Christmas Sugar Cookies made with Coconut Sugar

Christmas sugar cookies have always been a favorite of mine during the holiday season. What I really mean is my mom’s Christmas sugar cookies. She’s made them every holiday season since I can remember; sometimes for other holidays like Easter or Valentine’s Day, and even just because. Besides being absolutely delicious, these cookies are really sentimental to me. So when Donnie wanted to put it in our weekend plans to make Christmas cookies, I already knew what kind of cookies I wanted to make. I wanted to take my mom’s recipe and swap out regular sugar for coconut sugar. Per Donnie’s request, I also wanted to make our own cream cheese icing with coconut sugar. If you haven’t used coconut sugar before, coconut sugar does not at all taste like coconut. Instead, the coconut sugar almost gives these cookies and icing a caramel taste-yum!

Dough Ingredients:

1. 1 cup softened butter
2. 1 1/3 cup coconut sugar
3. 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4. 3 beaten eggs
5. A sprinkle of salt
6. 1 teaspoon baking soda
7. 4 cups of unbleached white flour

To make the dough, first mix the butter, coconut sugar and vanilla. Next add in the eggs, salt, baking soda, and flour. After all ingredients are well combined, cover the dough and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours. If your dough is a little crumbly add in a splash of milk and mix a bit more before placing in the fridge. Take the dough out of the fridge and let it sit for a bit, before you are ready to cutout and bake the cookies.

Preheat the oven to 350˚ and begin rolling out the cookie dough on a floured surface. We sprinkled some flour on parchment paper and it worked great. It is usually easiest to roll out the dough in small batches, as you will have several cookie sheets to fill. Rollout the dough pretty thin, but not too thin and use whatever cookie cutters you want. We have antique cookie cutters that we just love. My favorite ones of these have always been an angel and a tree. Bake each cookie batch for about 8-10 minutes. Between cutting out and baking the cookies, you can get started on the icing.

Icing Ingredients:

1. 8 oz softened cream cheese
2. 1/4 cup milk
3. 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4. 1/2 cup arrowroot
5. 1 cup coconut sugar

I first combine arrowroot and coconut sugar, to create a powdered sugar. I added the arrowroot and coconut sugar to my blender, and blended for no more than 30 seconds. Then, mix together all other ingredients with the coconut powdered sugar. It should be icing-like, and a little thin. Set aside until all of the cookies are baked and cooled.

When icing the cookies, make sure to completely coat each one and set aside. We found that placing the cookies back on a cookie sheet and into the freezer for a bit helped the icing to set. To store these cookies, line some parchment paper in a container and place a few cookies. Then, continue to layer parchment paper and cookies until your container is full. If you are at all like us several cookies did not make it into the container!

In the Spirit of Adventure,

Demie