Vegan Blood Orange and Pistachio Cookies
These delicate Vegan Blood Orange and Pistachio Cookies are full of the sweet fragrance of blood oranges with some added crunch and nuttiness from the pistachios. Get the recipe below.
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Seasonal flavours
I love to cook with the seasons. For this recipe I took inspiration from one of my favourite winter fruits: blood oranges. They are only available for such a short period of time (January – March) so I always grab a few when I see them in the supermarkets.
Blood oranges are special not just because of their speckled, red colour but because of their flavour. It’s more floral and tart than your average orange.
It gets its distinct look and unique flavour from the conditions in which they are grown. It needs to be warm during the day and then drop to -1°C or -2°C at night. Without these temperatures they don’t have their special characteristics.
Pistachios work so well with orange that they were the obvious nut to include in this recipe.
How to make vegan cookies
Making the cookie dough involves a few steps. Creaming together butter and sugar, adding the flour and nuts then kneading to bring it together into a dough.
Once the dough is formed it’s very important to leave it to chill. This will mean that when its rolled out and baked it will keep its shape.
We want to use a pretty cookie cutter for a lovely delicate biscuit. I’ve gone for a round scallop edged cookie cutter but you can choose whatever you like. The size and shape of your cookie cutter will determine just how many you can get out of the dough so the servings is just a rough estimate.
These cookies will bake in no time at all – just 12 – 15 minutes. Any longer and they will catch on the edges, and go really hard and brittle. We don’t want that!
How to decorate these blood orange and pistachio cookies
In case you weren’t sure what flavour these cookies were – I’ve used blood orange icing and chopped pistachios to decorate their tops.
Making the icing is easy, simply mix blood orange juice with icing sugar until it is just thick enough to pipe. You don’t want it so runny it’s going to slide off of the cookies.
Before the icing sets, sprinkle over some pistachios.
If you leave them out for an hour or two the icing will firm up and they will be ready to eat!
The recipe
Vegan Blood Orange and Pistachio Cookies
Equipment
- Rolling Pin
- Cookies cutters
- Baking trays
- Cooling rack
- Icing bags
Ingredients
For the cookie dough
- 150 g vegan block butter or margarine
- 100 g caster sugar
- 1 blood orange zest only
- 275 g plain flour
- 2 tbsp pistachios finely chopped
- 0.5 blood orange juice only
For the decoration
- 250 g icing sugar
- 0.5 blood orange juice only
- 2 tbsp pistachios finely chopped
Instructions
To make the cookies
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and zest of the blood orange until light and fluffy (I use an electric mixer but this can be done by hand).
- Add in the flour and pistachios and stir until combined; to bring it together into a ball of dough, add the juice of the blood orange and stir.
- Lightly dust your work surface with flour and tip the dough out (don’t worry if its still crumbly at this stage, there’s no need to add extra juice).
- Knead the dough to bring it together until its one smooth ball of dough. Avoid overworking it.
- Wrap the dough in cling film or place it into a Ziploc bag and place into the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes. While the dough is cooling, line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper and place to one side.
- Once the dough is chilled, roll it out on to a floured surface. Be sure to move / pick up the dough and rotate in between rolling it out to stop it sticking to your work surface. Stop once the dough is roughly 5mm / ¼ inch thick.
- Cut out as many cookies as you can and place them straight on to the lined baking trays. Place these trays into the fridge for 30 minutes.
- Bring together all of the trimmings into a ball, re-roll and cut out more cookies. Keep repeating this until you have use up all of the dough and don’t forget to chill them before baking.
- While the cookies are chilling, preheat the oven to 180 C / 350 F / gas mark 4.
- Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes until they are just golden brown.
- Once baked, transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and leave to cool completely before decorating
To decorate
- Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl and slowly add just 1 tbsp of blood orange juice at a time until the icing is smooth and thick. It should be thick enough to hold it's shape when piped. Be very cautious as it's much easy to add more juice to make it thinner than it is to add more icing sugar to make it thicker.
- Pipe a border of icing round the edge of the cookie in any shape you wish.
- Add a tsp more juice and then carefully spoon or pipe the thinner icing into the centre of the cookies, the outlines you have already created will act as a dam to stop it flowing over the edges of your cookies.
- Add the finely chopped pistachios to the top.
- Leave the icing to dry for an hour or two before eating.
Nutrition
More blood orange recipes
More biscuits and cookies
For more cookie and biscuit recipes like this, check out the recipe archive.