Vegan Crescent Cookies

These vegan crescent cookies will taste like a nuttier friend of a shortbread cookie. The ground walnuts give them a moister texture, so they are crumbly in a melt-in-your-mouth way. And the generous dusting of the vanilla powdered sugar will lift these to Christmas cookie heights.

If you want more vegan cookie recipes, try our snowball cookies, lemon cookies with blueberry jam, coconut cookies, thumbprint cookies, or the best shortbread cookies.

What to expect from this recipe?

They are crumbly, nutty, powdered sugar-topped little crescent-shaped cookies that we serve as sweet treats after our Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day lunch. These Hungarian Christmas cookies are the first of many recipes where we adapted a family recipe to be vegan and gluten-free.

As long as I can remember, crescent cookies with walnuts have always been an unquestionable part of our family’s Christmas. In other words, there is no Christmas without them. The original recipe is handed down to generations. These cookies are kid favorites and the first ones to disappear, so we always make sure to bake enough. 

You may have already come across them, as they are famous worldwide. These Hungarian walnut crescent cookies (also known as Hókifli) are very similar to other nation’s cookies may they have different shapes (balls or crescent moon) or are flavored with different nuts (pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts, or almonds). These are: 

• Polish walnut crescent cookies (Migdałowe Półksiężyce)
• Austrian or German vanilla crescents (Vanillekipferl)
• Balkan vanilla crescent cookies (Vanilin Kiflice)
• Mexican wedding cookies or Russian tea cakes (also known as snowball cookies)

Ingredients

My grandma’s family recipe for Vanillekipferl has six ingredients: all-purpose flour, butter, powdered sugar, ground walnuts, egg yolk, and vanilla sugar. You can see her original recipe in the recipe card below. But to make our vegan crescent cookies, you will need the following ingredients:

• Ground walnuts or walnut meal → You can use pecans, almonds, or other nuts like pistachios or hazelnuts to create a new flavor. We recommend using the coarse nut meal and not the fine nut flour.
• Oat flour
• Tapioca starch → You can use other substitutes like cornstarch
• Coconut sugar → You can use other dry sugars like cane sugar, brown sugar, or white sugar. We haven’t tested this recipe with a liquid sweetener like maple syrup.
• Vegan butter → Like Earth Balance butter sticks
• Vanilla sugar for dusting – see below for more details

🛒 You can find detailed measurements for all ingredients in the printable version of the recipe card at the bottom of this post.

How to make vanilla sugar?

You can buy vanilla sugar online in small packets. Add them to your powdered or icing sugar (1 small package to ½ cup of sugar) before dusting.

Alternatively, you can place a vanilla bean (empty vanilla bean works as well!!!) with powdered sugar for 1-2 weeks in a mason jar or other airtight container. You get a more robust flavor if you keep them longer or add more than one vanilla bean.

Instructions

You can use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, but not everyone has one. I like making things simple, so I use my food processor. Even if you don’t have dough blades, classic blades also work like a charm.

Mixing the cookie dough

1. Add all ingredients (ground walnuts, oat flour, tapioca starch, coconut sugar, vegan butter) to a food processor.
2. Pulse until they form a ball.

The easiest way to make a crescent shape

3. Take your rolling mat and lightly flour it.
4. Tear a small dough and roll it out to form logs.
5. Cut the logs into approx. three inches (ca. 8 cm) with a sharp knife.
6. Take the 3-inch pieces and bend them into crescent moons.

Baking and dusting

7. Bake them on parchment paper in a 350 Fahrenheit (ca. 180 °C) pre-heated oven for 12 minutes. Check around 8 minutes to see how they progress.
8. Dust them with the vanilla and sugar mixture while they are still hot. Leave them on the parchment paper to cool before transferring to anywhere else to avoid breaking.

Top tips

• Flour your surface – I like using rice flour to dust my rolling mat. Rice flour seems to have a non-stick grainy consistency, making working with any dough easier.
• Dust them when they are hot – You need to dust the crescent cookies with powdered sugar while they are hot; otherwise, the sugar will not stick to them. I usually do that while they are still on the parchment paper, as moving them while they are hot is not an easy task.
• Parchment paper instead of a baking sheet – I recommend using parchment paper instead of a silicone baking sheet or cookie sheet, especially if you are baking multiple batches. That way, you can easily take out the cookies with the parchment paper to a wire rack and bake the next batch without downtime in the same baking tray. They will likely break if you use a silicone baking sheet and try to move them while they are hot.
• Place them close – As there is no baking powder, baking soda, or any other type of leavening, they will not rise significantly. You can place them relatively close to each other.
• When are they ready? – If they start to brown, you are too late. The crescent cookies will remain almost the same color before and after baking.

Variations

You can use this base vegan crescent cookie recipe, to make all the different variations.

Our recipe is the classic Hungarian walnut crescent cookies (Hókifli). But if you want to make Vanillekipferl just like the folks in Austria, use almonds instead of walnuts. Or dip the ends in melted chocolate to make the German version. In Italy, they also make almond crescent cookies, just like in Austria. We are all neighbors here in Europe with similar recipes.

FAQs and substitutions

How long will the cookies last?

They quickly disappear in my household, so 2-3 days. But if you make a large batch, they can last for several weeks. That is why they are perfect as edible Christmas gifts, like in the below photo.

Which nut to use?

We traditionally use walnuts. But if you don’t have any, you can use any other nuts like ground almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, or pistachios.

Can you freeze it?

You can freeze the cookie dough as well as the baked cookies without a problem. When you are ready to bake them, take the dough out of the freezer and let it thaw in the fridge overnight or at room temperature for at least 1 hour. Roll, cut, and bake.

Can you substitute tapioca starch?

I have only tested these vegan crescent cookies with cornstarch and tapioca starch and saw no difference. Read our tapioca flour substitutes article for more starch options. I haven’t tested it with any all-purpose flour instead of oat flour.

Allergen info

This Vegan Crescent Cookies recipe is dairy-free and egg-free.

• Vegan – All suggested ingredients are supposed to be vegan.
• Nut-free – Nut meal is an essential ingredient, and I haven’t tested this recipe with seeds. Let me know if you do.
• WFPB-friendly (whole foods plant-based) – Vegan butter is not compliant since it has processed oil. We haven’t tested this recipe with nut butter.
• Gluten-free – All proposed ingredients are supposed to be gluten-free, but always check the packaging for cross-contamination info, especially for cornstarch and oat flour.
• Soy-free – Companies frequently use soy to make vegan butter. So select soy-free products. All other ingredients are supposed to be soy-free.

More vegan cookie recipes

For more vegan dessert recipes, browse through our recipe collection or check out these delicious cookies:

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UPDATED: This recipe was originally posted in November 2019. More info, tips, and details were added and it was republished in October 2022.