Vegan sugar cookies are sugar cookies that don't include any animal products. Vegans abstain from consuming or using fish, poultry, meat, eggs, and anything that comes from an animal or fish. They only eat food made from plants. Because vegans don't eat any dairy products, including eggs, a recipe for vegan sugar cookies needs to be altered in order to adhere to the strict vegan guidelines.
This vegan dessert is similar to traditional sugar cookies, minus the eggs and butter. Because sugar cookies generally include butter, a vegan butter substitute provides the buttery taste, moisture, and texture traditionally associated with sugar cookies. Vegan butter substitute is recommended over tub margarine, because the margarine's moisture content is too low. This and a few other substitutions create vegan sugar cookies that have a taste and texture similar to traditional sugar cookies.
Many people will frost their homemade sugar cookies with an icing made with milk. Because vegans don't eat or use anything that is associated with animals, a non-dairy substitute must be used in place of the milk generally used in cookie icing. One option is almond milk, which is made from pressed almonds and imparts a nice, slightly almond taste to the vegan sugar cookies.
The ingredient used most as a substitute for the traditional cow's milk is soy milk, which isn't a substance that's been milked from an animal, but a white liquid made from pressed soybeans. Some soy milk has vanilla flavoring added, so cooks should consider how this will influence the taste of vegan sugar cookies. This may mean that they should decrease the amount of vanilla that they add to the cookies, if applicable.
Eggs are a necessary ingredient in cookies, so vegan sugar cookies need a substitute ingredient that will bind the other ingredients together. Often vegan cooks use soya flour, banana, or a white sauce as the binder. None of these ingredients work in cookies. When cooks make vegan sugar cookies, they will often use a vegan egg replacement powders, which are generally stocked in health food stores.
Because vegan cookies have a tendency to stick to a cookie sheet, cooks need to use a thick, heavy cookie sheet to bake the cookies. The thick cookie sheet can also be lined with parchment paper to protect the cookies from sticking and burning.
