What an amazing Saturday! For someone who finds it difficult to sleep in, laze around, and do nothing...today was an oddity...it is now 8:37 pm and I only recently made the transition from yoga pants to jeans (evening wear). Speaking of transitions (I love setting up my own amazing segues!), this was a day that seemed very much like a transition from Fall to Winter. Still no snow on the ground here, but it's been raining and one just can't ignore that if it were not for a few teeny tiny degrees that rain would be snow! Also, I started wrapping presents, addressed my Christmas cards this morning at 6:30 am (before I went back to bed and watched 80's commercials on YouTube for 3 hours - who am I!?) and made my first glorious batch of Christmas shortbread cookies!
I know, I know...I know what you're thinking. Well either yum! or good "vegan-shortbread" is impossible because in order for them to be good them must be made with real butter (or so the tartan clad packaging tells us). Ok I agree, there is good shortbread and bad shortbread...but don't knock it til ya try it!
Vegan Holiday Shortbread Cookies
You will need:
1 cup vegan margarine*
3/4 cup icing sugar
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
a dribble of vanilla
a pinch of salt
(yep, margarine and icing sugar and white flour...most days I can say part of my reason for eating a vegan diet is "good health"...and some days I can't)
What to do:
- Preheat your oven to 350° F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
- Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.
- Roll dough into 1" balls (if you find it starts to crumble while rolling add just a few drops of water at a time until the dough has a better rolling consistency), place each ball approximately 1" apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Keep in mind you want a bit of space between each cookie, but because there are no leveners (baking soda or eggs etc.) in this recipe these cookies don't tend to expand too much, so fitting that extra dough ball in at the end can be done without worry!
- Using a fork press each dough ball down until cookies are slightly flattened with fork marks deep enough to accept sprinkles or dragée (little silver and gold balls for decorating cookies), see picture below.
After each cookie has been forked and sprinkled bake for 13 minutes or until the edges are just beginning to turn golden. I highly recommend, as each oven is different that you start by baking them for 10 minutes, if they are not golden (as pictured below) continue baking in 2 minute intervals.
As you can see these cookies don't look much different coming out of the oven than from when they go in...take a peek at their undersides to see how they are doing. Also...please allow them to cool before biting in, if you don't you'll burn your mouth, then you won't be able to taste anything properly...you might even get one of those hangy bits of skin in the roof of your mouth...let them cool, don't ruin your holiday or your overall cookie experience!* a word about vegan margarine: this is just my opinion but the very best vegan margarine for baking in particular is Earth Balance, it is available at most "health food" stores and in larger grocery stores with a "health food" section.
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