Christmas Cookies

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♥ These are for you Jen!! ♥

I've been making decorated Christmas Cookies like this for years! My good friend Jennifer back in Canada and I would get together a couple weeks before Christmas and make a huge batch and spend the evening decorating them and listening to pop-tastic Christmas music!! It became an absolute tradition and one I simply had to carry on with my son. I've based this recipe on our standard vanilla cut out cookie dough but have simply swapped the butter with vegan margarine and used egg replacer in place of the egg - works great :-)

Christmas Cookies:

165g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
92g vegan margarine
116g caster sugar
20g egg replacer + up to 50ml water
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract

Stir dry ingredients together, including egg replacer. Beat margarine together with sugar until creamy, beat in extracts. Stir into dry ingredients then add enough of the water until a dough ball forms and cleans the sides of the bowl. Wrap in cling film and chill for at least an hour. Cut in half then roll out on floured surface - not too thin. Cut out desired shapes, re-rolling scraps and cutting out more. Place on baking sheets lined with baking paper. Bake in 350/180 degree oven for 10 - 12 minutes - the edges should just start to look a bit golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Fluffy Vegan Buttercream Frosting:
1/4 cup shortening (vegetable fat like trex - about 50g)
1/4 cup 'pure' sunflower spread or other vegan spread (about 55g)
1 3/4 cups icing sugar (I forgot to weigh this!)
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp soy, rice or oat milk

In a mixer with the whisk attachment soften the shortening and pure until soft, add vanilla. Now add icing sugar 1 cup at a time beating well between each addition, you'll need to stop now and again and scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula. You want this one just slightly thicker than when using for cupcakes so keep that in mind. Separate into smaller bowls and add food colours, if it gets to thin add more icing sugar.

Decorate as desired.

♥ 2012 EDIT ♥

I've been wanting to make these again without the egg replacer - something I haven't used in years. My recent Canadian Living Holiday Baking magazine had a recipe for sugar cookies that just needed a little veganizing and these turned out great! The dough is workable, easy to cut out shapes, bake up perfectly and taste just as good as I remember.

Sugar Cookies

Yields about 36 cookies, depending on size of cutters.

• 150g vegan butter (3/4 cup)

• 240g caster sugar (1 cup) can use granulated.

• 1 tsp vanilla

• 350g flour (2 1/2 cups)

• 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/4 tsp salt

• 4 Tbsp water (more or less)

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla together until light and fluffy. Separately mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add this to the butter mixture and mix, add the water as you need it will depend on how 'wet' your vegan butter is. I used Vitalite which is quite a wet butter and needed the full amount. You want it to just come together as a dough. Shape the dough into 2 equal size balls, flatten slightly, wrap in cling film and chill for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 190C. Generously flour your work surface then gently knead the dough a few times until it is smooth - this will help in rolling it out. Keep the surface and your rolling pin well floured and roll out to about 1/4" thick. Flour your cutters and cut out your shapes.

Transfer to a baking paper lined baking sheet:

Then bake for 10 - 12 minutes. They should still be pale and only just getting golden at the edges.

Let cool for 5 minutes on the sheet then transfer to a wire rack to fully cool before decorating as you wish.

For the frosting, I no longer use the above recipe as I don't like using shortening in it, I don't really follow a recipe per say I just add a few tablespoons of vegan butter with a few drops of vanilla extract, mix it up then add enough icing sugar alternately with either dairy free milk or cream (whatever I have on hand) until it's creamy and tastes good :-)

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