Homemade Vegan Roll Out Sugar Cookies Recipe- With Gluten Free and Refined Sugar Free Option

My mother didn't usually make sugar cookies growing up. Not quite sure why. She made lots of different types of homemade snacks and desserts, but sugar cookies is one type of cookie I don't recall her making.
My association with sugar cookies comes solely from the sugar cookies given out in school around the holidays, delicious, sweet, and crunchy, and made into all sorts of cute shapes.
I haven't been the biggest sugar cookie maker myself, I must admit. The name "sugar cookie" makes me feel that it is "oh so unhealthy", and so high in sugar that it's bad to eat. I'd rather make cookies with more innocuous sounding names.
The last time I made sugar cookies was for a party after Anneliese was born, when I made these cute girly shaped sugar cookies, frosted with naturally colored homemade royal icing. But I couldn't even eat those, because the cookies weren't gluten free.

My son found the boy cookie cutter I had, that came with the girl cookie cutter, and asked me "Mommy, why don't we ever use this? Make a cake really flat and we can cut it out in boy shapes."
I told him that those are for making cookies in that shape, and he asked me if I could do that.
"I dunno," I hemmed and hawed, not sure I'd be able to find a decent roll out sugar cookie recipe that was gluten free, and not particularly interested in making sugar laden sugar cookies...
But then I decided to do a search online and see if I could come up with a decent gluten free vegan sugar cookie recipe, and I struck pay dirt- lots of wonderful looking recipes!
I went with this recipe I found for vegan gluten free sugar cookies, healthied it up a bit, changed it up somewhat, made it somewhat cheaper, and came up with these terrific sugar cookies, which, not only don't have white sugar in them, the sugar they have in them, coconut sugar, is really high in minerals and really low glycemic index. Awesome. And oh, perfect texture also!
You can glaze the cookies. I'm not sure I will. :-D I think they look cute enough unglazed.

The best thing about these cookies is that unlike most roll-out-cookie doughs, this needs no refrigeration, so it's much faster to make.

I've included a wheat version and a refined sugar version and a less healthy version if you're just after cheap and don't have food restrictions.

Homemade Vegan Roll Out Sugar Cookies Recipe- With Gluten Free and Refined Sugar Free Option

Ingredients:
3/4 cup palm or coconut oil (or butter or margarine or shortening)
1 cup coconut sugar, sucanat/rapadura, brown sugar, or white sugar
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
5 tablespoons water (or two eggs instead of the water and flax seeds)
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract or vanilla powder
2 1/2 cups Homemade Gourmet Gluten Free Flour Blend (or you can try it with other all purpose gluten free flour blends, but I can't promise it'll work as well) or wheat flour if you don't have gluten issues
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons xanthum gum (leave out if making a non gluten free version)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions
1. If its winter and your palm oil or coconut oil are hard already, you can start as is. If its summer or your house is really warm and your oils are liquid, put them in the refrigerator to harden somewhat so you can have a good, workable texture for your dough. If using butter or margarine, remove from the fridge and let soften a bit before using.

2. Mix your fat/oil with the sugar, and mix until thoroughly creamed.

3. Add the flax seed and water (or eggs) and vanilla extract and mix.

4. Add the flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, and salt, and mix well.

5. Lightly flour the counter, break off a piece of dough and roll it in the flour.

6. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough to approximately 1/4 inch thickness.

7. Using cookie cutters to cut out the shapes from the rolled dough, transfer to a lined cookie sheet/baking tray. If you don't have cookie cutters, the top of a cup will do.

8. Roll out the rest of the dough this way, using cookie cutters to cut out all the shapes. I had enough for 2 trays of tightly packed cookies.

9. Lay them on the cookie tray- they can be close, nearly touching, as this dough doesn't spread out while cooking.

10. Bake cookies at 400 until solid and slightly changing colors- approximately 10-12 minutes.

Are you a sugar cookie fan? How often do you make them? How often do you eat them? If you had a healthier recipe for sugar cookies, would you make them more often? Did you eat sugar cookies growing up? Any special memories relating to sugar cookies?
Does this look like a recipe you'd try out?

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