Sugar Cookies (variation of the recipe from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar)
Ingredients:
2 1/3 Cup flour
2 Tablespoons corn starch
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 Cup butter softened (at room temperature)
1 Cup sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon other extra like lemon (or just a little more vanilla)
1/4 Cup milk
To make the dough:
Sift together dry ingredients into a small bowl and set aside. Then, beat the sugar and butter together in a mixing bowl. Scrape it down. Beat in the extract and milk. Beat in 1/2 the flour mixture. Then carefully mix in the rest of the flour to form a soft dough. Divide in 2. Pat each half into a 1-inch thick disk. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate several hours or overnight.
To make the cookies:
Preheat oven to 350. Use parchment paper on your baking sheets. Roll out dough. Cut cookies. Use spatula to put on sheets with an inch between them. Bake 8 to 10 minutes until getting golden at edges. Remove cookie sheets from oven and let sit for 5 minutes. Then use spatula to move the cookies to racks to finish cooling.
Variations:
If you are also avoiding milk, use a vanilla milk alternative for the liquid and instead of butter use equal parts nonhydrogenated margarine and nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening. I love the taste of citrus, but if you want to mix up the flavors you can use other extracts (like almond or even mint or coffee) instead of the lemon extract. To strengthen the vanilla flavor you can use double-strength vanilla extract or scrape in a vanilla bean when you add the vanilla extract.
