Vegan Christmas Cookies: Which Classics Actually Work

Hello lovelies,

Yes, I know it is August.

That is exactly why I am writing this now. Christmas baking rarely falls apart because of the recipes. It falls apart because it starts three weeks before Christmas, when time is short and patience is shorter. The people who bake calmly in December had half their dough in the freezer by October.

And then there is the thing that held me back for years: the assumption that vegan Christmas baking is a separate discipline with its own recipes. It is not. The first time I read through my grandmother's cookie recipes properly, most of them did not call for eggs at all. They called for butter, and butter is the easiest swap of the whole year.

So here is what I know now: which kinds work straight away, which need a real substitute, and when to start what.

Which Christmas cookies are already almost vegan?

A great many of them, and that is the good news: anything built on shortcrust classically contains no egg.

Shortcrust is flour, sugar and fat, and it needs nothing else. Cut-out sugar cookies, shortbread, thumbprints, crescents, pinwheels and linzer cookies all belong to that family. In most inherited recipes there is simply no egg, and where one appears it is usually there to glue two halves together or to add shine.

Which means you do not need a special vegan recipe for these. You need the recipe your family has always used, and one swap.

Where I grew up in Switzerland these are called Guetzli, and the list is the same one. Mailänderli are cut-outs, Brunsli are nothing but chocolate, almonds and sugar.

Why the myth persists that vegan Christmas baking is a separate discipline probably comes down to the word butter cookie. Butter is in the name, so the swap sounds impossible. Butter is in fact the easiest ingredient in the tin to replace.

A second case gets overlooked: honey. It sits in gingerbread and in some spiced cookies, and it is not vegan. Maple syrup or molasses replaces it 1:1, and molasses lands closer to the original because it is darker and more assertive.

How to tell from the recipe how much work is ahead: count the eggs. If there are none, you are done in 2 minutes. If there is one and the dough gets kneaded, 2 tablespoons of plant milk usually cover it. If it calls for egg whites beaten stiff, you are looking at one of the three kinds in the section after next.

Which cookie needs which swap?

Sort by what the egg or the butter was actually doing. Then each kind comes down to a single move.

One line is missing from the table because it appears in almost every recipe and nobody counts it: the egg wash. It turns up right at the end, usually as beaten yolk, and it does nothing but add shine and color. Replace it with a little plant milk plus half a teaspoon of maple syrup. The sugar caramelizes lightly and turns the surface golden. Without the syrup the cookies stay pale, which is not a fault, but it shows the moment a second tray sits beside them.

And if a recipe calls for 2 or more eggs that never get beaten? Then it is usually not a cookie dough at all, it is a cake batter, and different rules apply.

Two rows of that cover most of a cookie tin. Swap only the butter and change nothing else, and half your baking is already done. What a dough like that looks like when it works is in our base dough for three kinds of cookies.

vegan cookies - 1 dough and 3 kinds

Crispy cookies with nuts and ginger

Cookies with dates

Maca Peanut Cookies

How do you replace beaten egg white in meringues and macaroons?

With aquafaba, the thickened liquid from canned chickpeas. About 3 tablespoons whipped for 5 to 10 minutes gives you a foam you handle exactly like beaten egg white.

These are the only cookies where the egg genuinely is the recipe. A meringue is egg white and sugar. A coconut macaroon is beaten white with coconut folded through. There is nothing there to leave out.

For royal icing, whip the aquafaba and beat in confectioners' sugar until the mixture holds a trail. It sets firm enough for piped lines and dries overnight. It dries more slowly than the classic version, so leave the cookies uncovered overnight before they go into a tin.

Use the liquid from a can rather than water from chickpeas you cooked yourself. A systematic review in the Journal of Food Science and Technology reports that canned aquafaba foams better. How else aquafaba behaves is in my guide to replacing eggs in baking.

One can of chickpeas yields roughly 100 to 150 ml (about 1/2 cup) of aquafaba, depending on size, which is enough for a tray of cookies plus their icing. The chickpeas themselves go into hummus or a stew here, so nothing is wasted.

And here is the part almost no guide mentions. A study at the University of León baked meringues from aquafaba against meringues from egg white. All of them foamed well, and the canned chickpea aquafaba came closest to egg white. But the aquafaba meringues had fewer air pockets, were harder, and fractured differently. In a dense spiced cookie you will not notice. In a light meringue you will. That is not a reason to skip it, but it is much better known in advance than discovered on the baking sheet.

Which fat belongs in cookie dough?

Solid fat, and cold. Cold vegan butter or a bake-stable full-fat margarine, 1:1 for butter. Oil does not work here.

