Description
Gluten free and vegan vanilla spice sugar cookies are perfect for showing off your favorite holiday cookie cutter shapes! This roll-out dough is flavored with cardamom, cloves, and vanilla. You can enjoy them plain, decorated with sanding sugar, or with a simple glaze.
Ingredients
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
for decorating:
- sanding sugar or sprinkles (optional)
- glaze or frosting (optional)
Instructions
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 the cookies with sanding sugar or sprinkles if you like, then put the trays into the oven. Bake the cookies 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. This recipe yielded 28 cookies with my cookie cutters.
Store leftovers in an airtight container.