Well, you may be already be asking, “Why would I make my own Oreo cookies? I mean, aren’t they already vegan?”
I have to preface this blog post & recipe with a notation that, I am not trying to start a wildfire around non vegan sugar and the use of palm oil here today; I honestly just want to share my recipe for Homemade Vegan Oreos Cookies!
So to answer the question loosely whether or not Oreos are vegan, it depends first of all on where the Oreo manufacturer is sourcing their sugar.
Wait a minute! Sugar is not vegan!???
Yes, this is the #1 most asked question I get.
Any sugar that was processed through animal bone char cannot be classified as vegan sugar, since obviously it is using exploited animal bones for the processing.
In the USA, Nabisco Brand is definitely making their Oreos from sugar that came from animal bone char processing.
So here in the USA they are not vegan.
In the UK though, I have been told they do not use animal bones, you lucky ducks across the pond!!
So I suppose this poses another question which is the snub nosed “How vegan are you?”
This is a heated topic and one that I am not trying to debate here on my blog, but it does make you wonder
“What else are they using animals in and for, that we don’t even realize!?”
Not to mention the heavy amounts of glyphosate found in many of the products we consume regularly including Oreos that top the list!
But that is a topic for another day and conversation.
Dang what has happened to the world and our food system!??
I didn’t even get into the Palm Oil discussion yet.
So for the self proclaimed hard core vegan and plant based eater, you probably wouldn’t catch them eating Nabisco Oreos not only for the sugar but because of that company’s heavy use of non sustainable palm oil.
To read more about it click here for Emily, the Bite Sized Vegan’s clear and supported article around palm oil and it’s exploitative practices.
Now with all that being said:
LET’S MAKE VEGAN, ORGANIC, SUSTAINABLE, NON GMO- GLYPHOSATE FREE OREOS!!
Yikes, I will say it again, what has happened to our food system?!
My cookies are already close to the Double Stuffed Cookies so you can adjust the thickness of the filling for the style you like best!
This recipe will also take flavorings like mint, coconut, strawberry extracts and many more!
For Chocolate stuffed cookies replace ¼ cup of the confectioners sugar with ¼ cup of cocoa powder
- For the Cookies:
- Organic All Purpose Flour unbleached 1 cup (125g)
- Dutch Process Cocoa * used used Hershey's Dark Blend ¼ (20g)
- Baking Soda ⅛ tsp
- Sea Salt pinch
- Organic Confectioners Sugar ½ cup + 2 Tablespoons (75g)
- Cold- Earth Balance Vegan Butter *or any vegan butter of your choice 10 Tablespoons (140g)
- Vanilla Extract 1 teaspoon (5ml)
- For the Filling:
- Organic Confectioners Sugar 1½ cups (180g)
- Earth Balance Vegan Butter *or any vegan butter of your choice 4 Tablespoons (65g)
- First prepare the chocolate cookie dough by combining the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and confectioners sugar in a large mixing bowl.
- Blend on low speed to combine, the add the diced cold vegan butter and continue blending on low to medium speed. It will seem that this is taking forever to come together and you will think there is something wrong with the recipe. Just wait. It may take 5 minutes or more
- It will eventually come together and at that point you can add the vanilla extract and blend on high for 10 seconds to incorporate well.
- Turn the very soft, sticky dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap or parchment paper (the plastic is way easier though) and then place another piece over top
- Roll to about ¼" thickness as shown in the video.
- Cut the dough with a 1¾" cookie cutter (dip the cutter in flour to make sure they don't stick in your cutter) and place them spaced ½" apart on a parchment lined (or non stick) sheet pan.
- Bake in a preheated 350°F oven for 10-12 minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack while you prepare the filling.
- In a large mixing bowl combine the confectioners sugar and vegan butter and blend on low until it all starts coming together to a thick paste like dough.
- This will also seem to take forever but it will eventually come together after about 2-4 minutes.
- Exactly as you rolled the sticky cookie dough you will do the same for this filling. Between 2 pieces of plastic wrap or parchment paper (trust me the plastic wrap is way easier!) and then cut out with the same cookie cutter (or slightly smaller if you prefer) dipped in a bit of confectioners sugar to make sure they don't stick
- Sandwich the filling with the cooled cookies and that's it!
