Vegan Cut-Out Party Cookies

Ingredients

• 1½ cups palm oil shortening, or 3 sticks palm oil-based vegan shortening
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1-2 tbsp lemon juice
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 2½ cups dry fondant sugar
• ¼ cup water
• ½ tsp almond extract (or any flavor you like!)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. For the cookies, mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. With a mixer, beat the palm oil with the sugar until fluffy. Add vanilla and 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice. Stir in the dry ingredients until a cohesive dough starts to form. If it is too crumbly, add another tablespoon of lemon juice.
3. At this point, you can chill the dough for an hour to make it easier to work with, but you don't have to. Line an insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper and spray lightly with baking spray. Dust with confectioners sugar. Take a small amount of dough, about the size of a tennis ball and flatten it with your palm right on the baking sheet. Dust your rolling pin with confectioners sugar, and roll the dough out to ¼ inch thick. Cut out shapes with the cookie cutter, and remove excess dough, leaving cut-outs on the pan. Place the baking sheet in the freezer for 10 minutes- this ensures the cookies will keep their shape and not spread. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until just barely starting to brown. While different trays of cookies are baking or chilling, you can keep working on pieces of parchment paper and then just transfer to pans when ready. It's ok to re-roll the same dough twice, but try not to do it more than that so the flour doesn't get tough. Allow baked cookies to chill thoroughly on wire racks. Makes about 3 dozen large cookies.
4. For the icing, stir together the dry fondant, water, and extract. Check the consistency and add more dry fondant or water as needed; you want it pretty thick at first for outlining cookies, and then you can thin it out later for filling in color. Using a pastry bag or a baggie with a small hole clipped from the corner, outline the borders of your cooled cookies. Once the icing is sturdy, fill in the background of the cookie with a thinner icing, letting it "flood" into the borders. Once the background is dry, add colored icing to make carrots or any design, or sprinkle with colored sugars. Allow drying uncovered overnight.

 

Whether you serve these cookies for a baby shower, birthday, or just keep them frozen for midnight snacking, they really are a great way to indulge with animal-free style.  Plus, they are a lot of fun to make and decorate!