Making it WHOLE: Sugar Cookies, Part 2 – The Frostening

Video companion at the bottom of the page.

Dec 13, 2025

*There’s a video companion to this post at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!

Last week…

When we left off our sugar cookers were chilling in the fridge. So our first step is to take them out, let them heat to room temp for fifteen minutes or so, while we preheat the oven to 350º and line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.

Dust your cookie cutters with flour and go to town. Cut all the shapes you can from each sheet of dough, then gather up the leftover dough and roll it out again. Cut all you can, gather it, up and roll it out again. Do this until you’ve used every bit of dough possible.

Lay the cookies on a cookie sheet. I had to use two. You don’t want them touching but they won’t spread much if you’ve used enough flour.

They don’t look done when they’re done. They never browned on the edges even though I cooked them longer than suggested. 12 minutes is plenty.

Cool them on a wire rack, then frost as described below.

Basic Frosting Recipe

1 cup cashew cream
1 cup date paste
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Food coloring and flavor variations given below

Method: Mix it all together in your smoothie blender.

Add the colors a little at a time, beating after each until you get the shade you want.

Add the flavors with extreme care, using the smallest amount possible, then adding more and tasting after each addition.

About Food Colorings

I’m playing with natural food colors for my frostings this year, and it’s still experimental.

Suncore Foods (a woman-owned company) has a full line of natural food coloring powders made from real foods. I recommend checking them out. Today I’m using gel food colors just because I didn’t want to experiment while recording and I needed to get these done. I’ll play with that next time. (I’d also add more flavorings to the cookie batter itself next time, double both the vanilla and the almond I think, or experiment with orange or peppermint flavorings, which were limited to just the frosting this time.

Variations

Here are the frosting variations including several I didn’t use in the video.

Chocolate: add 1-2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder.
Chocolate peppermint: add 2 drops peppermint extract to chocolate frosting.
Peanut butter chocolate. Use natural peanut butter (no oil, no salt, just peanuts) instead of the cashew cream, add 1-2 tablespoons cocoa. Might require a splash of soy milk or water.
Chocolate Almond: After adding the cocoa, also add 2 drops almond extract
Peppermint frosting: add 2 drops peppermint oil and green coloring.
Orange frosting: Add 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon orange extract and blend red and yellow dyes to make orange.
Strawberry frosting: Add 1/4 -1/2 teaspoon strawberry extract and red coloring.
Raspberry: Add 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon raspberry extract and less red coloring, to make it pink.
Blueberry frosting: Add 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon blueberry flavoring and blue coloring
Lemon: Add 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract and yellow food coloring

You can also sprinkle them with vegan holiday glitter sugars, sure to make any holiday cookie look like a work of art, even if your frosting skills topped out at age seven. (Like mine.)

Here’s a still of the finished product.