Cinnamon Toast Shortbread Cookies

These were featured in the 2008 Canadian Living magazine holiday baking edition, which my mom sends me every year, and just looked soooo cute! I love cinnamon toast (which is simply a mixture of cinnamon and sugar sprinkled onto hot buttery toast, in case it's a uniquely North American thing) so just had to make these. The cookies themselves were already vegan as long as you replaced the butter with vegan margarine, no eggs even! They are very good too, I was surprised how little sugar went into the dough but it works, the icing counters that quite nicely.

I did change the icing recipe though. The original called for cooking butter until browned then mixing in the icing sugar, cinnamon and cream. I tried this with margarine but it turns out that margarine cooked this way ends up tasting like very old deep frying fat - it was not good, trust me! So I just whipped up a regular buttercream and added cinnamon to it - worked very well.

I can't find the recipe on their website so here it is, I'll post a cut in half version as the original made tons of cookies. Also, I ran out of plain flour so used self raising here, worked just fine.

Makes about 16 small cookies:

1/2 cup vegan margarine (110g)
1/4 cup sugar (50g)
2 Tbsp cornstarch (cornflour)
135g plain flour (that's half of 1 3/4 cups)

Beat margarine and sugar together until smooth. Stir in cornstarch until smooth, stir in flour. Roll into a 9" long log, wrap in cling film and chill for at least half an hour. Flatten 3 sides of the log, leaving one side rounded then using chopsticks or similar press indents into 2 opposing sides of the log. (This is the recipe authors complicated way of saying, make the log look like a loaf of bread.) Wrap again in cling film and chill for at least another half hour. Preheat oven to a low 140C, slice dough into generous 1/4" slices and place on a paper lined baking sheet. You will have to touch up the slices to make sure they look like toast again as slicing can make the shapes a little wonky. Place 2" apart on the sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until edges are lightly golden. Let cool on sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to a rack to fully cool.

Cinnamon Butter Cream:
3 Tbsp vegan margarine
2 cups icing sugar
1 - 2 Tbsp oat cream, or soy
1/8 tsp cinnamon, or more to taste
tiny pinch of salt

Whisk all together till smooth, add more cream or icing sugar until soft spreadable consistency.

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