How to Make Vegan Cookies

Knowing how to make a dish friendly for vegans is often just a matter of knowing your substitutions.

Baking can be intimidating for those of us who prefer to eschew the measuring cups and approximate cooking times. So vegan baking may seem like double trouble to the more lax cooks among us.

But chillax, because it's not so hard. You can experiment with vegan baking using old tried-and-true recipes and having a handy list of vegan substitutions for baking ingredients.



Milk may be the easiest ingredient to replace, because it seems like they're milking just about everything these days, with soy, rice and almond milks being the most popular alternatives. But soy and almond milks may be your best bet when baking because they contain fat and make for a moist end product.

If a recipe calls for buttermilk, you can substitute an equal measurement of soy milk and add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice per cup of milk, letting it thicken for five minutes before adding to other ingredients.

Rather than using cholesterol-laden butter in your cookies, you can use an equal measurement of vegan margarine (found at most health food stores) or 3/4 cup of vegetable oil for every cup of butter the recipe calls for.

Coconut cream has a light, subtly nutty flavor and can be used in place of cream in most desserts.

Every baker knows that eggs are essential for binding – but they're also a vegan no-no. However, here's a neat little trick: Mix together finely ground flax seeds and water until it forms a gel-like consistency. One tablespoon of flax seeds and 1/4 cup of water is equivalent to one egg.

Now you can substitute ingredients to make your fave treats into vegan ones! Or, try this sweet Vegan Sugar Cookies recipe from Betty Crocker: