Vegan Cut-Out Sugar Cookies + Royal Icing

Soft, chewy, and slightly sweet cut-out sugar cookies. They’re the quintessential holiday cookie in my opinion. In fact, I’ll make a bold claim right now. It never really feels like the holidays until these festive cut-out sugar cookies make their appearance.

Do you have a favorite cookie like that?

Let me tell you about my family’s favorite: Vegan Cut Out Sugar Cookies.

I have fond childhood memories of me and my brother baking cut-out cookies with my mom. Me carefully cutting out cookies with my favorite duck cookie-cutter and placing them gently on a baking sheet. My mom slightly burning them in the oven, my brother topping them with an array of bright, artificially colored red and green sprinkles.

I think about it every time I make these cookies.

I treasure these memories even more now that my mom has passed away.

My mom baked the cookies of my childhood with various animal products like butter, eggs, beeswax, and artificial food coloring. None of which is very vegan-friendly at all.

These days I make my cut-out sugar cookies vegan, and I make them dye-free. But that doesn’t mean that I bake them with less flavor or make them less pretty.

I’ve tested lots of recipes for vegan sugar cut-out cookies and royal icing, each not quite capturing that flavor and nostalgia of the cookies from my childhood. Sometimes it’s because the cookie isn’t right; other times, the icing is wrong.

So I set out to make my own.

I wanted a sugar cookie with a soft, lush texture while still being sturdy enough to hold a cut-out shape and decorations well. To balance the sweetness of the decorations, I wanted a less sweet cookie.

It was something that my maternal grandma said to me that made this recipe click: “Everything is better with cream cheese.” She was talking about dairy cream cheese, no doubt, but she’s right.

Everything is better with cream cheese.

Adding vegan cream cheese is the secret to creating a soft, luxurious cookie worthy of the phrase, “This is the best damn vegan sugar cut-out cookie I’ve ever had.”

Or, “mmmm.” You know, whichever.

Let’s talk cookie dough for a minute.

If you’ve ever made rolled cookies before, you know how important it is to have nice dough. If it’s too wet, the dough will be too sticky. But if it’s too dry, it’ll crack and fall apart. The perfect cookie dough should be soft, pliable, and easy to roll.

That’s what this dough is. Even after it’s rolled and cut and rolled again, it’s a dream. It’s the perfect cookie dough to use with your favorite cookie cutters.

I like to make my cookie dough a day before I want to use it. This dough works best if you let the dough warm for a few minutes before using it. Then later, I can pull the dough out, let it warm for about 15 minutes, and I’m ready to roll.

Food colors and brightly colored sprinkles are ubiquitous in baking sections of grocery stores across the U.S. Made from chemicals and sugar; these products don’t overtly appear non-vegan, so it’s easy for people to overlook them.

But we shouldn’t.

The food dyes found in most grocery stores — produced through the wonder of chemistry and the industry of oil drilling — are something we all should avoid. Not only are they harmful to human health, but artificial food coloring is also or was also subject to animal testing.

And those cute sprinkles? They’re made with refined cane sugar, beeswax, and artificial food coloring. AKA: bone char, an animal product, and animal testing.

Instead, look for colored sprinkles made with things like raw sugar, natural colors, and carnauba wax, made from the leaves of the palm plant.

As an alternative to artificial colors, you can learn to make a rainbow of colors from plant-based ingredients you probably already have in your fridge or spice rack in this tutorial, Homemade Food Coloring (All Natural + Vegan).

I picked up a few packets to test out on my favorite sugar cookies.

I’m a fan.

First, the colors come packaged in individual packets, which means I don’t over-buy. Second, the colors mix easily and create beautiful colors. I don’t even mind that they’re more pastel than bright. Lastly, they’re budget-friendly.

Here’s a 10-pack, Color Kitchen Food Colors from Nature, that makes a good starter pack.

By far, these colors are the cheapest and the most widely available. The powdered colors come in a pack of three colors which you can mix for a variety of colors.

I bought this McCormick Nature’s Inspiration Food Colors pack when I made these unicorn sugar cookies. Just look how vivid the colors turned out!

The cookies featured in the photos were topped with royal icing and then decorated with the blue natural color sugar from the India Tree Nature’s Color line, Let’s Do Organic Multi-Color Sprinkelz, organic snowflake sprinkles made with carnauba wax, organic sanding sugar I found in the bulk section of my local health food store, and an organic peppermint candy cane that I broke into pieces.

They were scrumptious.

Now, about that royal icing.

Many royal icings use egg whites, which are obviously not very friendly for us vegans or chickens.Instead, you’ll want a batch of vegan royal icing for your cut-out sugar cookies. That’s where I come in with this vegan royal icing recipe to save the day.

Fair warning, friends: This stuff is the real royal icing deal.

It sets quickly, so if you want to add sprinkles to your vegan sugar cut-out cookies — and you know you do — do it immediately after icing the cookie. You can dip your cookies into the icing, or if you want to get your inner Martha Stewart on, use a food-safe paintbrush and brush it on. I’ve done both.

This icing is a perfect base for other flavors of icings. Try lemon, orange, or cinnamon flavors. It’s an off-white icing, but you can add color to it if you like.

Experiment, have fun!

Are you ready to get baking? I hope I’ve convinced you to make a batch of these vegan sugar cut-out cookies. If you do, leave a comment to let me know how it goes or tag me on Instagram at #yourdailyvegan!