Learn how to make these vegan snowball cookies with this easy dairy-free recipe flavoured with cardamom and clementine zest.
Let's be honest. I love butter, and I am not exactly what you would consider a vegan. Not really even close. The thing is, vegans need Christmas cookies too. With that in mind, I thought it would be nice to include a vegan cookie recipe since the Christmas holidays are coming up and this is prime cookie-making season.
I don't bake vegan recipes very often. So far, there's just an eggless chocolate cake recipe and this cookie recipe that would fall into that category. I think the trick for first time vegan-baking is definitely to begin with a good non-vegan recipe. I would also suggest starting with a recipe that contains no eggs: replacing eggs in a recipe can be a little tricky because you have several options for egg replacers, and this might take some fiddling. This is why I started with this recipe for snowball cookies.
The original recipe for cardamom snowballs (a.k.a. snowdrops) comes from Savory Simple. I simply replaced the regular butter with vegan Earth Balance buttery spread. The thing to note is that Earth Balance contains salt, therefore salt was omitted. What I love about this recipe is that, yes they are definitely vegan, but you really cannot tell. These just taste like good cookies, which is exactly what you want from any cookie recipe. Plus, you can definitely play around with the spices and flavours in this recipe, and even use different nuts in the dough.
If you want to bake other vegan recipes from the blog, I'd use Earth Balance in these recipes, which don't contain eggs: chocolate sablé cookies, these crystallized ginger cookies, and walnut crescent cookies. You can easily replace the milk in any recipe with a non-dairy option.
📖 Recipe
Vegan Snowball Cookies
Ingredients
- 230 grams Earth Balance vegan butter spread
- 63 grams icing sugar
- 2 clementines zested
- 5 mL pure vanilla extract
- 125 grams ground almonds
- 188 grams bleached all-purpose flour
- 125 grams icing sugar
- 7.5 mL ground cardamom
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 °F (165 °C). Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the vegan butter and the 63 grams of icing sugar. Add the clementine zest and beat again. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- Add the vanilla and the ground almond, then the flour.
- Scoop the dough and roll into 1 inch balls.
- Place on prepared cookie sheets and bake for about 14 minutes, rotating after 12 minutes.
- Let cool on a wire rack.
- Sift together the 1 cup of icing sugar with the cardamom, and toss cookies in the mixture. (Note to really coat cookies, toss them in the mixture when the cookies are still a little warm, or even double coat them).
Notes
- I made this recipe with Earth Balance vegan butter spread, which is salted. If you are using an unsalted butter, you should add salt to this recipe.
- Please note that I bake with uncoated aluminum sheet pans that are light in colour. If you are baking this recipe with darker bakeware, you may have to drop the oven temperature to 300 °F (150 °C) to prevent your baked goods from browning too quickly.
Liz says
These look yummy and fairly easy to make!