Delicious crinkly, soft, and chewy vegan molasses cookies that are packed with festive flavor. They're a must-have for cookie season alongside vegan gingerbread cookies.
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📖 Recipe Overview
- Minimal Ingredients - Made using 10 core ingredients. They're also made without butter or egg replacements. Instead, these cookies are based on cashew butter which lends a delicious deep-roasted cashew flavor!
- Amazing Texture And Flavor - Crinkled, soft, and chewy cookies with warm and sweet smoky molasses and cozy winter spices.
- Great For Special Occasions - The perfect cookie box fillers for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They stay soft and chewy for days and are perfect for gifting seeing as they are stored at room temperature.
🧾 Ingredients Needed
Here's everything you need to make homemade molasses cookies from scratch:
Ingredient Notes
- Cashew butter: As briefly mentioned above, this recipe uses cashew butter in place of stand/vegan butter! Not only does this keep these cookies oil-free, but the cashew butter also bakes into a lovely roasted cashew flavor which comes through so perfectly along with the cinnamon flavor of these cookies.
- Soft brown sugar: The cookie dough is sweetened with sot brown sugar giving them a delicious caramel flavor and color. You can also use coconut sugar in place of regular sugar if you'd prefer.
- Molasses: The star of this recipe is molasses as it gives a deep, caramel, almost aniseed flavor to the biscuits. If you're not a fan of molasses, try using maple syrup in place of it.
- Aquafaba: This is the liquid from a can of chickpeas! It is commonly used as a substitute for eggs, which is why it's included in this cookie recipe.
- Vanilla extract: A touch of vanilla adds flavor and a mild aroma to the cookies.
- Plain flour: Regular flour works best for these cookies, although you could also use spelt flour, I have not tried using gluten-free flour to make these. Let me know in the comments section if you do and how they go for you!
- Baking soda: This is the leavening agent for this recipe, as it releases carbon dioxide when baked creating a soft cookie.
- Spices: We can't have ginger molasses cookies without a healthy dose of spices. Of course, you can add more or less to the cookie dough depending on your personal taste.
- Salt: If you're a long-time reader of ATD you'll know that I like to add a touch of salt to all of my dessert recipes. Not only does it help to balance the sweetness, but it also acts as a flavor enhancer.
- Cane sugar/demerara sugar: Granulated sugar (brown or white) is mixed with ground cinnamon which the cookies are then rolled in. This helps to give them a crisp, crunchy outer shell.
🥣 How To Make Molasses Cookies Vegan
Find the complete list of ingredients, quantities, and instructions in the recipe card at the end of this post.
Step 1: Cream together the wet ingredients with the sugar (in this case cashew butter, molasses, aquafaba, vanilla, and soft brown sugar).
Step 2: Add the dry ingredients to the bowl/mixer along with the wet ingredients and knead until they form a dough.
Step 3: Wrap up the cookie dough and chill.
Step 4: For the coating, mix together sugar and ground cinnamon. Roll the chilled cookie dough into 12 balls and coat them in the sugar mixture before popping them onto a baking tray.
Step 5: Use the back of the spoon to press the cookies down so that they are slightly flattened before baking.
Step 6: Once baked, allow the vegan molasses cookies to sit on the baking tray for a couple of minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.
🍪 Variations
- Cinnamon Molasses Cookies - Ginger, although incredibly tasty, is a very punchy strong flavor and let's face it, it's not for everyone. Feel free to swap out the ground ginger with additional ground cinnamon in this recipe.
- Refined Sugar-Free - For a lower refined sugar you can use coconut sugar in place of soft brown sugar and the cane sugar coating. If using coconut sugar, do note that your cookies won't spread quite as much as with soft brown sugar. I've tested these biscuits with both and the use of cane sugar makes a huge difference in helping the cookies to spread out and get crinkly.
- Nut-Free - If you're looking to avoid nuts, you can swap out the cashew butter for tahini.
- Cashew-Free - I've tried these molasses cookies with both peanut butter and tahini which were both delicious, but bear in mind that whatever butter you use will have a strong effect on the end flavor of your cookies.
📝 Recipe Tips
Pan-bang your cookies. If you prefer thinner flat and crinkly cookies use the pan-banging method from The Vanilla Bean Blog. Simply bake the cookies for 8 minutes, then remove them from the oven and bang the baking tray on your work surface. Then bake for another 2 minutes, and tap them on the counter again once finished.
Chill the cookie dough. For the best molasses cookies, make sure you chill the cookie dough for at least an hour prior to baking. You can keep the dough in the fridge overnight if you want!
Evenly measure out your cookie dough. For the most even cookies, use digital kitchen scales to measure out your individual cookie dough balls.
💬 FAQs
These cookies will be slightly firm/crunchy once freshly baked and will soften after the first day. They will last in a sealed container for up to a week.
🎄 More Vegan Christmas Cookies
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📖 Recipe
Molasses Cookies (Vegan)
Ingredients
- ½ cup (128 g) cashew butter
- ⅔ cup (106 g) soft brown sugar or coconut sugar
- ⅓ cup (112 g) molasses
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) aquafaba
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
- 1 cup (125 g) plain flour
- 1 teaspoon (5 g) baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon (15 g) ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Garnish
- ¼ cup (50 g) granulated cane sugar or demerara sugar
- 1 teaspoon (5 g) ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Add the cashew butter, soft brown sugar, molasses, aquafaba, and vanilla extract to a stand mixer or large bowl and whisk for a couple of minutes until all the ingredients have been mixed throughly.
- In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
- Add the dry ingredients to the bowl/mixer along with the wet ingredients and mix until they form a dough. If you're not using a stand mixer, use your hands to bring the ingredients together to form a dough. Cover the dough with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least an hour.
- Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 175°C (350°F).
- Mix together the granulated sugar and ground cinnamon in a small bowl.
- Once the cookie dough has been chilled, divide the dough into 12 sections and roll them into balls with your hands. Roll the cookies in the cinnamon sugar and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Use the back of a spoon to flatten the cookies.
- Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. Allow the cookies to sit on the baking tray for 2 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Storage
- These cookies will be slightly firm/crunchy once freshly baked and will soften after the first day. They will last in a sealed container for up to a week.
Notes
- Feel free to swap out the ground ginger with additional ground cinnamon.
- For a lower refined sugar, you can use coconut sugar in place of soft brown sugar and the cane sugar coating. If using coconut sugar, do note that your cookies won't spread quite as much as with soft brown sugar.
- Nut-Free - You can swap out the cashew butter for tahini.
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Hi! What else besides flax eggs could be used to replace aquafaba?
Hi Pheebs,
You could try vegan unsweetened yogurt
I'll try. Thank you!
Delicious! I’m not usually a huge cookie fan but these turned out with a perfect texture and were deliciously ginger-y
So happy you loved them Sarah, thank you for your lovely feedback x
These cookies are so good!!! I made them twice in one week. They’re super easy to make too. I used flax egg instead of aquafaba cause that’s what I had and it worked well.
Hi Sally,
Thank you so much for the feedback I'm happy they went down so well! Also good to know about the flax egg in case anyone else is in the same boat 🙂