TRY IT OUT! Vegan Sugar Cookie Recipe from Nora Cooks (Gluten-Free modification)

I realize you’ve come here to read about cookies. But if you’re reading about cookies at all, it’s not just about the cookies, is it? You already know what cookies are. They’re as simple as it gets. Even the greatest cookie in the world is hardly life-changing, and it’s all over in a few bites.

What’s really important about cookies is the role they play in childhood, traditions, and making memories. So as I prepared to write about our tradition of making cookies for all of the kids’ birthdays in our family, I was struck by the fact that this tradition, which already feels quite old to me, is still not as old as the COVID-19 pandemic.

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As we look forward to the day when we come out of all this, when our youngest son will have lived more life outside the pandemic than within it, our hope is that we’ll be bringing plenty of good things along with us. One of those things will be our new tradition of baking allergy-friendly cookies, based almost entirely on this recipe by Nora Cooks. Please take note, it is not a gluten-free recipe. But here’s how you can fix that.

• First, and most obviously: use a Gluten-Free 1-to-1 flour. Either Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur will work fantastically here. Others may as well, but I can personally vouch for those two. (See our guide to Gluten-Free flours for more.) What I have found using the GF flour is that 2 cups (290 grams) is the right amount. The recipe mentions the possible need for an additional ¼ cup of all-purpose flour, but for the GF version, 2 cups seems to be exactly right.
• For the vegan butter, we usually use Country Crock vegan butter sticks. You can find them in most grocery stores. They have a few different varieties where the fat content is sourced from avocado, olives, or almonds, but they all have the same consistency and flavor, in our experience.
• For the milk substitution, unsweetened “original” almond milk works best, since these cookies alraedy lend themselves to the almond flavor. (Definitely use the almond extract listed as “optional” in the recipe — it’s great!) I suppose sweetened and/or vanilla almond milk would probably not ruin the cookies by any means; they just might be a little more overtly sweet. Coconut milk would almost definitely work too, but it might alter the flavor and consistency in unexpected ways.
• In our oven, we actually use a heat of 375º F (higher than the 350 recommended in the recipe) and bake for about 10 minutes. We’re not sure if this differs because of the GF flour or an incorrectly calibrated oven. Just keep a close eye on them the first time you attempt the recipe. If there’s even a hint of brown on any of them, go ahead and take them out. They don’t need any browning to be finished, they just need to be stiff.
• After removing from the oven, leave them on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

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If you’re going to do the icing, that part of the recipe is the same; it will just take some experimentation to figure out what works best for you. As mentioned in the recipe, you may want to start with the lower amount of non-dairy milk to create a thick icing to do the outlines, then use the remaining amount to thin it out for the “fill-in” icing.

Of course, you’ll need to let the cookies cool before you do anything with the icing at all. Since we usually end up baking them at night, this typically means letting them sit overnight somewhere, which can be a logistical challenge. But if you can manage to leave them on cooling racks for an hour or so, they should be firm and cool enough that you can stack them on a plate and leave them in the microwave. Why the microwave? Well, you don’t want to put them in anything completely air-tight (such as a zip-loc bag or Pyrex) for at least a few more hours, otherwise they could get soggy from whatever moisture hasn’t yet evaporated.

Later on, after icing, they’ll need additional time to sit so the icing can harden. Sometimes, if this is another overnight situation, we just put them on baking sheets in the oven again — which obviously only works if you haven’t baked anything else that day.

After they are fully cooled AND iced AND the icing has hardened… then, only then, can you finally put them in an airtight container. (Sometimes this actually softens them up again ever so slightly, which can actually be quite delightful.)

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Lastly, I should mention that I’ve actually never made non-vegan sugar cookies from scratch, so I’m not sure how different this technique is from the usual. But I have eaten plenty of non-vegan sugar cookies in my lifetime, and I can tell you these are the real deal. They’re every bit as chewy and delicious.