How does one go about opening their first blog post ever? How do you introduce yourself to the universe known as the blogosphere? Do you walk in hand extended and introduce yourself, boldly? Hang back in crowd and hope someone notices you? I say throw a party and invite the neighbors! HI NEIGHBORS!! My name is Ashley, my hubs is the hairy guy you may see lurking in the photos here from time to time and rounding out our family are our children ages 8, 6, 3 and our furkids Sabrina the cat and Xira the pup. Now pass the dip and lets party!
Well ok, perhaps "party" is a bit grander than how my first blog post came to be. Technically what happened is my six year old told me at 6:30 last night that his class is having a birthday party for Dr. Seuss today and that he wanted to bring something to share at the party. Hmmm... a last minute something Seuss. How could I say no?
You see, Dr. Seuss is our absolute fave author! Eric Carle comes in a very close second but the good Dr. always takes the top spot, whenever the kids get to pick their own bedtime stories you can almost guarantee that The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, or Red Fish, Blue Fish will be the first one they ask me to read. We love all things Seuss! Our whole family dressed up as characters from the Cat in the Hat a couple years ago for Halloween. My 3 year old had a pair of Red Fish, Blue Fish Converse that I actually shed a tear over when she out grew them and my oldest son was a Star-Bellied Sneech in a Dr. Seuss play a while back. So now that you know how much we adore Dr. Seuss, you realize that I had to come up with something fantastic, did I mention it was only 2 hours before bedtime? OY think mama! THINK!
Of course cookies came to mind, they are quick easy and everyone loves cookies. Chocolate chip? Nah... what is Seussish (yes I just made that up) about chocolate chip cookies? Nothing, that's what!! Oatmeal? No the kids hate oatmeal cookies. SUGAR, of course! But no Seussish cutters! How do I not own any Dr. Seuss cookie cutters, I own a couple hundred cookie cutters but no Seuss! Think mama... think!! Google, HELP! Google provided me with lots of beautiful very intricate Seuss themed cookies, that if I had days and time to order Seuss cutters, I would have been all over. Then I saw THIS and I thought now THAT is doable! Pinwheels! It's been years but I remembered making red and white pinwheel cookies for Christmas once, so I was off and running.
Have I mentioned yet that my family is vegan? Yup, and we love it! We don't just eat grass don't worry! Vegan food is amazing! That is the main reason I started this blog to share vegan recipes FAMILY STYLE and show people that you can feed a large-ish family fabulously without breaking the bank or resorting to munching carrot sticks for the rest of your life (although we do love our carrot sticks around here!)
So the vegan sugar cookie recipe is as follows:
This recipe will make 30 pinwheel cookie pops
Preheat oven to 350
- 5 cups of flour
- 2 cups of sugar
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 soy milk - any nondairy milk is fine
- 1 cup of nondairy margarine/butter
- 1/2 cup of vegan buttery shortening (you can use all butter or all shortening, this is just the combo I like for crispy on the edges but chewy in the middle cookies)
- 1 tbsp vanilla
- Food coloring
- Vegan sprinkles or sugar crystals
*Note about ingredients - I always try to use organic products as close to their natural state as possible, meaning unrefined sugar, unbleached flour etc. I also try to stay away from artificial food colors and flavors in most of my cooking and baking. These cookies do make use of food coloring though, so if anyone out there knows how to get purple/blue food coloring naturally let me know!
Cream together the butter, shortening and sugar. Add milk, vanilla and baking powder, mix well. Add 1/2 the flour mix until combined and then add the other half and mix some more. It takes about 3-4 minutes with the hand mixer on med/high for the dough to come together. If you want to just make plain sugar cookies, slap your dough in the middle of some plastic wrap, form into a log and freeze for about 30 mins. Then slice and bake for 10-12 mins. If you are still with me on the pinwheels lets get rolling!
Take the dough and separate it into 4 equal portions in separate bowls and mix in the food colorings of your choice. I chose orange, purple, yellow and green that combo seemed very Seussy! Once you have your colors mixed in get some parchment paper and roll each color individually into a rectangle (or as close as you can get to one, I never have been good at rolling things into rectangles). Keep the other colored dough in the fridge while you roll each one out. I learned a trick recently about rolling dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper and it kinda rocks! No more dough that is too tough because of all the flour you rolled it in, AND having the rectangle of parchment kinda gives you a guide of how to shape what you are rolling out.
