Vegan shortbread recipe - pistachio and cardamom

This vegan shortbread recipe is deliciously buttery and crisp. Melt in your mouth with a hint of spice and crunchiness from the pistachios.

Now that autumn is here I’ve developed a propensity for comforting and delicious food. There’s nothing quite like a hot mug of hot chocolate with a biscuit straight from the oven. I made a batch of these over the weekend to indulge in whilst I put up my Christmas tree, yep I know it’s a bit early but it’s been that kind of year.

These vegan shortbread biscuits are perfect, crisp and buttery and oh so more is. You can even make a large batch of these cookies and freeze them and then just bake on demand. The biscuits when cooked will keep for 3-4 days in an airtight container.

What ingredients do you need?

12 green cardamom pods

400g of vegan butter

50g of ground rice

480g plain flour

1tsp of salt

70g of icing or powdered sugar

120g of pistachio nuts

Feel free to omit the pistachios and cardamoms if you’d prefer to have plain shortbread. You can also mix up the flavours, add orange flavouring if you’d like these to be organic flavoured ones, the flavour goes well with pistachios. You can even replace the pistachios with another nut if you don’t like pistachios. Or omit the pistachios and cardamom and replace with vegan chocolate chips for choc chip shortbread.

How to make these vegan shortbreads

Break up the cardamom pods in a food processor or high speed blender, you want to grind them into a fine dust.

With a stand or hand mixer beat the butter, ground rice, flour, salt, cardamom powder and icing sugar together. Stop once the mixture starts sticking together and resembles a paste.

Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for 60 minutes.

While the dough is in the fridge prepare the pistachios. Place the pistachios into your food processor and pulse a couple of times until you have small chunks.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out onto a floured surface. You want the dough to be approximately an inch in thickness. Scatter the pistachios on top and use your rolling pin to press the nuts into the dough.

Preheat your oven to 150C/Gas Mark 2.

Use a cookie cutter and cut the pastry into rounds approximately 5 inches in diameter.

Place the rounds onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes until the shortbread is a very light golden colour, don’t let them brown.

Best eaten warm.

Print