(No)Sugar Cookies

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching and all these beautiful sweet treats in the stores, I wanted to see if I could whip up something similar quickly and easily so my kids won’t feel deprived, but won’t be loaded up on sugar and artificial colorings.  So I cleaned up a standard sugar cookie recipe so we can enjoy a sweet treat with no guilt.  The end result was tasty, sweet, and kid-approved – my five-year-old inhaled a couple and asked for more, and my 16-month-old gave me a sitting ovation (no standing ovations from this lazy little man).

The measurements for the ingredients may seem a little odd.  That’s because the standard recipe makes four dozen cookies; this recipe is intended for a quick fix to a craving, so I scaled it to make just one dozen. 

You’ll need:

¾ tsp flax meal

2 ¼ tsp water

²/₃ c + 1 tsp spelt flour

¼ tsp baking soda

¹/₈ tsp baking powder

¼ cup butter (organic, unsalted), softened

3 tblsp maple syrup (100% pure grade A)

¼ tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 375°.

In a tiny bowl, add flax meal and whisk in water.  Place this in the refrigerator while you prepare the rest of the dough.  (This needs to be in the fridge for at least 15 minutes, up to an hour.)

Mix flour, baking soda, and baking powder in small bowl; set aside.

Cream together the butter and maple syrup.  I used my electric hand mixer for this, then a small spatula to really cream it together well.

Beat the flax mixture and vanilla into the butter, then gradually add the flour mixture, beating until mixed well.  Again, I did all of this with the electric hand mixer, then the spatula to really get everything mixed together well.

Roll into 12 equal balls (bigger than teaspoon size, smaller than tablespoon) and place on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for 8-10 minutes.  Let cool on pan for 1-2 minutes, then finish cooling on wire rack

After the cookies were cooled, I made a quick chocolate glaze to top them with, just for fun.  I added 1 ½ tsp coconut oil and 3 tsp maple syrup to a glass dish, microwaved for about 45 seconds – it was bubbling – then stirred in 2 tblsp cocoa and drizzled over the top of the cookies.  Once it cooled, the glaze set up nicely, and the mild coconut chocolate flavor complemented the cookies really well.

I used the flax egg in this recipe since I was only making a dozen.  A flax egg consists of 1 tblsp flax meal to 3 tblsp water; one flax egg can replace one egg in recipes.  The flax egg is much easier to divide into smaller portions than an egg.  If you want to use egg in this recipe, simply remove the flax meal and water from the ingredient list, quadruple the other ingredients, and use one egg.  I also have a few friends with kids that are allergic to eggs, so wanted to see if I could successfully make a yummy cookie for them – voila!

I considered replacing the butter with coconut oil, as I’ve done in many recipes, but I feel like when I’m making something that really relies on butter as a key ingredient for flavor, I should stick with it.  If you do use butter, just make sure it’s organic, real butter, none of that fake butter-substitute junk.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do.  I’ll be working on variations of this recipe – maybe some with a strawberry puree to make them pink – but this is a good basic, plain, (no)sugar cookie.