Coconut Sugar Cookies

This is a wonderful 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.

Why You Should Try This Recipe

If you love holiday cookies and baking but not the sugar headache that comes with it, these easy cut-out cookies are the perfect solution. They’re super easy and delicious.

• It’s a one-bowl recipe: everything is mixed in the same bowl and the dry ingredients are sifted in to avoid lumps.
• The dough doesn’t need chilling: you mix, roll, and bake – no need to chill at any step.
• No beating needed: a quick whisk does the trick here with no need to beat the oil and sugar together.

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

• Spelt flour: light or white spelt (type 630). I don’t recommend using whole-grain flour for this recipe. As always, white flour can be substituted for spelt with no change to the amount (though weighing is recommended).
• Coconut sugar: this is a coconut sugar cookie recipe, so I haven’t tried it with other sugar types.
• Coconut oil: if you don’t want to use coconut oil, an oil that’s liquid at room temperature works as well. Grape seed or avocado are ideal as they have almost no flavour, and can be subbed 1:1 for the coconut oil.
• 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: change the spices based on your personal preference. Cardamom is a delicious addition.

Step by Step

1. Whisk: in a large bowl, whisk the wet ingredients together to combine.
2. Sift: use a fine mesh sieve to sift the dry ingredients into the bowl.

3. Mix: stir together until a ball of dough forms. Don’t over mix or knead.
4. Roll: divide the dough in two and place onto a floured surface. Roll out with a rolling pin.
5. Cut out: use cookie cutters to cut the dough into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.
6. Bake: bake for about 8 minutes, or until the edges are golden.

Recipe 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.

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 (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 these a bit different from butter and white sugar cookies, 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.

How to Store

Storage: keep in a sealed container at room temperature for up to a week.

Freezing: place cooled cookies in an airtight container and freeze up to three months.

Expert Tips

• Reuse paper: 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.
• Don’t over mix: it takes a lot of working to make these cookies tough rather than crisp, but it can happen if you knead the dough or mix way too long.
• Omit the spices: if you want a basic sugar cookie for decorating, simply leave the spices out and have a plain cookie.

If you make these Coconut Sugar Cookies or any other cookie recipes on Occasionally Eggs, please take a moment to rate the recipe and leave a comment below. It’s such a help to others who want to try the recipe. For more OE, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, purchase the Occasionally Eggs cookbook, or subscribe for new posts via email.

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.