Heart Shaped Sugar Cookies : gluten-free and vegan

 

Valentine’s Day is just a few short days away and we have lots of cute things to do. Like make these lovely Gluten-free and Vegan Sugar Cookies – an old favourite recipe…. all the way from 2011! But I have gone in and tweaked this recipe to make it even easier for everyone to make.

Wow, I didn’t even realize that I have been eating and baking gluten-free and vegan recipes this long. I’m so thrilled that more and more people are jumping on the gluten-free diet as well as vegan and seeing great health benefits.

Back up a few years, and it was a lot harder to find ready made great product out there. Specialty foods like gluten-free were not around as much and now even Costco has a myriad of gluten-free and vegan products! Happy dance!

But I am thankful that the variety wasn’t as huge back in the day because that tested my skills in the kitchen! And baking from scratch gluten-free and vegan was what I had to learn in order to continue my journey of healing.

Luckily, not only did I get super confident in cooking and baking (the latter way more challenging I think) but also my health improved immensely! Avoiding gluten and wheat saved my life! (and I’m not even celiac or allergic to these foods – I just listened to my body) and voila! I feel so much better!!!

Anyway, back to these lovely Sugar Cookies!!
It is totally worth it to ditch the wheat and gluten and enjoy a yummy gluten-free and vegan sugar cookie! They’re really easy and fun to make! If you have some little hands around to help… get those involved too ;) My daughter loves baking with me… this is what Pure Love is all about ;)

 

Gluten-free and Vegan Sugar Cookies 

Ingredients :

3/4 c dairy free organic margarine
3 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon of white ground chia seeds, soaked in 3 tablespoons of warm water
   (needed only if the gluten-free flour does not contain xanthan or guar gum)
1 cup raw cane sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened organic applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
powdered sugar for rolling
+ extra powdered sugar for dusting or naturally dyed crystal sugar

Directions :

First, check your gluten-free all-purpose flour if it contains xanthan or guar gum – if it does, you can omit the Chia Seeds completely. If it doesn’t this cookie dough binds better if you do use the chia seeds.
So if you are using chia seeds – (I like the white ones as they will not leave speckles in your all-white cookies) If those are hard to find, you can just use any you have but they will leave a little dark speckles in your cookies (which is totally fine! ;))

Mix the chia seeds with warm water and set aside.

In a mixer, cream together margarine and sugar. Add applesauce, vanilla extract and chia seeds (if using) and mix well.  In another bowl whisk together all the dry ingredients. Slowly add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and mix gently long enough for the dough to come together. If the dough becomes too soft and sticky, especially when the room is hot, place in the refrigerator for a few minutes to get a little colder and easier to work with.

Preheat oven to 350. Cover work area and rolling pin with a little extra flour. Roll dough 1/4″ thick. Cut hearts, or other shapes and transfer to a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Bake for about 7-10 minutes depending on cookie size and thickness. Also, if you’re making smaller and larger heart shapes, do bake the even sizes together so they bake evenly.  At my settings 3″ cookies that are 1/4″ thick for 9 minutes are great.  Remove them while they still look under baked. If you wait until they look golden, they are probably already too crispy and hard. Let cool on the sheet for a few minutes then remove to cooling rack.

You can decorate with just a dusting of icing sugar or spread a thin coat of icing on top (recipe below), and add some sugar crystals in naturally food-dyed pink or red. 
If adding the icing sugar to these cookies, I would just reduce the amount of sugar to about 1/5 cup less.

 

Gluten-free and vegan Icing Recipe :

Ingredients :

1/2 cup of icing sugar
1-2 spoons of warm water

Directions: :

Mix these two ingredients in a small bowl. That’s it. You never have to buy ready made icing again ;)

Spread on cookie tops with the back of your spoon, then sprinkle evenly with natural sugar crystals in your favourite colour or try raw sugar for an ‘earthy’ look.

 

 

I hope you will enjoy these lovely Sugar Cookies as much as we do! These gluten-free and vegan heart-shaped Sugar Cookies are really our favourite. Can’t wait to bake these again this week ;)

If you’re wondering the isles of your grocery store this week and get lured by cutely packaged Valentine’s Day cookies with countless toxins, artificial flavours, colouring and more and more crap – and even consider eating that stuff (or worse giving it to your children!) Please don’t. Just don’t and consider a different aisle where you can get your hands on some great ingredients and have a blast making your own Healthier Sugar Cookies!

 Wishing you all a lovely Valentine’s Day everyone!!! 

 

♥

Pure Ella 

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