Yule Cut Out Sugar Cookies

This time of year always reminds me of when I was a kid and all of the excitement of the impending holidays. But nothing was more exciting than coming home from school to bake cookies with my Mom. I can’t remember what I liked more, the sugar cookie dough or the finished cookies, probably because it is too difficult to choose!

It is interesting when I look back to my childhood and all of “food” that we ate (I use quotations with the word food because of the dubious nature of it’s food-ness). Twinkies, Ding Dongs, candy bars, sugary cereals, and pasteurized milk products…the list can go on but I think that you get the picture. When I think of all of the dead milk, food dyes, artificial flavorings and high fructose corn syrup that I consumed it is no wonder that I was often sick, had frequent headaches and suffered from serious multi-chemical sensitivity.

Although at the time, no one ever thought to link the “food” that we ate to how we felt and even fewer thought that chemical sensitivity existed. Even the homemade baked goods that my Mom made were laced with ingredients that were harmful at worst and not supportive at best.

Take the decorations that adorn most holiday cut out cookies. Yes, they are beautiful and have gotten more so over the years with more vivid colors in the frostings and all of the sprinkles of varying shapes and colors. But beauty at what cost? I ask this question a lot and you will tire of it, I am sure.

But as a culture, we really have a tendency to make the crappiest choices when it comes to esthetics vs. health.

From what we slather on our bodies to what we put in our mouths…if we are going to heal, this has to shift.

If our priority is Health and feeling great, then we need to take a serious look at the choices we make and realize there is a whole wide world of options out there to choose from and we need to start choosing our health first.

Let’s start with food dyes.

This may seem like a simple task but it you have ever read a food label, you will realize that eliminating food dyes can be daunting. Especially if you are still shopping in the regular supermarket and eating processed foods. They are everywhere. Did you know that even Florida oranges are colored with orange food coloring? Also salmon and meats (especially lunch meats) to offset differences in color from storage etc. Artificial food dyes are everywhere even in many pharmaceuticals. Artificial food dyes have been linked by many to ADD and ADHD and the drug that they typically prescribe for these poor misunderstood kids is Ritalin, I find it sickening and ironic that it [Ritalin] is coated in either D & C yellow #10 or FD &C green #3. (FYI: F stands for food, D stands for drug and C stands for cosmetic). The drug also contains lactose, which is milk sugar that most of us cannot digest and can lead to many emotional/behavioral issues. Insane.

So what is a devoted foodie to do? How can we emulate Martha and not use food dyes?

There is a company called India Tree that uses food/plants to manufacture food colorants that are safer to use. I say safer because some people may still be sensitive to ingredients used. Now, like all things, you need to do your homework. I learned the hard way that just because a company makes one product that is a safe alternative does not mean all of their products are safe. This is true in this case. I will only use their products that use natural food dyes, the rest of the sugars and non-pareils are loaded with garbage that should not be consumed.

Let’s Do Organics makes sprinkles and jimmies that use natural colorants and are gluten free. True the colors are not as vivid and intense as regular (cancer causing) dyes but they are pretty and they do the trick.

My daughter loves them and they don’t hurt her. She is also very sensitive and gets extremely irritable and emotional when she eats foods that her body cannot process. Nothing is more important to me than her health; this is why I do what I do.

So, let’s get back to sugar cookies. Who would know that I could go on for so long before getting to the most important part, the recipe! I love a soft sugar cookie so I have adapted an old family recipe to make the cookie soft. It is actually my cousin Cathy’s recipe (thanks Cath!) and the original recipe called for both butter and shortening. Now, many of you probably know that if you want a soft cookie, you usually use shortening because using all butter will make for a crisp cookie. I love the flavor of butter and I will under no circumstances use Crisco so I use organic extra virgin coconut oil. You can also use organic non-hydrogenated palm oil. Both oils are solid at room temperature which makes them a natural substitution for yucky trans-fat shortening. They are also not the villains that they have been portrayed as. We will save that topic for another time.

Yule Cut Out Sugar Cookies

350 Degrees for about 10 minutes. All ingredients listed are organic

½ stick softened butter (use salted or unsalted, your preference)

¼ cup coconut oil

¾ cup evaporated cane juice

2 eggs (preferably from pasture raised hens)

1 t vanilla

2 ½ cups flour (I always use spelt, for this recipe it was white spelt, usually it is half white and half whole spelt)

2-½ t baking powder (aluminum free)

½ t salt (I use Redmond mineral salt)

Mix dry ingredients and set aside. Cream butter and coconut oil with sugar in mixer with paddle attachment. Add eggs and vanilla stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mix until incorporated. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix until dough comes together. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and cut in half, pat into discs, wrap up and refrigerate until firm at least 4 hours. Take dough from refrigerator and roll out on lightly floured surface to about ¼ inch thickness. You want them to be fairly thick in order to stay soft. Cut into desired shapes and transfer to silpat or parchment lined pan. Take remaining dough scraps and “smear”

them back together to fully incorporate the dough and refrigerate. This method will keep the dough from getting too tough with many re-rollings (like when you are making cookies with a 6 year old!) Bake until edges are just starting to brown, about 10 minutes. Allow to cool completely before icing. If you prefer not to use icing but still want to decorate, you may sprinkle cookies with colored sanding sugars and decorations prior to baking.

Butter Frosting:

6 T Butter

2 T Milk

1 t Vanilla

2 ½ cups powdered sugar

Whip together in a bowl, separate and color with India Tree colorants in desired shades. This is not a flooding type icing but more of a thick butter cream icing. You will need a spatula or butter knife to ice cookies or use pastry bags to pipe icing. We often use colored sugars and the Let’s Do Organics sprinkles to decorate further; I did not buy the India Tree sugars in time to make these cookies but you could color some evaporated cane juice to use instead. I only made green as I am a bit of a minimalist when it comes to cookie decoration unlike my sweet 6-year-old Sofia, see her with her masterpiece(photo above). When she is older, we will play with flooding but honestly, this icing while not fancy just tastes so much better and that is what we like!