The reason is in the dough. Shortcrust works because solid pieces of fat sit among the flour and stop it absorbing water. In the oven they melt and leave small pockets behind, and those pockets are what you register as short. Oil stays liquid, forms no pieces, and makes the dough leathery instead of crumbly. Why that happens, and how to convert if you are stuck, is in my guide to baking without butter.

For cookies, 2 things matter more than they do the rest of the year.

Vegan butter beats margarine. In a cake batter you barely taste the difference. In shortbread or a crescent, where there is almost nothing but fat, flour and sugar, you taste it clearly. For the three or four kinds you really care about, the pricier product earns its place.

Reduced-fat spread ruins the dough. It carries a great deal of water, and that water lands exactly where the fat was supposed to keep it out. The dough turns tough and will not roll.

How do you decorate without eggs?

A simple glaze never needed egg in the first place. Only firm, pipeable royal icing does.

Glaze is confectioners' sugar with water or lemon juice, and it never was anything else. It dries matte and it is the easiest answer for cut-outs.

Royal icing, the firm kind classically made with egg white, works with aquafaba: beat 2 tablespoons of aquafaba with roughly 250 g (2 cups) of confectioners' sugar until it holds a trail. It pipes fine lines and dries through overnight.

Chocolate is the pragmatic route. Dark couverture is very often vegan already; the ingredient list settles it in seconds. For filled cookies and buttercream layers, work with a firm vegan butter, and how plant creams behave alongside it is in my guide to plant-based cream substitutes.

One thing people often discover only at the tray: sprinkles are frequently not vegan. Colored pearls and nonpareils often contain shellac, listed as E 904, and carmine, listed as E 120. Both are of animal origin. There are plenty of alternatives now, but you have to read the label, and nobody reads labels in December. Buy the decorations in October along with the flour, unhurried, and set them aside.

What does not work is icing a warm cookie. It simply runs off. Cool them completely, every time.

When do you start? The baking timeline

Earlier than you think. The dough can be finished weeks before the baking happens.

This is the section that turns a frantic December week into a quiet afternoon, and the reason this piece is published in August rather than in December.

Shortcrust freezes very well. Press it flat into a disc, wrap it, label it. It keeps about 3 months and thaws overnight in the refrigerator. Flat rather than in a ball, because a ball is still frozen at the center when the outside has already gone soft.

What comes last is anything built on aquafaba foam. Those draw moisture and soften over days, so they get baked in the final week.

And if you only start in December? Then bake the kinds from the top half of the table, the ones that need a single swap, and leave meringues and macaroons for another year. 2 kinds made calmly beat 6 made in a panic.

Chestnut marble cake

Chocolate Chips with Speculoos Biscuits

Chocolate orange mousse with aquafaba

Puff pastry "candies" with dates

How do you store Christmas cookies?

Cool, dark and airtight, each kind separately, and never until they are completely cold.

The costliest mistake happens before the tin: packing cookies while they are still warm. The residual heat turns into condensation, and crisp becomes soft overnight.

Each kind on its own. Crescents give their vanilla to everything beside them, and soft cookies give their moisture to crisp ones. If you only have one tin, separate the layers with parchment.

The apple slice trick is real, but it is targeted. It releases moisture and softens hard gingerbread. It does not belong in a tin of shortcrust cookies, where it turns crisp ones limp. And it gets swapped every 2 to 3 days.

Cool and dark does not mean the refrigerator. An unheated room or a cool pantry is ideal. In the refrigerator the tins draw moisture.

How long they last comes down mostly to water content. Dry shortcrust kinds stay crisp for roughly 3 to 4 weeks, macaroons about 2 to 3 weeks, cream-filled kinds only a few days. Gingerbread actually improves with time.

And if the cookies are being given away: bag them on the day you hand them over, not before. Paper bags are lovely and not remotely airtight, and anything sitting in one for three days goes soft. Until then they stay in the tin. Soft and crisp kinds do not share a bag either.

And yes, baked cookies freeze, but only the dry undecorated ones. Anything with icing, chocolate or aquafaba foam loses its structure on the way back.

Lovelies, if you take one thing from this: most of your family recipes already work. You just have to read them once and count the eggs. The rest is one swap and a freezer. And if you want something more structured for the baking season ahead, have a look at our e-books in the shop.

Tell me in the comments: which kind absolutely has to be in the tin at your house?

Yours, Verena

Recipes to try

vegan cookies - 1 dough and 3 kinds

Crispy cookies with nuts and ginger

Chestnut marble cake

Vegan Chestnut Cake