Earth Day Sugar Cookies
And tips for a more sustainable home!
Earlier this week, I received an email from a local business offering free falafel in celebration of Earth Day. Don’t get me wrong, I love falafel but I couldn’t figure how this was going to to reduce waste, improve sustainability or help the planet. While I’m here to offer you a delicious recipe, I also want to use this platform to suggest some approachable and actionable items to improve sustainability within your home. I am far from perfect or exemplary but as I settle into a new home, I feel motivated to make small improvements that I hope will create good longterm habits. So without further ado…
7 ideas for an Earth friendlier home:
Use reusable storage bags instead of plastic bags. I personally love these Stasher ones.
Cook using your leftovers and/or wilting produce. I recently wrote an article for Allrecipes about how to grocery shop (buying only 10 ingredients!) for a week for one person. The TLDR is to cook up all of your food rather than throw it out.
Switch to reusable towels instead of paper towels. This is a great way to save a little cash too!
Compost. Here’s a guide from Food 52 on how to get started.
Bring your own reusable bags to the grocery store. Or, switch to paper bags versus plastic. I often reuse the grocery store bags until they fall apart.
Carry a water bottle instead of buying plastic water bottles. Some recs are Klean Kanteen and Nalgene; Stanley is huge on social media right now.
Shop smarter. Whether it’s trying out companies like Goldune, Blueland or this range of B Corps, it can’t hurt to support companies that aim to do good, especially for products you’re already buying.
To bake something in celebration of Earth Day, I leaned into my love of adding food dye to cookie dough for a fun and unique result. For the Super Bowl, I made these Bengals themed shortbread from this recipe which reminded me how easy it is to use food dye. Likewise, with these sugar cookies, you can add any color food dye to the dough for whatever combination you like. I like using Americolor because the colors are fantastic and a drop goes a lot further than typical grocery store options. Alternatively, you can omit the food dye and just go straight to scooping and baking for a classic sugar cookie.
Sugar Cookies
Yield: about 2 dozen, 35g cookies
Ingredients
2 ½ cups (358g) ap flour
1 teaspoon (6g) baking soda
½ teaspoon (2g) baking powder
½ teaspoon (2g) kosher salt
2 sticks (226g) butter, room temperature
1 cup and 1 tablespoon (223g) sugar
2 tablespoons (28g) dark brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
Green food dye, start with 1 dot at a time, optional
Blue food dye, start with 1 dot at a time, optional
2-3 tablespoons sugar, for rolling
Instructions
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Step 2
In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or large bowl with hand mixers, beat the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the egg and vanilla extract or paste until combined. On low, slowly add the dry ingredients until dough comes together and no streaks of flour remain.
Step 3 -If you’re making classic vanilla sugar cookies, skip this step and continue at Step 4.
Either roughly estimate or using a scale, divide the dough in two. With one half, add blue food dye and mix until desired color is reached. Repeat with the remaining dough but add green food dye.
Step 4
For classic sugar cookies, scoop or weigh out 35g portions of dough. For colorful sugar cookies, portion out (you can use a scale or eyeball) small pieces of each dough then roll together to form a ball. Once all of your dough is either rolled or scooped out, coat the balls of dough in granulated sugar.
Step 5
Move the cookie dough to baking trays lined with parchment paper, spacing the cookies about 2 inches apart. Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes until they have puffed slightly and are starting to have a cracked look on top. They will save in an airtight container up to a week at room temp or in the refrigerator and up to a month in the freezer. Enjoy!
I can’t stop talking about…
America’s Next Great Food Cities. Biddeford, Maine is one of my favorite little towns; it has been amazing to watch it grow over the past few years. It’s so exciting to see this coverage for some great businesses!
I’m fascinated by social media and the algorithm (aka what content is actually shown in your feed and why). I really enjoy Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio newsletter about working in social media. Out of curiosity, I started creating more video content on Instagram and joined TikTok. While I heard a lot of creators say posting videos was making a difference in engagement, I now can actually attest this is true even on my relatively small accounts.
While I have enjoyed creating a few different cookies this winter for my newsletter, next month I plan on baking something new. If you have any ideas for recipes or desserts you would like to see in the coming months, please leave me a message in the comments!
Finally, I am excited to share that I will be donating a tree for every subscriber through One Tree Planted. I’m glad you all are here and this is just a small way of saying thank you.
