Vegan Iced Lemon Sugar Cookies

I experiment with all kinds of foods and all kinds of cooking techniques all the time.   I love to learn and try new things and new ways of cooking, and do so all the time.  Vegan cooking has been an ongoing experiment and a work in progress for a few years now.   I am not vegan or even vegetarian, but I know quite a few people who are and I try my best to cook things they can eat and enjoy as well.  Cooking vegan is not that much different from cooking regular foods, you just have to make sure that all the products you are using do not contain any animal products at all.  It is easy substitutions like using soy, almond, or rice milk instead of regular milk, and vegan butter instead of regular butter, and everything must be made completely from plant based products.  This is really not all that difficult once you know what to use and what you are looking for.  But vegan baking is a whole different story.  This can be tricky if you do not know your ingredients and where they come from.   There are a lot of things we would not think about that come from animal products.  A lot of items contain lecithin, which contains milk products, or gelatin, which is made from marrow.  Honey cannot be used either, because bees make the honey, although you can easily substitute agave for honey.  And you have to find substitutes for eggs that are vegan and often times you have to use things like flax seed or xanthum gum, or other different ingredients and different kinds of flours that you would not normally use when baking.  Often times, you cannot find these specialty ingredients in your normal grocery stores either, although these products are becoming more readily available.  You just have to know where to look and what you are looking for.  Vegan cooking I have down pat.  No problem.  But vegan baking can still be complicated, even for me.   One of the biggest challenges I face when I bake vegan dishes is that more so than not, they come out very dry.  As I said, it is still a work in progress, and I continue to experiment and tweak things all the time.

The ingredient list.

Rolling the cookies in sugar and pressing them before baking.

Vegan Iced Lemon Sugar Cookies

2 1/2 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

2/3 cup sugar, plus more to roll the pre-cooked cookies in

1 cup softened vegan butter

1/3 cup lemon zest

1/2 cup silken tofu

3 TBSP lemon juice

 

Pre-heat oven to 400*F.

Sift all the dry ingredients together and set aside.  Mix the vegan butter and sugar together with a mixer until light and fluffy, then add the tofu, lemon zest and lemon juice.  Mix together again.  Add the flour mixture 1/2 at a time and mix until everything is well combined and incorporated.  Roll the dough into balls about 1″ thick and then roll in the sugar.  Slightly press them to flatten them and bake for about 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden in color.  Let cool, then ice.  You can serve them either with or without the icing, but I thought they needed a little more pizzazz, so I adding the lemon icing.

 

Vegan Lemon Icing

1-2 TBSP vegan butter

2 TBSP soy, rice or almond milk

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp lemon extract

 

Mix all together and spread on your cookies.