Thank you for bringing awareness to the issues of sugar filtered through bone char and palm oil. (I buy Florida crystals organic sugar which is vegan. I also buy Spectrum organic shortening [palm oil] that is RSPO certified, but not the other one – CPO? My understanding is that it’s better to buy RSPO organic rather than non-certified, because if we don’t buy their product, there will be no demand for it and they won’t even bother trying to make it sustainable.)That video by Bite-Size Vegan is excellent! I so admire you, as a previously non-vegan professional baker, for your willingness and openness to learning about animal exploitation, and your commitment to transitioning to a vegan diet. Many omnivorous cooks & chefs not only don’t want to hear about animal suffering, they’re critical and derisive toward vegans. So props to you, lady!
Thanks Louisa! I could no longer turn my eyes from it just because my paycheck depended on me living off of the cruel industry. My favorite quote from the book that made me go vegetarian in 2009 “The slightest sound will wake someone who is sleeping, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to sleep”
Thanks for all of your continued support!
Can I make these into vanilla oreos by leaving out the cocoa powder?
Yes!
Yummy yummy. That’s all I’m thinking about when I watched the video. But for sugar I use the Wholesome brand. It’s defininatly vegan.
Unfortunately Earth Balance also has palm oil in it. Besides making your own vegan butter from Coconut oil, I’m not sure there is a commercial vegan butter without palm oil. It’s tough to be 100% environmental. But we all do our best. Great video Gretchen. Keep them coming.
Hi Terri! Thanks! yes I know Earth Balance has Palm Oil, as they state this on their website: Earth Balance fully supports the production of certified sustainable palm oil. We are a member of the RSPO council and are currently working towards Mass Balance for our sustainable palm oil sourcing.
As some of us know though, there is much debate as to whether these councils are actually helping, as they have been found to be very loosely managed.
It’s like everything that gets exploited in these days of bigger, better ,faster, more. I often think of the amount of coconuts being harvested for oil, meat, water etc.. and the devastation that the huge demand we have placed on it in recent years could be doing? Anytime something comes into “vogue” (like the more recent celery juice that everyone and their dogs are now doing) I worry about the impact such a high demand of anything has on our planet, the workers and the manufacturing, since anytime demand increases, so does the need for cheap ways to fill it. 🙁
Hello,
Ther look very good. Do you know how I could adapt the recipe to make them like golden oreos instead?
Thank you very much
Thanks! You can replace the cocoa powder with more flour (cake flour is best if you have it)
YAY! Home-made vegan Oreos!
Oreos company says “oreos” are not vegan, that it contains small amounts of milk.
Hello Gretchen! Thanks for this recipe!
I have a question! I made this cookies and they turned out great, but I used a vegan margarine in the dough, it is like shortening with almost no water content , the filling came out perfect, but the cookies where too crispy and did not held their shape on the oven (they basically fried). Should I add some water content to the dough and reduce the fat a bit when using shortening? would this help to hold the shape? I tried to use a cookie stamp but it faded away during baking… Thank you so much!
Oh wow yeah sounds like fried dough to me! LOL However vegan butter is essentially shortening afterall, Im not sure which brand you used since most people complain that vegan butter (aka margarine) has a higher water content which is NOT what we are going for! That said, I would probably want to look at your measurements first (CLICK HERE) since I cannot for see a problem by subbing what you did(at least not to this extent)
hello Gretchen , thanks for your great recipe , unfortunately i cant use vegan butter because i live in iran and the vegan butter like earth balance is not there so do u think i can use vegetable oil like canola or coconut for dough?
HI, not here, since this is a creaming method, you cannot use oil.. oil will just slosh around – creaming is a mechanical leavening process that needs to happen with a solid fat like butter or margarine
Did you try coconut oil if that’s available? There are also recipes on how to make vegan butter using coconut oil. As I don’t like to use coconut oil for health reasons, I use to make vegan butter myself. It seemed to work in most bake goods if I recall correctly. But you would have to experiment. Not sure if it would work in this recipe though as I haven’t tried it myself. Best
I just made these for my sisters birthday present and let me say.. they turned out amazing! My dough and filling came together quickly which I thought was a little odd but it all turned out really well in the end! Thank-you so much for this recipe I will definitely be making this again.
awesome! Thanks for the feedback!
