These vegan Italian Christmas cookies are soft and pretty cake-like, but they’re cookies! When deciding to make these, as we had never made anything like them before, we compared multiple traditional swirled Italian Christmas cookie recipes and then averaged out everything and made them vegan by replacing non-vegan ingredients with the most appropriate vegan substitutions. Honestly, we feel so weird referring to them as ‘cookies,’ but that’s what they are!
Unfortunately, we did not have colourful sprinkles and we couldn’t find any that were vegan (and didn’t cost a fortune for a small bottle) so we just sprinkled chia seeds on them. In addition to that, as these cookies are very sweet already, instead of dipping them in a thick icing sugar mixture (as is traditionally done before sprinkling), we brushed on a light icing sugar mixture on its surfaces to make them more edible for those who can’t handle extremely sweet foods.
We hope you enjoy these…..cookies.
Bon Appétit!
Ingredients (makes 10-12)
12tbsp Aquafaba
125g Sugar
6tbsp Neutral-Tasting Oil (such as vegetable oil)
2tsp Vanilla Extract
420g All-Purpose Flour
4tsp Baking Powder
2tsp Icing Sugar
4-6tsp Water
Sprinkles of Choice (in desired quantity)
Method
- In a bowl, combine all dry ingredients apart from the icing sugar and sprinkles.
- In a smaller bowl, combine all wet ingredients apart from the water.
- Pour the wet mixture into the bowl with the dry mixture and stir them together to combine them.
- Knead the mixture to ensure that it is well combined.
- Shape the cookie dough into a ball, cover it and refrigerate it for 1-2hrs.
- During the last 15-20mins of your dough chilling, preheat your oven to 190°C.
- After chilling, divide the dough into 10-12 equal parts and roll them out into shoe strings that are roughly a minimum of 15cm long.
- Shape each dough string into a spiral with descending diameters the higher each level is. This can be done by making a circle with the dough then continuing the circle overlapping a little off centre from where it started till all the dough has been used up.
- Place each dough spiral on a baking tray lined with parchment paper ensuring that there is, at least, a 3cm gap between each spiral and between the spirals and the edges of the tray.
- Place the baking tray in the oven and let the…..cookies…..bake for 10-12mins.
- As the….cookies…..bake, combine the icing sugar with the water in a small bowl or cup.
- Once the cookies are done baking, let them cool for at least 5mins before handling them.
- Using a pastry/basting brush, glaze the…..cookies…..with the sugar mixture and immediately sprinkle your sprinkles of choice over them then let the sugar mixture rest for a few more minutes in order for it to set.
Serve.
If you try the recipe, upload a picture of it to Instagram with the hashtag #lickyourplaterecipe or tag @lickyourplates_ and @sammysingally.food so we can have a look at it and like it.
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