Sugar-Free Sugar Cookies

Hello again! I’m finally home in Denver. First, my flight was delayed so much that I couldn’t leave Savannah until the next day. Then, my flight out of Savannah was delayed so much that I missed my connection in Houston and had to be on standby for eight hours until I just barely made it on to the last flight out of Houston last night. Thank goodness. I have never been so glad to see the inside of the Denver International Airport.

Anyway, before I left, I told you that I had some photos waiting to be posted. And indeed I do! I wanted to use those teeny-tiny Christmas cookie cutters before leaving town, but I would have had a ton of cookies and not enough time to eat them. So, I decided to make some sugar cookies for Pranas to take home to his family…but I made them with sugar-free dough to be more diabetic-friendly.

I still used colored sugar for decoration, but that’s a whole lot better than the massive amount of sugar in the dough and icing. Feel free to come up with sugar-free ways to decorate and tell me! If you want to make regular sugar cookies, just substitute the same amount of sugar for the Splenda in the recipe. With Splenda, the cookies aren’t quite as sweet, so it makes for a milder cookie and more of the sweetness comes from the icing.

Sugar-Free Sugar Cookies
Prep Time: Approx. 30 minutes, not including decorating

2/3 cup shortening 2/3 cup softened margarine 1 1/2 cups Splenda (granulated for baking, not the kind in the little yellow packets)
3 1/2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs, well beaten 2 teaspoons vanilla Cream shortening, butter, Splenda and eggs in a large bowl.




Whisk together the dry ingredients in another bowl.

Add dry ingredients to the Splenda mixture and mix on low speed until beaters gather dough together, about 2 minutes. This is dough, so it’s fairly heavy duty. Be careful if you’re using a hand mixer.


Roll dough 1/8” thick on floured surface. Cut with cookie cutters.



Gather up unused dough, roll out, and cut again. Repeat until dough is used up. Place on ungreased cookie sheet about an inch apart (TIP: line it with parchment paper, your life will be a whole lot easier).


Bake at 350 degrees on ungreased baking sheet 6 to 10 minutes or until light brown and no longer soft to the touch. The time will vary, so just keep an eye on them. Makes about 6 dozen.


My cookie cutters were SUPER small, so the cookies turned out small and pretty thick—but that’s good! If you’re using small cutters, don’t roll the dough too thin or you’ll have problems. If you’re using bigger cutters, you can roll it a little thinner. Just don’t go thinner than about 1/8 inch.


Now for decoration! The icing recipe I usually use calls for powdered sugar, but I decided to try to make a Splenda powdered sugar substitute.
Sugar-Free Sugar Cookie Icing
2 cups powdered sugar substitute (recipe follows—if you’re not concerned with it being sugar-free, use regular powdered sugar)
2 tablespoons margarine 1 tablespoon milk 1 teaspoon vanilla

To make a powdered sugar substitute, use 3/4 cup Splenda and 2 tablespoons corn starch for every cup of powdered sugar required. Blend it to a fine powder in a blender or food processor.

Heat milk and butter until butter is melted. Stir in powdered sugar substitute; add vanilla. Add milk or sugar as needed to reach proper consistency.

Now ice your cookies and decorate them however you like! Work quickly so the icing doesn’t dry before you get your decorations on. I just dipped the cookies in colored sugar. For the snowmen and angels that I wanted to color white, I didn’t ice them—I just covered them in powdered sugar. It’s super tasty.

Tiny cookies are hard to decorate though! I usually like to use cinnamon candies as tree ornaments on these cookies, but they were so small I could barely fit two on! I definitely recommend using larger cookie cutters. The small ones are super cute, but they’re a little harder to work with.

So little! But yummy, cute, and very festive.