Print
A close-up of an adorable vegan bee cookie with a chocolate smiley face, pink cheeks, and almond slice wings, sandwiched with chocolate buttercream. Other bee cookies are slightly blurred in the background on a green gingham cloth.

Vegan Bumble Bee Cookies - adorable Easter & spring treat!

Prep: 30 mins | Cook: 12 mins | Total: 42 mins | Quantity: 12 sandwich cookies

Ingredients

Cookie ingredients:

  • 125g (1/2 cup) vegan block butter
  • 140g (3/4 cup) caster (super fine) sugar
  • 55ml (1/4 cup) plant milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 215g (1 + 1/3 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • yellow food colouring (optional)

Buttercream frosting ingredients:

  • 75g (1/3 cup) vegan block butter
  • 165g (1 cup) icing (powdered) sugar
  • 20g (1/4 cup) cacao powder (sub with cocoa powder)

Decoration ingredients:

  • 100g dark chocolate
  • 2 teaspoons icing sugar
  • pink food colouring
  • 24 flaked almonds

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 170 Fan / 190 C / 375 F / Gas 5 and line 2 large baking trays with parchment or silicon mats
  2. To make the cookies, beat together the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. You can do this by hand (you'll need to soften the butter first) or in a stand mixer using the paddle attachment
  3. Beat in the milk, vanilla and yellow colouring. Then add the flour and baking powder and beat until just mixed together
  4. To get them all as much the same size as possible you'll need to do some weighing. Weigh the whole amount of dough then divide by the number of cookies you want to make. This recipe makes 24 cookies so 12 sandwich cookies. So divide the total weight by 24 and you'll get the weight of each cookie
  5. Once you've got your weighed out blobs of dough, roll them into balls then flatten slightly in your palm. Place on a lined baking tray. They do spread so you'll need to space each of the cookies a little way apart from each other
  6. Bake for 12 minutes until just domed and lightly golden - they do firm up as they cool. Leave on the tray for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely
  7. While they're cooling beat together the ingredients for the buttercream - either by hand (again using softened butter) or in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment
  8. TIP: a very small splash of boiling water while you're whipping the buttercream frosting makes it super light and fluffy
  9. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle
  10. Once the cookies have cooled melt the dark chocolate in the microwave or a bain-marie (a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water). Spoon some of the chocolate into a small paper piping bag then pipe eyes and a smiley mouth on half of the amount of cookies
  11. Squeeze any chocolate out of the bag into the rest of the melted chocolate. Dip the other half of the cookies in the chocolate (the domed side) to make the bee bums! Leave somewhere cool to set
  12. Mix a spoonful of icing sugar with a literal tiny amount of water and an equally tiny amount of pink food colouring. Spoon that into another piping bag then pipe 'cheeks' onto the bee faces
  13. Once set turn the bee bums over and on the flat side pipe a swirl of buttercream covering the cookie. Add the face to make a sandwich. Add a couple of flaked almonds to make the 'wings'
  14. Store the cookies in an airtight container somewhere cool for up to 5 days

Recipe by The Cook & Him at https://thecookandhim.com/recipes/vegan-bumble-bee-cookies-adorable-easter-spring-treat/