Vanilla Spice Sugar Cookies

Oh the elusive gluten free AND vegan roll-out cookie dough! When I first started testing gluten free/vegan recipes, there were a lot of flops and failures. I remember initially giving up on a cookie dough that was gluten free, vegan, and able to be rolled out and cut with cookie cutters without it being so fragile that it would tear apart if you looked at it wrong. I actually put it waaayyyy at the bottom of my test list as a way to passive aggressively avoid it. How adult of me.

I remember one awful tasting cookie batch that was oily and tasted like beans because it had garbanzo and fava bean flours in it. Eww. I'm pretty sure it also turned to puddles of dough in the oven. Though I share a lot of delicious stuff here on the blog, I've eaten my fair share of mediocre and downright disgusting baked goods. But, I wouldn't have it any other way because it's allowed me to come up with my own methods and baking instincts in the kitchen.

The original idea for this post was to give you a gluten free/vegan version of my family's tea cake recipe. But the more I thought about it the more I realized how far removed it would be from the original intended product. Instead of being hellbent on trying to recreate something, I decided to work with an older blog recipe (this one) and take it in a bit of a different direction.

Since there's no shortage of sugar during this time of year I wanted to give you an option free of refined sugar/cane sugar. These cookies are sweetened by coconut palm sugar, hence the brownish hue. Unlike cane sugar, coconut sugar will be absorbed more slowly into the blood stream and won't give you that immediate sugar high/sugar crash. Plus, it gives baked goods hints of molasses and caramel flavors instead of just plain sweetness. Since it's the holidays I elevated these simple cookies a bit with a good dose of vanilla and some spices. You can decorate them with your favorite natural sprinkles or make a simple glaze like I did. Or, leave them plain because they are just as delicious unadorned.

Vanilla Spice Sugar Cookies

dry ingredients
2 cups (265 g) brown rice flour, plus more for rolling out the cookies
1/2 cup (50 g) almond meal
3/4 cup (90 g) arrowroot flour/starch
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp xanthan gum or psyllium husk
1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground cloves

wet ingredients
1 cup (140 g) coconut sugar
2 tbsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup (140 g) melted coconut oil
1/3 cup (80 g) unsweetened applesauce

Sift together the dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk to combine everything. In a separate bowl, combine the coconut sugar and the remaining wet ingredients together. Whisk the mixture until it is smooth and the sugar has mostly dissolved.

With the stand mixer running on low, pour the wet ingredients into the dry. Run the mixer until the dough starts to come together into a ball. It will be a bit sticky but should form a ball easily. Remove the dough from the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and place it in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, preheat your oven to 325 degrees and line 2 or 3 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Dust your work surface with brown rice flour, then place the ball of dough down and dust the top with rice flour as well. Roll it out to about 1/8 inch thick, dusting with more rice flour as necessary to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin. Cut out shapes with your desired cookie cutters, then place them at least 1/2 an inch apart on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat this process until all the dough is gone. Decorate with sprinkles if you like, then put the trays into the oven, Bake them for 15 minutes for softer cookies or 20 minutes for crisper cookies. Make sure to rotate the trays halfway through the baking time so that all of the cookies bake evenly. Cool the cookies on a tray or on a cooling rack. With my cookie cutters the recipe yielded 28 cookies. Store leftovers in an airtight container.