Tag: almond

Vegan Cranberry Orange Shortbread Cookies

writ­ten 06/03/23, updat­ed 02/18/24

What

Mak­ing short­bread cook­ies with dried cran­ber­ries and orange zest with veg­an but­ter.

Ingredients and Supplies

Serv­ing: 12–15 cook­ies (Dou­ble mea­sure­ments for more)

Elec­tric Mix­er, Wax Paper/Plastic Wrap, Refrig­er­a­tor, Knife/Food Chop­per, Sil­i­cone Spat­u­la, Zester/Grater

All-pur­pose Flour (1 cup), Bak­ing Pow­der (1/8 tsp — option­al), Salt (1/16 tsp)

But­ter (1/2 cup soft­ened = 1 stick), Con­fec­tion­ers Sug­ar (1/4 cup)

Vanil­la Extract (1/2 tsp), Almond Extract (1/4 tsp), Orange Zest, Orange Extract (option­al)

Cran­ber­ries, chopped (1 cup), Wal­nuts (puree or chopped, option­al, 1⁄2 — 1 cup)

Time

Prep (30min) + Chill (~ 4 hrs) + Bake (10 min) = 4 hrs 40 min

Steps

  • Mix togeth­er Flour (1 cup) and Salt (1/16 tsp). Option­al­ly, add Bak­ing Pow­der (1/8 tsp) for fluffi­ness
  • Use elec­tric mix­er on medi­um to beat the Veg­an But­ter (1/2 cup soft­ened) and Con­fec­tion­ers Sug­ar (1/4 cup) until it’s smooth. Stop and scrape the sides, if need­ed
  • Add the Vanil­la Extract (1/2 tsp) and Almond Extracts (1/4 tsp), as well as the Orange Zest. Option­al: Orange Extract for stronger cit­rus fla­vor
  • Mix in the Flour mix­ture in grad­u­al­ly while beat­ing on low until every­thing com­bines well
  • Fold in the Chopped Cran­ber­ries (~ 1 cup), until even­ly dis­trib­uted
  • Turn out the dough onto a light­ly floured sur­face (or direct­ly onto plas­tic wrap/parchment paper)
  • Roll into a log
  • Wrap in either parch­ment paper or plas­tic
  • Set in refrig­er­a­tor for 4ish hours to hard­en
  • Remove wrap­ping
  • Pre­heat oven to 350F (180C)
  • Slice into discs (your choice of thick­ness)
  • Bake at 350F for 12–15 min­utes (your pref­er­ence for done­ness)
  • Let cool on racks, in fact, overnight, uncov­ered is best for the veg­an cook­ies

EAT

Pictures

Chop­per
Chopped
But­ter and Sug­ar
Adding fla­vor
Grad­ual Flour mix­ture add
Whirrr
Cran­ber­ries: IN!
Dough
Turned out…a lit­tle wet
Ball Formed
Log Rolled
Wrapped and to the Fridge
3 Hours lat­er unwrapped
Sliced
Flat­tened
Loaded into Oven
OOOOOOO

Result (June 2023)

Imme­di­ate­ly , they end­ed up soft, crumbly, and sticks eas­i­ly to the inside of the mouth. For the cran­ber­ry lovers this is great! Clemen­tine usage instead of an orange made the cook­ies a bit bit­ter and lacked in cit­rus fla­vor. I don’t like the crum­bling, melt­ing tex­ture. By the next morn­ing it was almost per­fect! It allowed the cook­ie to hard­en more and was quite enjoy­able! Adding some nut pieces might add to the tex­ture

Next Attempt (Feb 2024)

Used a dash of Orange Extract, real Orange Zest, pureed wal­nuts, soaked cran­ber­ries in boil­ing water, added a table­spoon of veg­etable short­en­ing (Crisco), while keep­ing all oth­er instruc­tions the same. Seemed less sweet this time, but good taste. Short­en­ing makes it much more like short­bread (duh). Soaked cran­ber­ries makes the dough a lit­tle dark­er

Dry com­bo
Wal­nut pieces
Pureed
But­ter, short­en­ing, sug­ar
Zest and extracts
Light­ly chop­ping soaked cran­ber­ries
Mixed
Turn out
Balled
Rolled
Fridge
4 hours lat­er unrolled
Sliced
Squished
Fresh! Hot!
Cool­ing
Thin­ner Batch

Notes

  • I used a stand mix­er with the stan­dard pad­dle attach­ment
  • I was­n’t sure about dough con­sis­ten­cy. Many recipes called for a good mix, but not too much. I gath­er you want some­thing just well incor­po­rat­ed, not nec­es­sar­i­ly super smooth. Mine end­ed up wet because I added too much orange juice
  • Veg­an But­ter is much low­er in sat­u­rat­ed fats than reg­u­lar but­ter. I think that has some­thing to do with the crum­bli­ness of veg­an cook­ies as a whole. Appar­ent­ly, coconut oil can be sub­sti­tut­ed one to one to reg­u­lar but­ter because it pro­vides the high fat con­tent need­ed to com­pare to reg­u­lar but­ter. Aquafa­ba which is the liq­uid in a can of chick­peas is a great egg white sub­sti­tute for bind­ing.
  • If you don’t have a food chop­per, you can use a knife
  • Soft­ened But­ter means soft, but not melt­ed. Basi­cal­ly, it’s the same as room tem­per­a­ture. I read that you can also just mix it in the bowl a bit before adding the oth­er ingre­di­ents.
  • Soft­en­ing but­ter can also be done in the microwave. I did mine about 15 sec­onds
  • You can add or take away from the sug­ar or cran­ber­ries as per your taste
  • I did­n’t have an orange, so I used a Clementine…Not rec­om­mend­ed
  • On my very first attempt, I com­plete­ly messed up the mea­sure­ments for the bak­ing pow­der, using cups instead of tea­spoons. Every­thing was great until I tried to eat them. NASTY NASTY NASTY. Too much bak­ing pow­der makes food a weird salty, bit­ter, grainy mess! It smelled good at least…