Nightmare Before Christmas Cookies

Vegan Nightmare Before Christmas Skeleton Reindeer have never been so cute and delicious. This chocolate cutout cookie recipe is easy to make, and the vegan royal icing is even easier to work with. These vegan christmas cutout cookies are perfect for a holiday cookie exchange or as gifts for friends.

This recipe makes 20 nightmare before christmas skeleton reindeer cookies.

Table of Contents

(click the links below to skip to the section you’re looking for)

• Cookie Recipe
• Icing Recipe
• Ingredient Substitutions
• Video
• Contact Me with Questions
• Similar Recipes

If you’ve glanced through any other holiday recipes on this website, you might have noticed a common theme…Christmas isn’t exactly my favorite holiday. It might even be my least favorite. However, Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my favorite movies (go figure, right?). Last December, we went to see the San Francisco Symphony perform the entire soundtrack from Nightmare Before Christmas live while you watch the movie. It was an experience that I highly recommend to anyone who lives near a big city. During that performance, I knew I had to make these cookies. And they’re as delicious as they are cute.

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Ingredients you need for this Vegan Chocolate Cutout Cookie Recipe

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• 2 cups organic unbleached flour
• ½ cup dutch cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoons organic cornstarch
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon non-aluminum baking powder
• ½ cup vegan butter or margarine
• ½ cup organic spectrum palm shortening
• 1 cup organic sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ¼ cup nondairy milk

Vegan Chocolate Cutout Cookie Directions

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl: 2 cups flour, ½ cup dutch cocoa powder , 1 tablespoon arrowroot powder or cornstarch, ¼ teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon baking powder.

Mix the ½ cup vegan butter, ½ cup spectrum sustainable organic palm shortening , and 1 cup sugar together on a fast speed using a stand mixer or a handheld electric mixer for like 5 minutes. Turn to low.

Add the ¼ cup nondairy milk and 2 teaspoons vanilla while mixing.

Sift in half of the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated. Sift and mix in the rest.

Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap to chill for 3-4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350° once the dough is done chilling.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and remove one dough ball from fridge.

Place the dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper to roll it out.

Roll as thinly as possible.

Remove the top piece of parchment paper and cut out as many shapes as you can, dipping your reindeer cookie cutter into dutch cocoa powder when needed to keep it from sticking.

Trade the dough remnants with the ball that’s in the fridge. Keep cutting until the cookie sheets are full of cut outs.

Bake for 8 minutes.

Cool on trays for 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to cooling rack.

Ingredients for Vegan Reindeer Skeleton Cookie Icing Recipe

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• 1 cup organic powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 tablespoon nondairy milk
• 1 tablespoon organic light corn syrup

How to Decorate Vegan Nightmare Before Christmas Cookies

Sift the cup of powdered sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer (or you can use a handheld mixer).

Add half of the tablespoon of nondairy milk and the entire tablespoon of corn syrup and mix using the stand mixer with the whisk attachment.

Mix on a low speed to start with (unless you like the look of yourself covered in powdered sugar), and increase speed as the ingredients start to combine. Scrape the sides and bottom with a silicone spatula and then mix again.

Add the rest of the nondairy milk little by little, mixing constantly, until you get a consistency that’s thin enough to pipe, but not too thin that it will spread.

Transfer the icing to a squeeze bottle with a narrow opening at the top or to a piping bag fitted with a small round tip.

Draw the skeleton details onto the cookies.

Let them dry for around 5 hours before trying to stack them.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Flour: If you don’t have all-purpose flour or you have some, but not enough, mix and match with any combination of wheat flour, spelt flour, or whole wheat pastry flour. The cookies might taste healthier with some of these though. If you avoid gluten, or if you have friends or family who are gluten free, you can substitute the all-purpose flour with a gluten-free flour blend to make these cookies gluten free.
• Dutch Cocoa Powder: Dutch cocoa reacts differently from standard cocoa powder, so you can make a substitution without altering the chemistry. If you only have regular cocoa powder, you can use that in place of the dutch cocoa powder. Just make sure you replace the tablespoon of baking powder with ½ tablespoon of baking soda. This will help reduce the acidity from the natural cocoa.
• Cornstarch: I always buy organic or non-GMO cornstarch, since corn is frequently a genetically modified ingredient. If you don’t have cornstarch, you can replace it with arrowroot powder using a 1:1 ratio.
• Baking Powder: Keep in mind that baking powder does expire, so it works best if it’s fresh/newish. I use non-aluminum because my memory is already terrible and I don’t want Alzheimer’s Disease. But if all you have is regular baking powder, that will work. If you’re out of baking powder, you can replace the baking powder with ½ teaspoon of baking soda.
• Vegan Butter: If you avoid soy, Earth Balance makes a soy-free vegan margarine. I always buy organic whipped Earth Balance, but I have also used Miyoko’s butter successfully in this recipe. If vegan butter or margarine is hard to find or not something you have in your house, you can use an equal amount of spectrum organic palm shortening in its place.
• Palm Shortening: If you don’t have access to palm shortening, you can replace it with an equal amount of vegan butter or margarine.
• Sugar: For the sugar in this recipe, you can use any number of sugars, as long as they’re vegan: sucanat, coconut sugar, raw sugar, organic sugar, or demurara. If you’re not sure if your sugar is vegan, you can contact the company and ask, but avoid conventional white sugar or granulated sugar, and you should be ok. If you don’t have a blender to blend sugar, you can use organic powdered sugar or granulated vegan or organic sugar. Powdered sugar will have a better result, but either will work.
• Vanilla Extract: If you try to eat clean, make sure your vanilla extract is pure vanilla extract and not artificial vanilla flavoring. Imitation vanilla is often made with chemicals. If you’re out of vanilla, you can omit it.
• Nondairy Milk: You can use any variety of non-dairy milk you want for this recipe. If you don’t have the full amount of nondairy milk that this recipe requires, you can substitute any amount with water or nondairy creamer. You can also mix and match different nondairy milks. I do this a lot when my macadamia milk only has a little bit left at the bottom and I use it up, and then I open a new container of almond, oat, or soymilk.
• Corn Syrup: I use organic light corn syrup for the GMO reason mentioned above, but you can use any kind you have. This just helps the icing be the right consistency.

Video

Here’s a video of me decorating my nightmare before christmas reindeer cookies.

Comments or Questions?

If you make this recipe, I would love it if you’d snap a pic, post to instagram, and tag me @vegandollhouse. It seriously makes my day/week/month!

Please message me (instagram or email) if you have any questions or feedback about the recipe.

Similar Recipes

This recipe is a mashup of my devil’s food cookies and my unicorn cookies.

If you like Nightmare Before Christmas as much as I do, you might also like my frogs breath soup and my snake & spider stew. Both are soups that are mentioned in the movie.

If you want these chocolate cookies to look more black and less brown, use the cookie dough recipe from my black cocoa cookie recipe. I did that for my coffin cookies, and they came out really cute.

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