Valentine’s Cookies

Welcome to the Valentine’s Day Blog Hop!  If you’ve come here from Andi’s Blog, you’ve found the right place!  If not, welcome to the Hop!  Here’s the link for you to follow to the start (Amanda’s Blog), and I’ll look forward to seeing you back here when you get all caught up.

One of the traditions in my family is to make some yummy treats for Valentine’s Day.  This year was a little more challenging because my sister’s on a really restrictive diet.  Her baby’s lactose intolerant, and therefore she can’t have any dairy, because she’s nursing him.  Bless her little cotton socks.  So we had to come up with an alternate goodie for our Valentine’s Treat!

Here’s what we came up with:

They’re easy-peasy sugar cookies.  What’s brilliant about these ones (apart from the fact that they don’t have dairy) is that… because they don’t have dairy, they keep their shape!  You can use them to make cutouts that look good and sharp!  And they taste divine.

Here’s the Recipe for the Sugar Cookies:

Ingredients:

• 1 C Coconut Oil (you can find it in the baking aisle, right next to the other cooking oils.)
• 1/4 C Shortening or Vegetable Oil
• 1 1/2 C Sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 1 Tsp Vanilla
• 3 1/2 C Flour
• 2 Tsp Cream of Tartar
• 1 Tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 Tsp Salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 F.
2. Cream the margarine and add te sugar gradually.  Beat until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
3. Stir in the vanilla.  Add the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt gradually to the creamed mixture, stirring in by hand.  If desired, dough can be chilled for easier cutouts.
4. Line baking sheets with parchment paper (makes it so you can cut your cookies out on the baking sheet without moving the cutouts to keep them from deforming).
5. Us a Tsp to drop even scoops onto the sheet, or roll dough out on a floured surface to 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick and cut into your favourite shapes.  Place cookies onto the prepared baking sheets.
6. Bake for 6-8 minutes.

For the yummy topping, we went with a drizzle.  Again, we had to get creative to avoid the whole diary thing.  So we made the drizzle using some powdered sugar, flavour, and maybe some water to thin it down.  For the pink ones, we used peppermint and a touch of red food colouring.  I had to add extra water to make it thin enough to drizzle well.  For the white, I used lemon juice, so I didn’t have to use any extra water at all.

Enjoy your treats!  And, for your next stop on the Blog Hop, head on over to Janice’s Blog.

Finally, I’m doing a random giveaway!  If you leave me a note, you get one chance.  Become a follower (don’t forget to tell me!) and get a 2nd chance.  Put up a link to my blog (again, don’t forget to tell me!) and you get a 3rd chance!  Check back on Monday to find out whose name got pulled.  See you then!