Rangoli Cookies (Eggless Diwali Sugar Cookies)

These eggless rangoli cookies bring the colors of Diwali to your dessert table. No cookie cutters, no special piping tips, and no cookie decorating experience needed.

These rangoli cookies are perfect for celebrating Diwali (Deepavali). The bright rangoli patterns capture the spirit of the holiday and the cookies are eggless, which makes them ideal for serving and gifting since many families avoid eggs during the festive season.

The icing designs are inspired by rangoli, an Indian folk art popular during Diwali and other auspicious occasions like Navratri, Onam, Pongal and even weddings. Rangoli is usually painted on doorsteps with colored flour.

The designs are usually symmetrical geometric shapes and are also often inspired by things in nature. It is meant for decoration, to bring good luck, and welcome visitors.

I first brought this art form to a cookie back in 2010, and they've been part of my Diwali baking ever since. They're a nice alternative to traditional sweets like ghughra or nankhatai, a popular Indian biscuit.

These Diwali cookies start with an eggless sugar cookie dough spiced with cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon. You've probably seen rangoli cookies from professional bakers with impossibly intricate piping. These are not those. I've kept the designs simple with no cookie cutters required. 

The square shape provides an easy canvas for symmetrical rangoli designs. A DIY piping bag made with parchment paper eliminates the need for special piping tips and pastry bags. 

They're a beautiful addition to a Diwali cookie box, decorating them is an activity the whole family can join, and they're just as welcome at any celebration that could use some color.

Ingredients Needed

A few notes on what's here and why it matters:

• Whole wheat and all-purpose flour. The blend gives these cookies a slightly nutty, earthy flavor. If you'd rather use only all-purpose flour, that works too but the cookie is slightly less tender. 
• Butter. Room temperature, so it creams properly with the sugar. 
• Milk. This is the eggless binder, and the amount varies with your flour and the humidity in your kitchen. Start with 3 tablespoons and add a teaspoon at a time until the dough just comes together. It should hold when pressed without feeling sticky.
• Cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg. These spices add a subtle festive taste without overpowering the icing. 
• Vanilla extract. Adds flavor to the cookie. Be sure to use pure extract not imitation extract. 
• Gel food coloring. Gel gives you saturated rangoli colors without loosening the icing the way liquid coloring does. Traditional rangoli palettes lean bright: fuchsia, marigold orange, turmeric yellow, deep green, royal blue. To be clear, I have shifted to using natural gel dyes since I first wrote this post so some of the photos show lighter colors. Natural dyes tend to be less bright.
• Granulated Sugar and Confectioners' Sugar. Granulated sugar sweetens the dough and confectioners' sugar makes up the sweet cookie icing.

How to Make Rangoli Cookies

Start by creaming the butter and sugar in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer until light and fluffy, about three minutes, stopping and scraping the bowl down in between.  Beat in the milk and vanilla until combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk together both flours, the spices, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix just until a dough forms. If it looks crumbly and won't hold together, add another teaspoon of milk.

Here's the step that makes decorating day easier: roll the dough out to a quarter inch thick before chilling. Roll it between two sheets of parchment, slide the whole sheet onto a tray, and chill for at least 30 minutes. Cold, pre-rolled dough cuts cleanly and the shapes won't distort when you move them.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cut the chilled dough into squares with a sharp knife, or use round or diamond cutters if you have them.

Squares are the easiest and rangoli designs are often drawn within a square grid. Plus, they waste almost no dough. You can re-roll any scraps.

Arrange the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet 1-2 inches apart and bake for 12-15 minutes, until the edges are just turning golden. The tops should still look pale.

Let them rest on the sheet for five minutes, then move them to a rack to cool completely. They must be fully cool before decorating or the icing will melt and bleed.

Store the undecorated cookies airtight until you're ready to decorate. They can be stored undecorated for a week or you can even freeze them for up to a month. See notes in the storage section. This makes it an easy project to split across a busy festival week.

Decorating: Rangoli Designs for Cookies

This is the fun part, and it's easier than it looks. If you can pipe a dot and a line, you can decorate these. Every design shown  is built from those two shapes, starting from a center point and working outward - the same way rangoli is drawn on a doorstep.

Getting the Icing Right

The icing should fall from a spoon in a ribbon that holds its shape for a few seconds before melting back into the bowl. Too thin and your lines will spread and bleed into each other. Too thick and it won't flow from the piping bag. 

Adjust a teaspoon of milk or a spoonful of confectioners' sugar at a time. Refer to my Easy Cookie Icing Recipe for more tips on this icing. It's the same one I've used here.

To color the icing, divide it among small bowls and color each with gel coloring, then transfer to piping bags with small tips or parchment cones with a very small opening cut. Thin lines are what make these look intricate.

My preference is to use parchment cones. It gives me more control and precision while piping. (Paper cones are how traditional henna artists pipe intricate designs too!)  To learn how to make these easy parchment cones for icing, head over to my DIY Piping Bag post for full instructions and a video. 

Optional: a white icing background makes the colors pop even more. To create this look, pipe a white border around the square and then flood the inside and let it dry. This extra step of creating a white canvas takes a bit longer because it needs to dry at least an hour before you pipe on top of it.

The longer you let it dry the sturdier that white top will be. I have done the step one day before also and then left the cookies to dry in a tray before making the design over it. 

General Method for Designing

Start with a dot in the middle. Then add some anchor dots on the edges, either in the middle or at the corners. Use these dots to create a guide for your lines. This will help keep symmetry in your design. Work with one color at a time. 

TIP: Let each color set for a few minutes before piping the next ring against it if you want crisp separation, or work wet-into-wet on purpose for a marbled effect.

Here's a step by step example for one of the cookies:

1. Draw a center dot and then 4 dots on each side, creating a cross. Then add two dots on either side of those 4 dots.
2. Draw a curved line from the center to the two side dots on all four sides.
3. Connect the lines to create heart shaped petal at each corner.
4. Fill  in the top  of the heart halves.
5. Change colors and add dots and lines at the corners and edges.
6. Change colors and add five dots in the center

I highly recommend starting by sketching on paper with some colored pencils. It will help you with ideas and you will know how to work with the colors one at a time if you practice it on paper. Once you do a few, you may find yourself getting creative straight onto the cookie. 

Let the finished cookies air-dry overnight, uncovered, until the icing is fully hard before stacking, bagging, or boxing them.

These sugar cookie decorating ideas work for any occasion. Swap the palette and the same techniques make snowflakes in December. 

Storage and Make-Ahead

These Diwali cookies are ideal for making ahead. The dough can be made and rolled up to two days ahead and kept chilled, or frozen for up to 1 month, well wrapped. Undecorated baked cookies keep in an airtight container for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 1 month.

Let undecorated cookies thaw completely before decorating. Once decorated and fully dry, the cookies keep about 5 days in an airtight container. For more detail, see my guide to freezing baked cookies and cookie dough. 

Gifting Rangoli Cookies for Diwali

For gifting rangoli cookies, let the decorated cookies fully dry before packaging. I let them dry in the open air overnight just to be sure. Seal cookies in cellophane bags or layer them in a box between sheets of parchment. A mixed box of two or three designs, tied with a bright ribbon, makes a beautiful hostess gift or mithai-box alternative. 

More Diwali Recipes

Round out your Diwali dessert table with these:

• Chocolate Barfi
• White Chocolate Diwali Bark
• Cardamom Cookies
• Saffron Cupcakes
• Cardamom Chocolate Truffles

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