Make these healthy vegan Valentine's cookie treats for your Valentine’s Day party! This heart shaped vegan sugar cookies have a nice crisp around the edges, hints of buttery shortbread notesand flavored with freeze dried strawberries. A perfect vegan valentine dessert / treat that you can put in a box and send as a gift!
In a food processor, start by mixing maple sugar with vegan butter and cashew butter, pulse until all of the butter is incorporated into the sugar and the mixture is clumpy.
Then proceed with all dry ingredients and pulse until the mixture looks sandy.
At the end add the "flax egg (ground flax seeds mixed with warm plant milk) and vanilla and pulse until the mixture comes together in big clumps. If the mixture still looks dry, add 1 tbsp of plant milk at a time, and pulse again until it looks and feel right. Just soft enough to be rolled out.
Chill The Cookie Dough
Form an oval disk and wrap it tightly. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes, or best - an hour or overnight.
Roll Out And Cut
On a flat surface, roll out the cookie dough between two parchment papers with a rolling pin to about 1/4 - 1/8 inch thickness (more or less your choice).
Cut out heart shapes and carefully transfer the vegan Valentine cookies to the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough. Gather any scraps into a ball and press into another disc. Chill the disc until firm enough to roll and cut out as many cookies as possible.
While the oven is preheating at 350F stick the cookie sheet in the freezer to firm up the butter in the cookies.
Bake The Cookies
Depending on the size of your cookies, bake for 12 to 15 minutes at 350 F.
Decorate With Freeze Dried Strawberry Powder
Allow to cool completely before decorating.For strawberry powder dusting, grind some freeze dries strawberries and set aside. Brush each cookie with maple syrup, to create a sticky surface and dredge in strawberry powder. Shake the excess, if necessary, gently use a finger to remove the extra powder.
Allow to dry for an hour or so before stacking.
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Notes
Tips For Making Perfect Vegan Valentines Cut Out Sugar Cookies
Chill And Rest the Dough Properly. Rolling out freshly made sugar cookie dough is tough. It’s too soft or too sticky. Placing the soft dough in the freezer to speed things up, won’t work either: The dough needs time to relax and chill in order to hold a well and get a more tender cookie.Don’t replace the maple sugar with maple syrup or other liquid sweetener, the sugar cookie dough needs a specific wet to dry ratio if ingredients.If you don't want any cashew butter, replace it with more vegan butter.Sweet brown rice flour has a much higher starch content than just brown rice flour, with better thickening and binding properties, so try not to replace it. If you must you can experiment with other gluten free flours like, oat or sorghum flour.Use a large cookie sheet to fit more cookies, bake in one layer, you don’t want to bake 2 sheets at the same time, they will bake unevenly.Cookie cutters – choose smaller size for more cookies or a larger size for saving time. I use these heart shaped cookie cutters.Work Quickly When Decorating - brush the cookie surface with maple syrup and while is still wet quickly dip it in freeze dried strawberry powder (it will give it a sticky base for the strawberry powder to hold well). When the maple syrup hardens it will keep the powder well in place, so you could stack and pack the cookies.Figure out what’s the perfect time for the size of your cookies, larger cookies will need more baking time.