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| Green Dough with parchment underneath |
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Once you have one layer rolled out put it on your baking sheet leaving
the parchment on the bottom of it and peel off the parchment on top. Set the baking sheet in the fridge
while you get busy rolling out the next color of dough.
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| Orange dough ready |
When you have got your next color all rolled out, pull the baking sheet out of the fridge and then peel the parchment off the top of the new dough. Quickly flip the new one on top of the one already on the baking sheet. *TIP* You won't be able to move or readjust this sheet of dough once you put it on there so try to line it up good! Once you have it on there peel off the parchment off. It may want to rip a little at first, just be gentle with it and once you get the whole edge off you should be able to slowly peel the whole thing off easily.
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| Layering orange on top of green |
Repeat this process for the remaining colors.
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| All the layers |
When you have all four layers on it should look something like the photo on the right.
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| So pretty! |
Cut the edges to make it a rectangle. I found it easier to slip it out of the sheet pan to trim it, just grab the sides of the parchment and pick it up.
Don't toss those edges! Just set them aside somewhere for now.
Ok so now... the rolling this part can be tricky. Have you ever rolled sushi, or at least watched someone else do it? You want to use a similar method here. Keeping the parchment on the dough you want to start rolling it (on the long side). Tuck the first bit over and then use the parchment paper to sort of lift the dough for you as you go. You want to try to roll it as tightly as possible. You do not want any gaps between the rolls. The dough may want to crack on you as you roll it, that's totally fine just keep the parchment paper over it and smooth the cracks out with your hands as you go, it won't be perfect yet so don't stress on it too much. Once you've got it all rolled up slice the roll in half and set half aside in the fridge.
Take 1 half and roll it with your hands on a piece of parchment getting the gaps out of the layers. You can actually feel the gaps in the dough if you run your hands along it, it should feel like a solid log if you feel a part that feels saggy or poochy you can tell there is a gap in there. Just roll it back and forth on the counter on the piece of parchment. Kinda like making a playdoh log! As you roll it the log will get longer once you have all the gaps out and the log is about twice as long as it was when you started wrap it up in that piece of parchment and set it in the freezer. Get your other half and repeat this process. They should look something like the photo when finished.
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| Candy! |
Now both of your logs should be in the freezer. Get a tray or another cookie sheet and pour in your sprinkles/sugar crystals.
Get the log that has been in the freezer the longest out and roll it in the sprinkles. If you find your sprinkles are not sticking you can use a pastry brush to brush a dab of water onto the log and then roll. The sugar crystals I used stuck pretty well on their own.
Now slice the log into 1/4 in thick rounds and stick a stick into them if you are making them into cookie pops like I did. I just used popsicle sticks they are way cheaper than cookie pop sticks. You want to be careful and make sure to stick the sticks about 1/2 way into the cookie right in the middle (don't let it poke out the back). Then space them evenly on a parchment lined cookie sheet (I resused the same parchment sheets over and over when making these) and bake at 350 for 14 minutes.
Leave them in the pan to cool for 10 minutes and then on the counter or cooling rack for another 15 or so. Repeat with the other log. At this point Dad gave the 10 minute bedtime warning so I had to do the last bit of packaging them without the kiddos. But boy were they excited about the outcome of these cookies! "They look like the Lorax trees mama!!" Yay, that made my heart smile!!
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| They look very Seussy to mee!! |
And then I realized I had nothing to put these in! Our grocery store is like 3 minutes away so we run there... a LOT. It was late and I didn't want to be gone long so heading over to Target was out of the question (time is a foreign concept to me once I enter the land of Target), so I was hoping that the grocery store would have those little cello treat sacks and something cute to tie them up with. I was out of luck! No cello sacks at all :( So I grabbed a box of generic sandwich bags for $1.25 and a couple of these premade curly bow things from the card aisle and hightailed it home just in time to get my bedtime kisses!
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| Sideways photo! |
With the little ones tucked in bed I enlisted hubby to help finish them off. I cut the ziplock part off the baggies and cut the middle of the bows off where they were all stapled together so that I had all the long pretty curlies. Stuck the cookie pop in the baggie and tied the curlies around the stick.
From start to finish the whole thing took me about an hour and a half the bulk of which was rolling out the dough.
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| 30 Seussy Cookie Pops all wrapped and ready to go |
You didn't think I'd forgotten about those scraps did you? Bake them as you did the cookies for about 12 mins and then once cool break them up into smaller pieces. This way nothing got wasted and the other kiddos get to have some treats too!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. SEUSS!
