Thoughts from me beneath my willow trees.: Dairy Free Sugar Cookies

I thought I would share my yummy, dairy-free sugar cookie recipe with you all. You can even make this vegan if you'd like to use an egg substitute. The icing is also non-dairy and dye free as well. It may be hard to tell from this photo, but the icing is actually pink.

I think the key to these cookies is to not cook them too long. If you do, they become very hard and brittle. I prefer chewy cookies.

Non-dairy Sugar Cookies

2/3 cup coconut oil (warm this so it is melty, but it doesn't have to be liquid)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 egg
3/4 cup white sugar
1 Tbs coconut milk (or any non-dairy milk drink)
1 tsp baking powder (preferably a non-Aluminum variety)
2 tsp vanilla (use a good quality, non-irradiated type like Penzey's)
dash sea salt

Beat the coconut oil and sugar until blended. Add egg and vanilla. Mix well. Add salt and baking powder; mix then add one cup of flour; and mix well. Add milk and second cup of flour. Mix again.

Roll out dough (divide into about 3 portions for easier rolling) on floured surface, sprinkling more flour on to dough as needed to keep it from sticking. Using a cookie cutter, cut out desired shapes. You'll want the dough to be relatively thick. Thin cookies will bake too quickly and become brittle (we don't that!).

Place cookies on a baking sheet and then into a preheated 375 degree farenheit oven. Bake about 11 minutes, but you'll likely need to test this out with your own oven. I try not to brown the cookies like most recipes say, because at this point they are going to be brittle (again, we don't want this...)

When they are done, let them cool about 5 minutes and then remove them and place them on a cooling rack. If you take a cookie at this point and break it open, you should see a lot of layers. Much like GOOD pie crust. You want your cookies to be flaky.

Now, when they are cool, you can ice them. I whip up a simple mixture of non-dairy butter (or you can use coconut oil, but the butter has a less intrusive flavor--let's say 2-3 Tbs), a dash of vanilla (let's say about 1 tsp), powdered sugar (let's say about 2 cups), and coconut milk to bring it all together. If you want to make them pink, use strawberry jam; in which case you may need less milk, so add that last. I had made a strawberry pancake syrup, so I poured that in. Mmm, it was delicious!

If you don't have a problem with dairy and you're not vegan, you can certainly use butter and regular milk in the recipe. It works great as well. Here's a couple of photos of cookies I've made in the past. (The icing does have artificial dyes in these photos.)

These tiger cookies were made to go with matching cupcakes for a child's birthday party.