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. 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.
The rice flour helps make the shortbread tender. I originally used the cake and pastry flour as it was all I had on hand, but I liked the end result, so kept with it. Rice flour and cake and pastry flour both have a lower protein content than regular flour, resulting in more tender baked goods.
The Process
There’s a visual of the process below. It’s very straightforward: Once you have the chilled vegan brown butter, it’s just a matter of putting all the ingredients in a bowl and mixing until well-combined, about 1 minute or so. Butter the sides and bottom of a cake pan with some vegan brown butter. 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.
Bake at 300F for about 20 minutes and then remove and let cool. The cookie dough will have risen but it will fall a bit in the pan while cooling.
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.
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 — like a doily. I 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.
Carefully remove the doily and your cookies are dusted with lemony-sugar and ready to impress.
Before you make this shortbread check out the Dark Chocolate Bark Recipe and also Vegan Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. Making all 3 of the recipes on the same day would be a great idea. Make enough vegan brown butter for both kinds of cookies and then use the buttery pecans that result from the vegan brown butter-making process in the Dark Chocolate Bark. You will not regret this!
Printable 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.
Notes
About Vegan Brown Butter
Make the vegan brown butter earlier in the day or the night before so that it has time to chill. It will be a thick, pourable liquid. Use the buttery pecans to make Dark Chocolate Bark.Substitutes for Vegan Brown Butter
If you’re in a hurry, you can use regular margarine for this recipe too. The cookies will have a slightly different texture, and the taste will not be identical but they are still good.Nutritional Information
Nutrition information is an estimate only, without the icing sugar toppings.Nutrition
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