Vegan Gingerbread Cookies are perfect for your holiday baking schedule. These spiced cookies make for a great alternative to decorating.
Are you ready to bust out those decorating skills? If so, we’ve got the perfect vegan gingerbread cookies for you to try.
Whether you are trying to make a delicious vegan gingerbread cookie recipe to decorate individually, or you are trying to make an entire gingerbread house, then this recipe will work for you.
Pair our dairy free gingerbread cookies with either dairy free vanilla frosting or royal icing to decorate for any holiday season. You could even pair these dairy free cookies with a dairy free chocolate frosting if you’d prefer.
These dairy free gingerbread cookies are:
- dairy free
- egg free
- corn free
- vegan
- nut free option
- gluten free option
- soy free option
Never miss another post! Sign up for our weekly newsletter and get them all delivered easily! Plus, 15 easy recipes delivered immediately!
Sign Up For My Newsletter Today!
What ingredients do I need for vegan gingerbread cookies?
This recipe doesn’t need a lot of ingredients and is really easy to make! Nothing is a hard to find ingredients and almost any store you should be able to find everything.
The ingredients that you will need are:
- vegan butter
- brown sugar
- molasses
- ground flax seed
- water
- vanilla extract
- all purpose flour
- ground ginger
- baking soda
- cinnamon
- cloves
- salt
- nutmeg
WHAT IS A FLAX EGG?
A flax egg is a combination of ground flax seeds and water that after sitting, will turn gelatinous.
This mixture gives you a vegan replacement in eggs that works great in many baked goods, like these vegan gingerbread cookies
How do you make vegan gingerbread cookies?
You are going to start by making a flax egg by combining the ground flax seed with water and letting it sit for 10 minutes.
While that’s sitting, in a large bowl, beat together the vegan butter, brown sugar and molasses until creamy, about 3 minutes.
When you flax egg is ready, add that and vanilla to the bowl and beat again.
Next, add in the flour, spices, baking soda and salt. Stir these together with a spatula until combined. Use your hands to form 2 equal size balls.
Lay down a piece of parchment paper, then one ball, then another same size piece of parchment paper on top. Take a rolling pin and roll our the dough to be ¼″ thick.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Cut out gingerbread men or other desired shapes. Transfer cut outs to a baking sheet.
Place in oven and cook for 9-11 minutes. Shorter time for smaller cut outs, longer time for bigger cut outs.
Remove and transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before icing.
Repeat with remaining ball of dough.
We recommend our vegan royal icing to decorate these dairy free gingerbread cookies.
Tips for making vegan gingerbread cookies:
Try to use the same size cut outs when cooking so they cook evenly and you don’t have overdone and uncooked cookies on the same try.
For example, if you are cutting out 1″ snowflakes and 3″ gingerbread men, the cook all the snowflakes first and then do a separate batch with the bigger cut outs.
How do you know when vegan gingerbread cookies are done?
When you are making dark colored cookies, it is not always easy to tell since you can’t just see golden brown. Vegan gingerbread cookies are done when the edges are firm if gently touched with a spatula.
WHAT OTHER PRODUCTS DO I NEED TO MAKE THESE CUT OUT DAIRY FREE GINGERBREAD COOKIES?
Beyond the actual dairy free cookie ingredients that you will need to make these gingerbread cookies, you’ll want to grab a few things to make these perfectly.
You’ll need:
- Baking Sheets
- Rolling Pin
- Cooling Racks
- Parchment Paper
- Gingerbread Men Cookie Cutters and other Cookie Cutters
- Vegan royal icing , Vanilla Frosting or Chocolate Frosting
- Piping Bag and Tips
- Sprinkles or Other Decorations
- Cookie Tin
Can I make these Top 8 Allergen Free Gingerbread Cookies?
Absolutely!
The two allergens in our written recipe is vegan butter (soy) and flour (gluten).
The vegan butter can easily be swapped for a soy free vegan butter. We love Earth Balance soy free for this. It comes in a red tub.
