference. Cardamom is a delicious addition.

If you don’t want to use coconut oil, an oil that’s liquid at room temperature works just as well. Grapeseed or avocado are ideal as they have almost no flavour, and can be subbed 1:1 for the coconut oil.

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This post was first published in December 2018. It has been updated with additional pictures and some slight changes to the recipe as of November 2021.