Brown Sugar Espresso Shortbread Cookies (Vegan)
The flavors of brown sugar, cardamom, and espresso come together in these lovely shortbread cookies. They are easy, dairy-free, and just festive enough to add to your holiday baking.
Ingredients
Cookie
- 1½ cups / 180 grams all purpose flour
- 1 stick / 113 grams plant based butter with salt - cold and cubed
- 4 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp powdered sugar
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Glaze
- 1/2 cup/ 60 grams powdered sugar
- 2 tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp milk
- ¼ tsp espresso powder
optional
- turbinado sugar
Instructions
Cookie
- To a medium bowl, add the flour, brown sugar, powdered sugar and cardamom; whisk to combine. Add the vanilla extract and the cold cubed butter; toss to coat the butter and incorporate the vanilla.Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until a pebble-like consistency is reach. I did this with a pastry cutter. Once the desired consistency is reached, bring the dough together with your hands, form it into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
- Remove the dough from the refrigerator and place it on a lightly floured surface. Roll it out to a 1/4 inch thickness. Using cookie cutters of your choice - I used a 2 inch round and a 2x2 ½-inch rectangle - begin cutting the cookies. Place the cut cookies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. You will need at least two cookie sheets. Re-roll the dough as many times as needed; try to handle the dough as little as possible during this process. Once all the cookies have been cut, place them back in the refrigerator for another hour. **If you have the cookies on a cookie sheet while resting in the refrigerator , I suggest using a different cookie sheet to bake the cookies on. Putting the cookies in the oven on a cold cookie sheet will affect the bake.*****optional - sprinkling some turbinado sugar over the cookies before baking them***
- Preheat the oven to 325F. Bake the cookies for 13 minutes. Once out of the oven, allow them to rest on the cookie sheet for 5 to 10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.
Glaze
- To a small bowl, add the powdered sugar, vanilla extract, milk and espresso powder; whisk until fully combined and smooth.
- Once the cookies have completely cooled, they can be glazed or drizzled. I fully glazed half of the cookies by dipping the tops of the cookies in the glaze. I drizzled glaze over the other half of the cookies. Allow the glaze to completely dry before storing the cookies.Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.