One of my favorite things to do around the holidays is to bake sugar cookies in fun shapes using cookie cutters, then decorate them with icing, sprinkles, and other fun ingredients.
I have been wanting to create a vegan, gluten-free, and refined-sugar free sugar cookie for a while now, and I’m so happy with the way this turned out. They come out firm and crisp, with almost a shortbread vibe, and the buttery sweetness melts in your mouth when you take a bite. The dough requires no chill time, simply roll out and start creating! The cookies don’t spread at all while baking, so you can be sure they will hold whatever shape you create with your cookie cutters. You can also store leftover dough in the fridge, simply add the tiniest bit of milk to get the dough soft again if it dries out a bit.
For icing, you can either use an organic powdered sugar mixed with natural food coloring/pigments and a little bit of milk, or you can mix dairy free cream cheese with maple syrup or honey to taste, then stir in different food colorings/pigments. I’ll let you know what I used for coloring below.
RECIPE
1.5 cups oat flour (finely ground store-bought works best for baking)
1 cup almond flour
1/2 cup coconut sugar
5 tablespoons cold vegan butter or regular butter
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a large mixing bowl, preferably using a hand mixer, cream together the coconut sugar, butter, vanilla, and maple syrup until whipped and fully combined.
- In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients: oat flour, almond flour, baking powder, and salt, until fully combined. Add the dry ingredients in with the wet bit by bit and work with your hands until a nice firm but malleable dough is formed.
- Place the ball of cookie dough between two pieces of parchment or wax paper and roll out to be about 1/2 inch thick. Place cookie cutters all over until you run out of space, then peel away surrounding cookie dough to leave only the cookies/shapes. Carefully using a thin spatula, lift each cookie onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 8 minutes. I found 8 minutes to do the trick, they should be golden brown on the edges. They will firm up as they cool. Enjoy!
For icing:
You can use whatever icing you’d like, as I described above, I use either powdered sugar mixed with just enough milk to make a thick but runny icing, then I mix in coloring. You can also mix dairy free plain cream cheese with honey or maple syrup, then add in coloring. I don’t measure anything, I just keep adjusting to taste, and starting with less color and adding more until I get the shade I want.
cookie cutters I used:
For coloring I used:
natural food coloring (comes with blue, red, and yellow so you can combine to make any color)
You can also decorate with cut out fruit shapes, mint leaves, berries, coconut shreds, and more! Get creative 🙂