Vegan Lemon Cookies

Click Here  for the video!

The only thing better than lemon flavored things is when those things are also lemon shaped. So I sat down with my go to vegan cookie formula and found a way to do both. The result has been described as "pure sunshine" and "a bite of happy" by my taste testers.

My first step was figuring out how to make the dough thick enough to mold how I wanted. Enter coconut oil. When making non vegan cookies, you use butter. The tendency for butter to solidify when at room temp makes for easy shaping. So I swapped my usual vegetable oil for coconut. I melt it initially for mixing into the dough and then do my shaping after the dough has rested in the fridge making it solidify. Second was getting the lemon flavor. Luckily, I was in the midst of learning how to make my own lemon powder so I used that instead of zesting a lemon. And finally, I wanted to round out my flavors so I added a bit of almond flour for depth. I tested this plan and it worked so well I didn't tweak a single thing despite making 4 batches in 1 week. 

As for the lemon shape, I thoroughly enjoyed making little lemon cookie slices but it was definitely time consuming and not necessary if what you're after is a plain old delicious cookie. However if you plan to shape them for extra pizzazz, I strongly suggest watching my video for this recipe to fully understand what needs to be done before starting.

Vegan Lemon Cookies

Makes 12 cookies.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1/4 cup almond flour
• 3 Tbsp water
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice 
• 2 tsp lemon powder ( or 2 Tbsp fresh lemon zest)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda 
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
2. Melt the coconut oil in the microwave and add it to the dry ingredients, stirring as you add it.
3. Combine the water and lemon juice and add it to the dough as well.
4. Mix/knead until it is all combined.
5. If you aren't shaping them to look like lemon slices, shape the dough into a log, place in a plastic bag or wrap in parchment paper, and refrigerate overnight.
6. If shaping into lemon slices:
1. take out 1/4 of the dough and set aside. Mix yellow food dye into the remaining dough. (if you have white food dye, mix that into the 1/4 you set aside. It will make the pattern stand out better.)
2. Take the plain dough and roll it out into a thin sheet between two pieces of parchment paper.
3. Repeat step7 with a similarly sized piece of yellow dough.
4. Shape the rest of the yellow dough into a cylinder using a bench scraper and parchment paper.
5. Place these three parchment paper packages in the fridge overnight.
6. The following day, carefully cut the cylinder in half longways, then quarters, and finally 8ths. You should end up with 8 long wedges.
7. Lay the sheet of plain dough out on your work surface and cut off the rough edge on one side.
8. Place a wedge on that line so that the wedge points in toward the dough.
9. Place a second wedge opposite the first so they are pointing toward each other about a centimeter apart.
10. Using the heat of your hands, press the wedges into the dough sheet so they stick together.
11. Cut behind the second wedge and carefully move the section of dough to the side.
12. Take a 3rd wedge and cover both of its flat sides with plain dough. Cut it away from the dough sheet.
13. Take a 4th wedge and cover 1 flat side. Cut it away.
14. Place wedges 3 & 4 between wedges 1 & 2 so that there is white between each section and press them together.
15. Repeat steps 12 and 13 and place the resulting covered wedges between the final two wedges.
16. You should have 2 semi circles, 1 with a white bottom and one without. Place them bottom to bottom and press together.
17. Wrap the roll tightly in parchment paper and squeeze to make sure it stays together.
18. Gather the remaining plain dough and warm it in your hands until it becomes malleable again and sticks together. Roll it out using parchment paper to make a second dough sheet that is roughly the width of your cookie dough roll.
19. Unwrap your cylinder and place it on the new sheet. Carefully roll cover the cylinder with the plain dough, wrap in parchment, and squeeze so it sticks.
20. Repeat with the yellow dough. Place the wrapped roll in the fridge for 2 hours.
7. Preheat your oven to 375° F.
8. Take the rested dough and cut about 1/2 inch rounds or simply divide the log into 12 equal pieces. The dough will be a bit crumbly so use the warmth of your hands and squeeze the dough gently to keep the cookies together. This especially helps if you make the lemon shaped cookies.
9. Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 12 minutes.
10. Let the cookies cool for ~10 minutes and the remove them from the baking sheet.
11. Enjoy!!!