Vegan Christmas Cookies studded with pistachios, cranberries and can be made into festive raspberry linzer cookies! Easy and made with common pantry staples.
These beautiful festive cookies can be enjoyed at home or brought to a end-of-year celebration! If you wrap them up or pop them in a reusable box, they make great homemade eco Christmas treats in December or the holidays!
For more vegan holiday cookies, see my vegan gingerbread cookies or pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Or if you're looking for a different vegan pistachio recipe, see my Avocado Pistachio Lemon Cake.
Ingredients to make these vegan Christmas cookies
First, we need an easy vegan shortbread recipe using:
- Plain or all-purpose flour
- Icing or powdered sugar
- Vegan butter, margarine or refined coconut oil (I'd recommend butter/margarine for a classic shortbread taste)
For a holiday touch, I added:
- Chopped pistachios
- Chopped cranberries (or any other dried red fruit will work)
- Raspberry jam. For these cookies, I've used both store-bought and a quick raspberry jam and they both work well!
Making the dough for the vegan Christmas cookies
My secret for making easy cookies for the holidays is using my food processor to make the cookie dough! If you don't have one, you can still make it using a mixing bowl and pastry cutter.
First, pop all your vegan shortbread ingredients in a food processor including the flour, butter and sugar. Pulse until combined and there are no more lumps of butter.
If it's TOO DRY (it might look like it's cracking) add a little more butter or a dash of water. If the dough is TOO WET (it might stick to your hands or the food processor), add a little more flour and mix again.
Your dough should stick together but should not stick to your hands.
Add your pistachios and cranberries then pulse until combined.
Of course, try not to pulse your nuts and fruit TOO much otherwise you'll end up with a buttery bliss ball rather than cookie dough!
Since the butter will have warmed up at this stage, pop the dough in an airtight container in your fridge to chill. I prefer using a container instead of glad wrap as a way to avoid single-use plastics!
Rolling the cookie dough
These are great vegan cut out cookies! The dough can be rolled out on a lightly floured surface just like conventional cookie.
The little bits of pistachios and cranberries makes a slightly chunky dough but it's still very workable. And also very pretty!
I used a scalloped cookie cutter to cut out shapes from the dough. However, the dough is quite textured so you may not always get defined 'scalloped' edges. In other words, you can use a simple round cookie cutter!
If you want to make linzer-style vegan Christmas cookies, make sure you create an even number of cookies with their centres in tact to cookies with their centres cut out. I got around 15 linzer cookies (or cookie sandwiches) from this recipe.
Baking the cookies
Depending on the size of your cookies, bake them in a preheated oven for around 12 minutes or until they are slightly golden brown. They will brown more (and firm up) as they cool down.
When the cookies have FULLY cooled down, feel free to decorate them! They look sooo good amongst the rest of your vegan Christmas treats :).
Check out my other vegan Christmas cookies:
- Gingerbread cookies (refined sugar free)
- Vegan Almond Flour Shortbread Cookies
- Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Healthy Vegan Gingerbread cookies
- Fudge stuffed chocolate chip cookies
- Vegan Mint Chocolate Cookies
You may also like:
Pistachio and Cranberry Vegan Christmas Cookies
Ingredients
Cookies
- 2 ½ cups (280g) plain or all-purpose flour, or white spelt flour, plus more for dusting
- ¾ cup (170g) vegan butter or refined coconut oil
- ¾ cup (75g) powdered sugar / icing sugar
- ¼ cup (45g) pistachios, chopped
- ¼ cup (30g) dried cranberries, chopped
Filling (optional)
- ¼ cup (80g) raspberry jam*, or jam of choice
Instructions
To make the cookie dough:
- Add the flour, butter/oil and icing sugar to a food processor or large mixing bowl. Mix until the ingredients come together. Add 1-3 tablespoons of water if the mixture is too dry.
- Add the pistachios and cranberries to the mixture and mix until just combined.
- Set aside the dough in an airtight container in the fridge for 1 hour or freezer for 30 minutes or until it's firmed up.
To shape the cookies:
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
- Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface so it is about 8mm thick. Use a cookie cutter to cut shapes out of the dough. Carefully place each cookie on a lined baking tray with a little space in between each cookie. You may need to use a flat spatula to transfer them.
- Collect the excess dough, roll it out and cut out more shapes from the dough. Repeat until you have no more dough.
Baking and decorating:
- Bake the cookies in the oven for 10 minutes (depending on the size of your cookies). The edges of the cookies should be slightly golden brown. Allow the cookies to completely cool on the baking tray.
- If desired, top half of the cookies with jam and sandwich them with the remaining cookies.
- Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature or the fridge for up to 1 week.
Notes
Please leave a comment below if you made this recipe, have any questions or thoughts! Your comment will help other readers and Rainbow Nourishments.
Hello ^-^ Do you think it would be ok if I used extra fine granulated sugar instead of icing sugar?
Hey! Yes that's fine. You may need to let the dough rest a little to allow the sugar to be absorbed by the butter and little liquid :).
Awesome recipe! We made Christmas tree cookies and tried this recipe with pistachio and dried cherries and filled with Plum Butter, Peach, and Cherry jam! So delicious!
Very easy to make it! Thank you for sharing!
This recipe is as fabulous as it is forgiving! I used regular butter and the cookies turned out beautifully. I was nervous to try making these as I had never made shortbread before, and didn’t have any fancy mixer or equipment at my disposal. But using just a pastry blender tool and my hands to mix the dough worked great! I definitely needed to add the 3 TBSP of water to the mixture as it was too crumbly without. Some other tips I have are to wet your hands slightly and work the dough a bit if it’s crackling too much when rolling it out. Lastly, I recommend chilling the cookie dough cut-outs one more time in the fridge (I chilled mine for about 10 mins) before baking. I think this helped them not to flatten out in the oven and gave a nice flaky texture to the cookie. Happy baking!
These cookies look amazing! Do you think GF flour would work? Hoping to surprise my children with Christmas cookies they can eat!
Thanks for all the wonderful, delicious recipe, Kristen
Thanks Kris! It depends on the GF flour blend. I've tried it with the ones in Australia and they weren't very nice. Perhaps try 50% almond meal and 50% your gluten-free flour blend if it has xantham gum?
Great recipe! I made these cookies yesterday and shared it with my family. They all loved it! I'm someone that don't like to bake, but this recipe is very clear and easy!
I tried making with jam and other ones without the jam. Personally, loved the cookies with filling more (sweeter than without).
If I'm planning to make these again without the filling, than I will propably add more icing sugar in it. But this is My own preference.
So glad you enjoyed the cookies Jane, especially if you don't like to bake! And good idea to add more icing sugar if you like things sweeter :). Thanks for taking the time to leave your feedback!