Holiday Cookies

I think I make more cookies in December than I do the whole year! Here are a few of my favorites:Frosted sugar cookies: I used this iced sugar cookie recipe that I found on Cooking at the Pacific Outpost. For the royal icing, I found that I couldn't use the Vegan With a Vengeance recipe because I din't have soy milk powder. Instead, I used this recipe for vegan royal icing (I found it on Vegan Nutritionista) which I believe is originally from The Joy of Vegan Baking (I really need to get that book already!). This cookie was labor-intensive. That said, it was pretty fun frosting them. Vegan With a Vengeance's sparkled ginger cookies are super delicious and very December-y. This was my favorite cookie to make and eat. It was easy and very winter appropriate. I love the combination of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and molasses. I found that if I left them in the oven for 10 minutes, they stayed soft on the inside, and if I left them in for 12 minutes, they were perfectly crispy.OK, so these Big Gigantoid Crunchy Peanut Butter-Oatmeal cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance don't exactly scream, "happy holidays!", but they are one of my all time favorite cookies ever. They're relatively easy to make and so addictively good. Plus, when you use peanut butter, oatmeal, and substitute whole wheat pastry flour, they kind of seem healthy. Almost.

Next year I'd like to try to make peppermint bark, snickerdoodles, and sugar cookies that look more like these:

These beautiful vegan peppermint cookies are are from Vegetarian Times. For now, I'm cookied out!