Easy Sugar Cookies with Barely Pink Icing

It must have been a dozen years ago that my friend, Alison, surprised me at my Bubbie's house for Thanksgiving. Along with her came a big bag of scrumptious sugar cookies that she and her mom baked and decorated with a smooth sheen of icing.  This sugar cookie recipe remains my favorite, with minor adjustments, of course.

The beauty of sugar cookies is, granted you don't go overboard with the icing, they're not too sweet. The slightly crunchy, slightly crumbly texture of the cookie paired with the sweet almond-flavored icing makes for a scrumptious treat.  These 3 dozen cookies were gone in a matter of a few days and I wish I could say there were more than two people eating them!

I left the rolling pin and cookies cutters in the drawer, in favor of the easy "log method."  And although I'm providing the full recipe for the icing below, I only made a half batch for my full batch of cookies.

Ethel's Sugar Cookies, veganized!
3/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer, combined with 4 tbsp water
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder

1. Beat oil, sugar, vanilla, and "eggs".  Stir in the flour and baking powder, using hands if necessary. 
2. Form the dough into a long log, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour.
3. Preheat the oven to 375*F.
4. Make sure that the circumference of the log is the circumference you'd like the cookies to be.  Unwrap the dough log and with a sharp, floured knife, make slices about every 1/4" or so.  You'll get about 3 dozen small cookies.  Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet.  They don't spread much, so you can probably pack them all in on one sheet.
5. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes. If you're going for larger cookies, adjust the baking time accordingly. Decorate with icing when cooled.

Decorator's Icing
2 cups powdered sugar
2-4 tbsp almond milk (or soy, or whatever, even water would be fine)
1/2 tsp vanilla or almond extract
coloring*

1. Combine all ingredients and mix until smooth and spreadable.

*To get the "barely pink" icing, I defrosted a few frozen cranberries and squeezed out the juice!  You'll see I got a little cranberry pieces in the mix too.

Proper beach attire

I am very lucky.  Although my family lives thousands of miles away, my three siblings, mom, and mom's boyfriend all came to visit us last week!  We had fun spending time together: watching movies, exploring Portland, playing board games, cooking at home.  We also took a day trip to Cannon Beach, which is a lovely place to visit any time of the year.  One doesn't go to the Oregon coast to sunbathe in December, so we occupied ourselves in other ways.

After my family flew home, Matt, the doggles, and I took a short trip to the Olympic Peninsula.  We found a cottage in Forks, Washington, not too far from the Olympic National Forest and some breathtakingly beautiful beaches.  It rained, as expected in the rainiest part of the country.  We were in a rainforest, after all.  It was glorious.

The four of us donned our raincoats and set out for our first hike together, not encountering any beast or person for the entire two hours on Christmas morning.

What a beautiful part of the country!

Happy New Year!  I hope 2012 is filled with happy surprises, time spent with loved ones, and new opportunities for us all!

A very good veggie burger!

Do you remember Heathen Vegan's Spicy Cajun Lentil Patties from Vegan MoFo?  It was one of those recipes that I instantly bookmarked to try post-MoFo.  However, I found it calling to me during MoFo, so I gave in and made these delicious burgers.

Following the recipe, my first batch of the patties came out really tasty, but crumbly- like the consistency of a dry sloppy joe- even with added gluten.  I baked my patties instead of pan frying for ease and to use less oil, and maybe to warm up the house a little.

A bit crumbly, but totally delicious!

Last night I made a batch, deciding to use mashed squash (squashed squash?) instead of the vital wheat gluten.  That made the mixture too wet, so I ended up adding in wheat gluten.  The consistency still wasn't perfect.  I'll need to continue to experiment.  However, both attempts yielded really satisfying burgers, especially with all the trimmings and some super great buns I found at the store.  If you're in Portland, check out Portland French Bakery's Pub Buns, available at Whole Foods.

Veggie Sushi!

Recently, my friend Carly (whom you may remember from this MoFo guest post) and I got together to plan our Thanksgiving menu.  And Thanksgiving menu planning is no good on an empty stomach, so we decided to make lunch.
 
