Sugar Cookies for Carlee!

This morning started out early, with me almost deciding to ignore the alarm clock. I thought of the fun Carlee would have today, and it forced me out of bed. I headed downstairs and made her holiday sugar cookies: snowmen, stars, bells, angels, and gingerbread men galore. I got Carlee ready and gathered the cookies and we were off to decorate with friends. She had a blast! Of course. I got a few laughs for bringing my own cookies, but also a few inquiries about how I had made them, and what substitutions I used. Interestingly enough though, after eating one and a half cookies with a little bit of icing on it, she handed me the second, saying, "I don't want anymore." A little too sweet, maybe?

The recipe I used was one I found on Allrecipes.com and then altered it to the following:

Vegan Sugar Cookies For My Little Carlee to Decorate
Ingredients:
3 Cups Unbleached All Purpose Flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup non-hydrogenated margarine (or another butter substitute)
1 1/2 Cups Natural Sugar Cane
2 Tbsp Soy Flour + 2 Tbsp water (to replace 2 eggs)
2 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
2. Cream together margarine and sugar. Beat in egg substitute one half at a time. Stir in vanilla. Gradually blend in sifted ingredients until fully absorbed. Cover dough. Refrigerate for 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease cookie sheet. On clean, floured surface, roll out small portions of dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out shapes.
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on wire racks.
5. Decorating with icing/candy of your choice.

These turned out a little chewy (which I like) since I took them out as soon as their raw looking glisten was gone. I didn't wait for them to brown at all. They weren't too sweet but just sweet enough. You don't want them too sweet anyway, with all that icing making up for it. :)

Carlee enjoyed decorating with her friends, and I really hope that I'm making it clear to her that eating vegan doesn't mean giving up socializing or doing fun food things with friends. I know she's still probably too young to understand that, but I want to make it clear from the start. If there are any left, (since Carlee and Tony have been eating plain sugar cookies left and right,) we're going to decorate the rest tomorrow for some family time, except using home made icing instead of cake icing like they used today. (blech!) heh.

P.S. I started putting copyrights on my photos, only because I don't want people thinking they're in the free domain and they can distort pictures of my baby! lol. If any family want originals, I'd be happy to email them to you, just let me know!