Charlotte and her cousin, Pike spent a cold, December evening all cozy inside making Christmas cookies with Grandma and Grandpa. Flour dusting the kitchen floor (and the kids' hair and clothes!), Charlotte cramming chunks of batter in her mouth at record speed, Pearl the dog licking the table, sugar sprinkles flying through the air, and elbows pushing one another to get to the cookies. Complete chaos! But in the end we had some very happy kids and a delicious batch of peppermint-flavored cookies to show for it! And that's what it's all about!

Roll-and-Cut Sugar Cookies
- Recipe from the book, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

Ingredients:
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup margarine, slightly softened (like Earth Balance "butter" sticks)
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract (you can also use almond, maple or any other flavor)
1/4 cup vanilla soymilk (or other non-dairy milk)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking powder and set aside.

In a larger bowl, cream the shortening, margarine and sugar with electric beaters until the mixture gets all soft and fluffy, for at least 4 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula to ensure everything mixes in. Now beat in the vanilla and lemon (or other) extracts and the soymilk to combine. Beat in half the flour mixture until moistened, then carefully mix in the remaining flour mixture to form a soft dough.

Divide the dough into two discs about 1 inch thick. Wrap each disc in plastic wrap and chill for several hours or overnight.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Lightly flour a large, clean work surface. Roll the dough to a 3/8in. thickness and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. If the dough seems too stiff to roll or cracks too much, let it rest at room temperature for 10min, then try rolling again.

Bake 8-10 minutes or until the cookies have just started to turn golden brown around the edges.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool for five minutes. Then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies depending on the size of your cookie cutters.

Peppermint-flavored Icing:
- from Vegetarian Times

3 cups confectioners' sugar
3 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. vanilla soymilk
1/4 tsp. peppermint extract

Mix all together and decorate with sparkling sugar or sprinkles.

I especially liked the peppermint extract in the icing-- it really gave the cookies a seasonal flavor. They tasted like candy cane cookies!

Guest post by Josh Latham, creator or MyVeganCookbook.com
Hi, my name is Josh Latham. I run a vegan recipe website called My Vegan Cookbook. My twin brother and I became vegetarian at age 11. We were both pretty finicky eaters before this decision. I always thought that meat was gross and sort of pushed it around my plate. But there was one incident in particular that really changed me. My mom had me help her prepare a chicken for dinner. She wanted me to pull the skin off the chicken for her while she chopped vegetables. I took a knife and started to trim the skin but my hands froze. I was suddenly struck with the realization that this used to be a living and breathing creature. I studied the chicken and felt a deep sadness and empathy for him. It was then and there that I woke up. I could no longer deny what meat was. Along the way, I had a few set backs to becoming vegetarian, and my mom thought I was just going through a phase, but after a year she realized she was going to have to start cooking vegetarian meals or else it would just get tossed out. It wasn't until I read The China Study in 2006 that I realized I wasn't doing myself or animals any favors by drinking cow's milk, and eating cheese and eggs. And so I began the year long, slow transition to complete vegan.

I was excited to be invited as a guest blogger on this blog because I am a kid at heart. My wheels started turning immediately as to what special gingerbread house I could create that would appeal to kids and young adults. I love all things geek, gingerbread and Kawaii, so I decided to combine all three. And so was born the Geek Boy Gingerbread House!


His eyes are open wide inside his thick glasses. The expression on his mouth is agape and his arms are flailing. Looks like he got that special tech gadget that he asked Santa for! Geek boy's look is finished off with a plaid pattern on his roof and a red bow tie.

To make this gingerbread house you first need to read through my free Vegan Gingerbread Houses ebook. This will give you a better understanding of the materials and recipes needed to construct a gingerbread house. You will find all the basics here, as well as other designs for houses in case you want to choose another style. There's a house for everyone's taste (pun intended) in there!

Dowload the pattern and instructions for the Geek Boy Gingerbread House.

If making a real gingerbread house is too much work, you can make one out of paper. Download, print, color with markers or crayons, and assemble the model of the Geek Boy Gingerbread House here.

Note from RaisingVegKids.com (Robyn)
After finding Josh's website online, I knew instantly that I had to make one of his gingerbread houses with my daughter, Charlotte. The photos of the houses in his ebook are all beautiful so it was very hard to choose, but I finally decided on Granny's House because it was clean and classic. Charlotte is only 15 months old, so I naturally did the bulk of the work, but she had fun mixing the ingredients....

......and a great time decorating the house with her friend, Linda. 

About half way into the decorating, Charlotte realized that you could actually eat the candy! So that was the end of that...