We made a lovely assortment of veggie sushi, which included various combinations of red bell pepper, dill pickles (my favorite ingredient!), cucumber, avocado, cilantro, Tofutti cream cheese, and parsley.  In some of the rolls we used quinoa in place of the rice. 



We dipped the sushi into spicy mayo (Sriracha + Veganaise) and tamari and ate it with split pea soup and a nice spinach salad with roasted cashews and miso-tahini dressing.

A lovely lunch with lovely company!  Never made sushi before?  Check out my step-by-step instructions that I posted a while ago!

What do Papa Tofu and I have in common?

A love for Ethiopian food!

This week I've been doing a little cooking from Kittee's Papa Tofu Loves Ethiopian Food.  Kittee has done a great job of explaining techniques, ingredients, and recipes in this adorable zine.  She worked really hard on both the designs and the recipes and it shows.  I'm super happy to have it in my collection.

The recipes I've tried so far have tasted really authentic, but even more importantly, yummy!  It was hard to decide on just a few dishes to try this week.  I'll be cooking through these pages, until I've tried every recipe, and then keep going!  The most fantastic thing about zines is that the number of dishes to try is manageable.

So what have I made this week?

Don't mind the horrible state of the injera.  I wasn't gentle with the ripping.

Here you'll see (clockwise from top right): Ye'abesha Gomen (mild collard greens), Ye'miser W'et (red lentils in a spicy gravy), mushrooms sauteed in Niter Kibbeh (seasoned "butter"), and Selata (tossed salad) with Citrus Vinaigrette.

The Ye'abesha Gomen was gingery and really on par with greens dishes I've had in Ethiopian restaurants.  I loved the Ye'miser W'et the most.  I actually made that one in the slow cooker, minus the initial sauteing.  We've had variations of the salad for three nights in a row.  The citrus vinaigrette is really simple, but I love it.  It's definitely going to become a go-to dressing in my house.

Tonight I'm going to make Keysir Allecha (Ethiopian style beets) to go along with leftovers of the other dishes.  It's been really easy to prepare one dish every night to add to the plate.

Super Breaded Tofu Dinner and a Thank you!

The full title of this meal is "Super Breaded Tofu 'Fried Chicken'-y Dinner" from Rabbit Food Cookbook.

Now that's a big lunch!  (And I ate it all!)

Vegan MoFo gave me the kick in the butt I needed to cook more from this cute little book.  Last night I made the above meal, which I loved.  It contained four components:

Breaded Tofu
The tofu was wonderful!  I don't know why, but I've never done the "shake 'n bake" thing which involves throwing the ingredients for the breading in a baggie, tossing in the cubed tofu, and shaking it up.  It worked out so well.  I did stray from the recipe just a bit by baking the tofu at 350* for 40 minutes (flipping half way through) instead of pan frying it.  The result was crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, peppery goodness.

Sauteed veggies
This was pretty straight forward- just green beans, carrots, and onion.

Mashed potato
Again, pretty straight forward.

Brown Gravy
Deeeelicious!  Again, I sort of strayed from the recipe.  Instead of using the exact dry ingredients listed in the recipe, I just threw in what was leftover in the baggie from the tofu.  This was a really, really good gravy.  There was almost this mustard taste, but there was no mustard in the recipe!  (Please excuse the 'gloppiness' in the photo- these were my reheated leftovers, which I was too lazy to heat separately.)

Also, I wanted to extend a big thank you to the lovely folks that honored me with a Liebster Award last month.  I'm going to be playing catchup in the weeks (months?) to come and will be sure to post links to some "under 200" blogs that I love.

Thank you so much:

Dawn from Veg-Am
Glauce from  All About... (vegan) Food
Christine from Christine Eats Gluten-Free And Vegan
Jeni Treehugger from Heathen Vegan

Aaaand the winner is...

Random.org has decided that the winner of one pink jar of grape jelly is Number 9: Amberle.  Amberle, please send an email to inmyveganlife a t gmail dot com with your address!  Congrats!  I hope you enjoy the jelly!

Thank you for all the ideas, everyone!  I'm definitely going to try some of them soon!