For the flour, you can use Measure for Measure Gluten Free flour in this cookie recipe.
Can I prep these vegan gingerbread cookies ahead?
Yes! You can make these a few days in advance if you plan to make ahead and decorate at another time or even decorate and take with you a few days from now.
Alternatively, you can make the dough and freeze the dough if you don’t need all of it at one time. Just let completely thaw before rolling out and cutting into shapes.
WHAT ARE OTHER VEGAN COOKIES THAT I CAN MAKE?
If you love baking cookies for the holidays, then you are in for a treat. These are part of our 12 days of cookies and here’s a few more for you to try. All our cookie recipes are vegan (dairy and egg free) and most about allergen friendly.
We will update will all 12 at the end, but here’s a few to try!
- Dairy Free Chocolate Chip Cookies (vegan)
- Dairy Free Cut Out Sugar Cookies (vegan)
- Vegan Salted Caramel Cookies
- Vegan Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Perfect Vegan Snickerdoodles
Pin these vegan gingerbread cookies for later:
Vegan Gingerbread Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon ground flax seed
- 3 tablespoon water
- ¾ cup vegan butter, softened
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- ⅔ cup molasses
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 ¼ cup flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon cloves
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- Royal Icing recipe
Instructions
- Combine ground flax seed with water and in a small bowl and let sit for 10 minutes. This makes a flax egg.
- While that's sitting, in a large bowl, beat together vegan butter, brown sugar and molasses until creamy, about 3 minutes.
- When flax egg is ready, add that and vanilla to the bowl and beat again.
- Add in flour, baking soda, spices and salt.
- Stir these together with a spatula until combined.
- Use hands to form 2 equal size balls.
- Lay down a piece of parchment paper, then one ball, then another same size piece of parchment paper on top.
- Roll out dough to ¼" thick.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Cut out gingerbread men or other desired shapes. Transfer cut outs to a baking sheet.
- Place in oven and cook for 9-11 minutes. Shorter time for smaller cut outs, longer time for bigger cut outs.
- Remove and transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before icing.
- Repeat with remaining ball of dough.
- Decorate as desired. We recommend our vegan royal icing to decorate these dairy free gingerbread cookies.
Angie
I made your gingerbread cookie recipe today. What a delicious cookie. I must have a small cookie cutter. I ended up with more than 36 cookies. I’m tired. LOL🙄The BEST part was actually having the royal icing work. I’ve tried so many RI recipes that taste terrible & don’t work ! I’m only using your recipe from now on! Now, I can bake cookies for Valentine’s Day using RI. They just look so pretty! Thank you for sharing! Merry Christmas & Happy 2023🎉🍾🎉
LarishaBernard
So happy to hear that! Happy New Year!
Hilary
I made these today and they tasted great! But the dough was quite wet so I found it very difficult to keep the cookies in their gingerbread person shape when transferring them to the cookie sheet. Will the dough firm up if I refrigerated it for an hour or so beforehand next time?
Niki
I’m struggling with how dry these cookies are. Well, the batter. It falls apart and cracks really easily. Help!
LarishaBernard
Hi Niki, Did you make any changes?
Poonam
hi i would love to try this cookie recipe but where I stay we do not get vegan butter. can I use any unflavored oil or nut butters. thanks
LarishaBernard
We’ve never tried to be honest so we can’t really tell you how it would come out. Nut butters won’t work. We don’t think most oils would work well, but possibly a firm, not melted coconut oil would be best to test
jodi
Best gingerbread cookies ever! I love the cookies and they are now a favorite! People who don’t typically like gingerbread even like it!
LarishaBernard
Amazing, so happy to hear
Lainy
I’m excited to try this recipe today to make our gingerbread house! Do you think I should leave it in the oven longer?Anything else you think I should do to make it a house?
LarishaBernard
Sorry we didn’t see this before, but we’d leave it in a tad longer.