Hello Gretchen! I am wondering about either using pure refined coconut oil, or cocoa butter or a combo of both….. The only vegan margarines that I;ve used have some water in them, which I imagine will throw things off. Are the vegan “butters” that you suggest pure fat, like real butter, and like the above substances I mention? If they are not pure fat, then what substances make up the balance of the content? I ask because if I do you either of the above alone or in combo, should I try to mimic what is in vegan butter, if anything, besides fat? Many, many thanks! I can hardly wait!!!! Yum, yum, yum!
Hi Mary Ellen, the trouble with using coconut OIL instead of vegan butter (aka – margarine) in a recipe like this is that the fat is meant to stay cold. Coconut oil has such a low melting point that I worry it may not fare well in this recipe. While I have not tried it, it is worth a try- if you grate the frozen coconut oil (with a box grater?) into the dry and see if it will work in properly that way. Please let me know if it works!
Hi, Is this recipe in your book? I have your book but haven’t experimented with many recipes yet. I’m wondering why use confectioners sugar over cane sugar? I’ll check my book and see if the recipe is there and maybe you explain it. Trying to make a vegan ice box cake for spouse and want to make homemade oreo cookies instead of buying them. I’ll try this out tomorrow. Best
I do get why confection sugar now. I made these today and they came out good. It does remind me more of a pie dough kind of texture though, yet still a cookie. Is that the correct texture? It sort of melts in your mouth kind of texture… but the taste is all there. I’m just wondering if I got this right. I think it should work as a vegan icebox cake though.
Best
What texture/consistency are these supposed to have? Is the crispiness of “real” Oreos? I see that fellow reader Susan, above, did not like the crispiness and/or looseness of her batch, and Yms mentioned pie dough texture, and wanting to use them for an Icebox Cake. That’s what I’m looking for – a crisp (maybe dry) cookie that I may also use the same way as Yms (Icebox Cake.)
These are shortbread cookies, so they will be crispy, dry textured and crumbly once bitten. They will do well inside of an ice box cake for sure.
Hi Gretchen! I tried making these and following the directions exactly, even pulling out my scale an d weighing them. The first batch was more a frosting texture and the second batch was better, but 2hen I tried to cut the shapes, they came out to soft. I attempted to combine both batches and did my best to form a disc and have it in the freezer.
I used Bob’s Red Mill GF 1 to 1 baking flour, Wild Harvest organic powdered sugar, Hershey’s 100% cacao and earth balance butter. I’m not sure what I did wrong,but I’m hoping freezing for a bit will help stiffen up the Doughboy I can cut and bake. I’d hate to waste the ingredients. Any ideas as to what I might have done wrong? Thank you!
Hi Heather! I’m sorry this happened! While I am not a GF baker, I have been told that many of my recipes work great with a 1:1 blend, that said I cannot say that ALL the recipes do work, however I would think this one would be quite friendly to that adaptation!
Did you happen to watch the video? Often times SEEING the real time visual of me making it, you may see where something is different than what you did.
CLICK HERE https://youtu.be/jOJAgQzbVPo
Hi Gretchen, thank you for responding.
I did refer to the video and could tell that my dough was different from yours. I pulled the “disc” of dough out of the freezer and rolled it out. I managed to get shapes that held together. When I baked them though, they came out kind of flat and crispy. I think they might still be ok, just not like yours. I am a pretty good baker, but vegan baking is a whole different ballgame for me. I am personally not vegan but one of my barista’s is and I don’t ever want her to feel left out. I made your caramel pecan bars for her last year and she loved them! I also want to say that I have learned a lot from you in regards to vegan baking like about the sugar for instance and using aquafaba and I really want to try making oneofyour cheesecakes! Thank you for that.
Thanks for the great recipe!!
I have kind of a weird question – do you think this recipe would work for a single, 9 in oreo cookie sandwich? My (vegan) friend bought me some amazing cake pans that look just like giant cookies and I would love to make a giant vegan oreo cookie cake (I plan on using a thin layer of funfetti white sheet cake frosted with vegan buttercream as the middle portion, I’ve made the vegan white cake and vegan buttercream before for them and they loved it!). Do you think that this recipe would be able to bake as one giant cookie instead of the small ones shown here? If you aren’t able to comment back within the next few weeks, I’ll just go ahead and try it out and post a new comment about how it worked (or didn’t, lol), so if you aren’t sure, no worries! Thanks in advance!!
Yes absolutely! I know exactly the pan~~, I think? ~ I also have one it is silicone, but looks like an Oreo cookie 😀