Rich and buttery, this vegan brown butter shortbread is sublime topped with lemon-infused icing sugar. While this may sound fancy, rest assured, the recipe is kid simple: 1 bowl, 1 minute of mixing, then straight into a cake pan and into the oven.
Having said that, you do need to make the vegan brown butter ahead of time, as it needs to be chilled a few hours before using.
Ingredients
There are just 4 ingredients in this recipe: vegan brown butter, rice flour, icing sugar, and cake and pastry flour.
About Vegan Brown Butter
Brown butter makes everything better so we created a vegan version -- and it's almost as simple to make as regular brown butter. Make the vegan brown butter earlier in the day or the night before and chill it. It won’t harden when chilled, but it will be a thick, pourable consistency.
About Icing Sugar
Icing sugar, also called powdered sugar or confectioner's sugar, is found in the baking section of most grocery stores.
If you have a blender, you can make your own using white sugar - just blend on high speed for a few seconds until the sugar grains turn into powder.
Not all icing sugar or white sugar is suitable for vegans, see Sugar, Sugar, Honey, Honey: A Guide to Sweeteners for Plant-Based Diets for more information.
About Rice Flour
The rice flour helps make the shortbread tender, as it has a lower protein content than regular flour
About Cake and Pastry Flour
Cake and Pastry Flour has a lower protein content than regular flour, which helps make the shortbread tender.
Visual Overview: Making Vegan Brown Butter Shortbread
- Before you start this recipe, be sure to prepare and chill the vegan brown butter.
- Preheat the oven to 300F.
Brush the sides and bottom of an 8-inch cake pan with some vegan brown butter.
Add the vegan brown butter to a large bowl, then add in the dry ingredients and stir
Making Vegan Brown Butter Shortbread
Making Vegan Brown Butter Shortbread
Spoon the cookie dough into the pan, levelling it out. It doesn’t have to be perfectly flat as it will rise in the oven and even out somewhat.
Making Vegan Brown Butter Shortbread
Bake for about 25 minutes, until lightly browned.
Once cooled, run a knife around the edge of the cookie and then cut it into triangles. We made 16 cookies as they are quite rich. You can enjoy as is, or decorate (see next step.)
Making Vegan Brown Butter Shortbread
If you want to garnish the cookies with the lemon-infused sugar like we did, remove the cookies from the cake pan and line them up to form a circle in the same way they came out of the pan.
Put something lacy on top, such as a doily. We used a placement from CB2 that looks a bit like a doily and it did the trick. You could even make a paper snowflake and use that.
Put the icing sugar in a small sieve and press the sugar through the sieve with a small spoon, moving around to cover all of the cookies.
Carefully remove the doily and your cookies are dusted with lemony-sugar and are ready to impress.
Tips: Plant-based baking
If you're new to plant-based baking, you're probably curious about making cookies without eggs or butter. We love using aquafaba as our egg replacer. It's the liquid from canned or home-cooked beans. If using the liquid from the can, it requires no preparation at all - just separate the liquid from the chickpeas drain and it's ready to go. See our detailed post, Aquafaba: An Easy Vegan Egg Replacer, for more information.
To replace the butter in this recipe, we're using vegan brown butter, which is made from vegan butter or margarine and pecans. The pecans provide the nutty flavour that you get from browning regular butter.
This recipe uses icing sugar. Sugar is one area where plant-based and vegan diets don't completely overlap. Due to how it's processed, some icing sugar may not be vegan-friendly -- however some plant-based eaters choose to eat it, as the final product does not contain animal products. For more information, see Sugar, Sugar, Honey, Honey: A Guide to Sweeteners for Plant-Based Diets.
Recipe Card
Vegan Brown Butter Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup vegan brown butter, chilled (See instructions section for link to recipe.)
- 1/4 cup rice flour
- 1/2 cup icing sugar
- 1 cup cake and pastry flour
- vegan brown butter, for the baking pan
Lemon Icing Sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon lemon rind, finely grated
- 1/4 cup cane sugar
Instructions
To make the cookies
- Preheat the oven to 300F.
- Combine the chilled
vegan brown butter and other cookie ingredients in a mixing bowl, and mix for about a minute until well-combined. - Butter the sides and bottom of the a 9 inch cake pan with vegan brown butter. Spoon the cookie dough into the pan, spreading it evenly.
- Bake for 25 minutes, or until lightly browned. Let cook before cutting and decorating.
To make the lemon-infused icing sugar
- Combine the ingredients in a blender and blend for a few seconds until the sugar is the consistency of icing sugar
To decorate
- Once the cookies have cooled, use a sharp knife to loosen the edge of the cookies in the pan. Slice the cookies into 12 triangles and then carefully remove to a plate. Place a paper doily over the cookies. Put a tablespoon or two of the lemon icing sugar in a small sieve and then use a spoon to press the icing sugar through the sieve, covering the cookies uniformly.
