I’ve been decorating sugar cookies since before I could spell the word cookie. “Decorating” may be the wrong word for those early cookies. Messily but joyfully coating with sugar is a bit more fitting. My skills have improved marginally, and each batch still has a few duds that are kept for family only.
I learned a lot about frosting and glazing and piping during those early years in the kitchen with my mom. I knew that black and red food coloring tasted terrible. I knew that my mom would outdo my piping job every time. I knew that when writing Happy Birthday always use cursive. I knew to fold down the top of the icing bag before filling it. I knew what a coupler was and that it had to go inside the bag before the icing. I learned these lessons the hard way: through messes and mistakes and vibrantly red ladybug cupcakes that tasted awful.
I think my mom learned a few things too. She quickly learned to always put a rubber band around the top of the icing bag before putting it in the hands of a three year old. And maybe don’t let a three-year-old pick out her dream birthday cake from the Wilton catalog each year unless you want to spend hours trying to make a treehouse and a 3D crayon box and a bright red Elmo that doesn’t taste like poison. Also, that decorating a plate rather than a cookie kept me busy and content since all I wanted was the icing anyways.
Most of my early creations never left the house since every single icing tip made its way to my mouth at some point during the decorating. There is something about colorful icing in a bag that tastes better than icing any other way. I always ended up with a blue tongue, a tummy ache, and sugar-crusted fingers, but I loved every minute of it.
So I recreated one of my family traditions raw-style.
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Sugar Cookies with Beetiful Frosting
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 120 minutes
- Total Time: 150 minutes
- Yield: 8 -10 1x
Ingredients
- COOKIES
- 1 1/2 cup raw buckwheat groats
- 1/3 cup agave nectar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla powder
- 1/4 cup almond milk
- 1/4 tsp salt
- FROSTING
- 1 can full fat coconut milk
- 2 tbsp agave nectar
- 1 red beet
- 1 gold beet
Instructions
- FOR THE COOKIES: Grind the buckwheat groats to a flour in the blender.
- In a bowl, combine the buckwheat flour, salt, and vanilla powder. Stir to mix.
- Add the agave and almond milk. Mix with your hands to form a sticky dough.
- Roll out the dough between two pieces of wax paper to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out 8-10 cookies (depending on size).
- Dehydrate on a lined tray for 1-2 hours at 115 degrees.
- Remove from dehydrator and refrigerate before decorating.
- FOR THE FROSTING:Refrigerate the coconut milk overnight. Open the can and scrape off the cream into a bowl.
- Add the agave, and whisk until light.
- Divide into two bowls and set aside.
- Puree the beets separately. Strain.
- Add a very small amount of pink beet juice to one bowl of coconut whipped cream and yellow to the other. It doesn’t take much to color it and you don’t want to overdo it on the liquid and end up with watery frosting. If it seems a little thin, refrigerate for 30 minutes or so before decorating.
- Artistically decorate your chilled cookies.
If I want to sub buckwheat groats for AP flour, should I use 1 1/2 cup too? Thank you, Natalie!!
Hmm it’s really hard for me to say without testing it as all flours absorb moisture so differently. You’ll have to experiment and just add the flour slowly until you get a roll-able dough consistency. Best of luck 🙂
Haha. I just ran out of AP flour when making pumpkin carrot cookies yesterday! Maybe I will try coconut flour since the recipe calls for a dehydrator 😊