Another timeless classic – the no bake cookie. These Orange Coconut No-Bake Cookies are a little different than your standard chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal no bakers, but they are perfect for hot summer days when you’re craving a little bit of sweetness!

You don’t need much to make them either. A blender or food processor is handy, but I’ve made many batches of these cookies without one! The original recipe is from my mom, I think she got it out of an old Taste of Home magazine. It calls for vanilla wafers, pecans, powdered sugar, coconut, and orange juice concentrate. But alas, although it looked vegan at my first glance, some more investigating revealed a sad truth that had me stumped for a while.

Vanilla Wafers have eggs in them!

For shame, ‘Nilla! Just kidding. you do you. I just didn’t know, and I was a little bummed to find out I couldn’t use them. Especially since they are a pretty important ingredient in this recipe! However, I’m no quitter when it comes to delivering delicious sweet morsels to you, my friend, so I explored all my options. First, I checked around the grocery store to see if any of the other brands of wafers were vegan. They were not. (Side note, if you ever find any that are, let me know!) Second idea was to make my own eggless, vegan vanilla wafers, but after a quick recipe search, that just sounded like too much work. These are supposed to be easy, low effort, no bake cookies! Making your own wafers would totally defeat that purpose.

Thirdly, I started exploring what other cookies I could use instead. I know Oreos are vegan, so I started looking at the golden oreo packs to see if they were too. Ding ding ding!! Winner! They even have lemon flavored Oreos now, which would probably be good in this too, but I went with the classic vanilla sandwich cookies. And, to my delight, they worked like a charm and the cookies came out delicious!

Front image of ingredients needed for orange no bake cookies; coconut, powdered sugar, vanilla Oreos, orange juice concentrate, and chopped nuts

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So, gather your ingredients,

And let’s make some orange coconut no-bake cookies! If you have a blender or food processor, toss in your cookies and pulse until they are smooth crumbs. Add in your pecans or walnuts, and pulse just a couple more times. It’s okay if you have some bigger bits, it’ll give you some texture variety. If you don’t have a blender or food processor, put your cookies in a large ziplock bag and use a rolling pin or other heavy kitchen tool to crush them up. You can use a knife to roughly chop the nuts.

Transfer the crushed cookies and walnuts to a large bowl and add coconut and powdered sugar. Pour in your orange juice concentrate, and stir with a heavy spoon or spatula to combine. It will look super dry, like there is no way it will come together, but it will, I promise! If you need to use your hand to get it all mixed up, go for it.

Once it comes together, use a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop to form cookie balls, then roll in powdered sugar and refrigerate until firm! The original recipe said you can roll in additional powdered sugar before serving, but I’ve found I like them best when the sugar soaks in just a bit and the cookies aren’t freshly dusty, haha. But feel free to try either way!

If you are looking to make sure your sugar is vegan, look for organic, less processed sugars. Sugar does come from beet or cane plants, but bone char from animals is often used in the refining process. If that bothers you, something like this Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Powdered Sugar might be a good choice!