Vegan Almond Nogg Sugar Cookies

I love that my last recipe was of a healthy salad, and now I’m posting a recipe for cookies. At least these sugar cookies are vegan, so that makes them healthy.. right? Heh. Well, like I said before, it’s all about a balance. 😉

I’m thrilled with how these vegan sugar cookies turned out. I spent the day doing some Christmas baking with my bestie, which has been our holiday tradition for the past few years now. It’s one of the main things I enjoy about the holiday season. I love to bake, and I wish I had the time and energy to do it more. 

Anyway, we adapted an easy sugar cookie recipe from LovingItVegan, swapping the soy milk for this fabulously festive Almond Nogg that the lovely people at SoFresh were kind enough to send me over the holidays. I thought we’d try something different this year, and I’m glad we did, because the subtle hints of nutmeg in the Nogg gave the cookies a nice touch! Having the Almond Nogg in both the dough AND the icing seemed like overkill at first, but because the drink itself is so light, it actually worked perfectly in the cookies. 

If you like eggnog and want a healthier, egg-less alternative, look no further. Almond Nogg has the faint taste of traditional eggnog, but with a lighter, almost nutty taste. If you don’t like the taste of egg nog (like me – I was never a fan of the stuff), then you will still enjoy drinking this Almond Nogg, as it’s not as thick and heavy as actual egg nog, but it still has those festive Christmas spices so it feels like you’re drinking a healthier version of the real thing.

Now, back to the cookies. I brought these sugar cookies over to my work to do some honest tastings and everybody ended up loving them. They mentioned how moist, buttery, and soft the sugar cookies were, and when I told them that they were entirely vegan, they were all shocked! I love showing people that vegan alternatives can taste just as good, or even more so, than their non-vegan counterparts.

(Also, please don’t make fun of our icing skills – we tried our best! The whole thing gets really tiring after a few cookies, and then you just want to give up and dunk them in icing before dunking them into your mouth. Hence, the reason why I rarely bake..)

Note: if you make this recipe, be sure to bake the cookies for under 10 minutes. That’s the trick for a softer, more moist sugar cookie. I usually check them after about 7 minutes, and take them out 1-2  minutes later, when they’re only slightly golden brown around the edges but fully cooked on the inside. Remember that they will harden up after you take them out and leave them to cool, so 10 minutes is the absolute maximum cooking time (unless you like crunchy sugar cookies).

Enjoy 🙂

Vegar Sugar Cookies with Almond Nogg

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Serves: 10 Prep Time: 30 minutes Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

For the cookies:
2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups of organic sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup vegan butter
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 squirt of lemon juice
1/4 cup SoFresh Almond Nogg
Desired cookie cutter shapes 

For the icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. SoFresh Almond Nogg (or more if needed)
2 tbsp. vegan butter

Vegan Almond Nogg Sugar Cookies was last modified: January 2nd, 2020 by themindfulstrawberry

Instructions

For the sugar cookies:

1. Preheat oven to 350 Degrees F.
2. Using an electric mixer, cream the vegan butter with the organic sugar and then add the vanilla extract, almond milk and lemon juice.
3. In another large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, and salt.
4. Add the dry ingredients into the other bowl with the wet ingredients, mixing together until the dough becomes crumbly. If the dough is too crumbly to form a ball with your hands, add a little more Almond Nogg.
5. Create two balls of dough and place in a covered bowl in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes (optional; but this helps the dough rise and makes the cookies super soft and airy). You can make a vegan hot chocolate while you wait! 🙂
6.  Transfer the balls of dough to a baking mat covered in flour so the dough doesn’t stick.
7. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough to desired thickness (ours were about 1/4 inch thick).
8. Dip your cookie cutter into flour so it doesn’t stick and and cut out your cookies.
9. Transfer cookies to a tray lined with parchment paper.
10. Repeat this process until all dough is used up.
11. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes; checking cookies after 7 or 8 minutes.
12. Remove cookies from the oven when finished and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before decorating.

For icing:

1. Prepare decorative frosting by mixing icing sugar, vanilla extract, butter and Almond Nogg together in a bowl with an electric mixer, starting on low speed and gradually increasing speed until smooth.
2. Mixture should have a glue-like consistency, and shouldn’t be too thick. If you need to add more Almond Nogg to thin it out, add a tiny bit at a time until you reach desired frosting consistency.
3. Separate frosting into two bowls if you want two different colours. You can also place frosting into a small ziplog bag and cut a small hole at one end to make your own piping bag. I found that the frosting came out all at once using this method and it got messy fast, so you can also just frost the cookies with a simple butter knife!

*This recipe makes about 24-30 cookies, depending on how thick you want them to be.

Vegan Almond Nogg Sugar Cookies was last modified: January 2nd, 2020 by themindfulstrawberry