Happy Valentine's Day

I didn't used to be a fan of this commercialized day, but I think the kids have softened me up, and made me realize any excuse to celebrate love whether romantic or otherwise is a good one. I'm a lucky lady because I have three amazing main Valentine admirers this year and a lot of other people that fill my life with love!

The kids find such joy in celebrating holidays and we all love a good excuse to bake special treats. I decided we should break out the heart shaped cookie cutters for some sugar cookies. A favorite around here and a big part of our Christmas traditions. In fact, for the last ten years, maybe more, my beautiful niece, Madison and I have a tradition of baking sugar cookies together for Santa. So this post is dedicated with love to my Madison. Even though I'm in Oregon now and she's back in Colorado I know we'll still have more bakes to come!

So to me the main challenge with a plant-based sugar cookie is the BUTTER substitute! Butter is such a big player in the classic version I wondered what the solution would be. I googled away and the kids and I settled on a recipe over at It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken, and in the end I think the cookies turned out pretty decent.

That said, I wonder if they'd have turned out even better with a few ingredients adjustments. I only had a courser sugar on hand and it didn't mix into the batter well. I also think playing around with a different vegan butter would make a difference too. We used the Melt brand. The consensus throughout my three favorite taste testers was that the cookies were good, but no where near as good as our classic butter and egg sugar sugar cookie recipe.

Have any of you found a good plant-based sugar cookie recipe? I have about 10 more months to perfect a new version before Madison and I bake again. I'll take any suggestions, and in the mean time I wish you all a day filled with love.