Thanksgiving Rolled Sugar Cookies

Sugar cookies in fun Thanksgiving shapes are a must-have in our home, and we are really excited to share that these can be made easily with our Vanilla Cake Mix as the base (yup, our cake mixes can be used to make cookies!).

This recipe is top 14 allergen free, gluten free and vegan.

Growing up sugar cookies were a tradition in our family.  The hardest part for us was waiting on the dough to chilled. I have fond memories of making the dough with my Mom, helping her wrap it up and then patiently waiting until she told us it was ready to bake.

During the waiting time we (sometimes) would help clean up, and always would go through her cookie cutter bin to chose which cutters we wanted to use that day. We also would pick out our favorite colored sugars for the top. The wait time of about an hour seemed to go by fast!

We made these using our vanilla cake mix which makes it a little faster to prepare the dough.

Thanksgiving Rolled Sugar Cookies

Makes up to 40 x 3 inch sized cookies

Tools Needed:

• Mixing bowl(s)
• Spatula
• Measuring spoons
• Measuring cups
• Hand or stand mixer
• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutters
• Cookie tray(s)
• Parchment paper
• Cooling Rack(s)

Ingredients Needed: 

• 1 Kate’s Safe and Sweet Vanilla Cake Mix
• 3 tbsp Tapioca Flour
• 1 teaspoon Cream of Tarter
• 2/3 cup Shortening
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons your safe milk
• Up to 4 additional tablespoons your safe milk
• Sanding Sugars of your choice (read on for how to make your own)

If you’d like to frost them you can find the instructions to do that here.

(above ingredients are for making a full bag of mix, making approx 24-36 cookies depending on how thin and large you make them)

*We have been asked if you can use your safe vegan butter for these.  These cookies work much better with the shortening and will spread a bit more if you use vegan butter.  If you don’t need to be dairy free you can use regular butter (vs shortening) as a replacement.  You can try using half vegan butter and half shortening if you don’t mind them to spread as much.  We liked to use the half butter/half shortening for the sugar drop cookies found here.  If you do use full vegan butter for these they will spread a bit more.

Instructions:

1. In a small bowl mix the baking powder and 2 tablespoons of milk and together.  Set aside.
2. In a large bowl with a hand mixer, or your stand mixer, beat the shortening for about 2-3 minutes to get it a little lighter.
3. Add cake mix, tapioca flour, cream of tarter, milk and baking powder mixture and additional 2 tablespoons milk to bowl.
4. Continue to beat about 4-5 minutes and until it starts to form a ball. Add up to 2 additional tablespoons of your milk. (I added one additional tablespoon of milk, so I used a total of 3 tablespoons). (Note: It may look crumbly when you start. Just keep beating. It will get there.)
5. Divide dough into two parts. Wrap each in a ball in parchment paper. Place in fridge for an hour to chill.  Can keep in fridge up to about 5 days as well.

After dough has been chilled proceed to next steps:

1. Preheat your oven to 350F. 
2. Line your cookie tray(s) with parchment paper.
3. Pull out one part of the dough and roll with a rolling pin between two pieces of parchment paper. (Roll 1/8-1/4” thick depending if you want a thinner or thicker cookie.  The thinner cookie will be crunchier. Thicker will be softer in middle and better for frosting.  We do recommend for a softer “Lofthouse-like” cookie to use our drop recipe here. If you want to use this recipe to make cookies that you frost then use a round cookie cutter)
4. Use cookie cutters to cut dough. Re-roll excess as needed. You should place the dough into the fridge if it gets to warm/soft and hard to roll. Just pull back out in 15-30 minutes and roll.
5. Place cutouts onto tray. Keep 2” apart as they will spread a little.   Note: be sure to place cookies of the same thickness on the same tray. If you mix between thin and thicker they won’t bake evenly.
6. We recommend topping the thinner cookies with sanding sugar. 

Bake:

Thinner:  about 1/8” thick 8-10 minutes
Thicker: 1/4” (ones you’d frost) 10-12 minutes

1. 1. Remove baking trays from the oven when you see the edges getting lightly brown and allow to cool on tray for 10 minutes or so. Then cool on wire rack.
   2. If frosting make frosting per back if frosting bag and you can spread in with a spatula or pipe on. Top frosting with sprinkles! Again, here’s the link to frosted cookies.

You can make any shapes you’d like and my kids had fun deciding which ones to make for Thanksgiving.  Rolling these between parchment paper makes it much easier and requiring no flour for your surface.  If you’d like to roll out on your surface then use your safe flour to do so to assure the dough does not stick to your counter.  We also bake these on parchment paper as well.

Making these cookies with our Vanilla Cake Mix was so easy to do and we were so excited to bring a family favorite cookie into our home this holiday with the use of our baking mixes. These are so good and one can tell these are not made with gluten, wheat, eggs, or dairy!

Kids love making these cookies.  I love to lay out all of our cookie cutters for them to choose their shapes and also an array of different colors of sanding sugars.  Sometimes they do tend to go overboard on the sugars – but really can you have too much of those pretty colors!?

We hope you enjoy these sugar cookies using our cake mix – these are ones that can be made for any occasion, just use a different shaped cookie cutter.

Be sure to check out our entire selection of recipes here.