These Valentines Day sugar cookies use just 2 tablespoons of coconut sugar instead of heaps of “regular” cane sugar. Even better, the frosting recipe is yogurt based and uses beet powder instead of artificial food dye. Perfect for kids (and adults!)
Heart Shaped Sugar Cookies (without regular sugar)
Prep time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 9 minutes
INGREDIENTS
Cookies
- 1 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons coconut sugar (or your favorite sugar substitute)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 4 tbs softened butter (unsalted)
- 2 tbs milk
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Icing
- 1 cup greek yogurt (whole milk)
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tbs beet root powder
- 2 tbs honey
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
- Add all cookie ingredients into a large mixing bowl and simply use your hands to mix everything into a cohesive ball of dough.
- Place the dough ball in between two large sheets of parchment paper, and roll the dough until it’s about a quarter of an inch thick.
- Use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out your cookies and transfer to the baking sheets.
- Bake for 9 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges.
- Let your cookies rest for about one minute on the cookie sheets after removing from the oven, and then transfer to a wire rack to completely cool before icing them.
- To make the icing, simply combine all icing ingredients into a small bowl and mix thoroughly to break up all of the beet root powder.
- Be sure to read the notes below for advice on ingredients, substitutions, storage and how to prepare this dough 24 hours in advance.
NOTES
- If you plan to make this with your kids, my advice is to make the dough ahead of time before they join you to cut out the hearts and decorate the baked cookies. Simply roll the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours. About an hour before baking take the dough out and unwrap to bring to room temperature. If you forget to take it out in time, unwrap and place on a plate and stick in the microwave for 10 seconds.
- After mixing the dough, give it a taste and decide if you want to add more coconut sugar.
- You can absolutely use regular cane sugar for this recipe if you want, it’s 1:1 ratio.
- I used three different sized heart shaped cookie cutters, which is fun for decorating.
- When making the icing, you can taste test and add more honey to make it sweeter. Also, feel free to adjust the amount of beet root powder depending on what shade of pink or red you want. This part is fun, and you can add more as you go to have different shades for some of the cookies.
- Beet root powder is one of my favorite natural food colorings. You can get this at whole foods or on amazon.’
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