My Quest for the perfect (no) Sugar Cookie...

Part of my New Year's resolution was to eat better, right?  And as I began to eat healthier foods that didn't have so much sugar in them, I began to experience a horrible psychological withdrawal from the sugar, right?  I wasn't impressed with the withdrawal symptoms I was experience.  Give me caffeine withdrawal headaches any day of the week.  The constant flip-flop of emotions, not so much.  Since I'm already detoxing from processed sugar, I have decided to cut it out all together.  

On Saturday, the Roommate, the Momma and I stopped in at William Sonoma where, upon entering, I made the most glorious discovery:

Yes, dearies, that is (child sized) Star Wars apron and Star Wars cookie cutters.  The squees of glee and the happy dance I did in the middle of William Sanoma might have embarrassed me if I had any pride.  Thankfully, I don't, so I made quite a spectacle of myself.  

You know what this means, right?  Nerd Cookies!!!!  Damn, you George Lucas...

Armed with my Nerd Baking supplies, I set off on a mission to create the perfect (no) sugar cookie.  I did not know the peril that awaited me. I thought it would be a brilliant idea to use Splenda as a substitute for sugar.  After all, it does say right on the package that it can be substituted cup for cup with sugar.  What they don't tell you is that it is also twice as absorbent as sugar and as such will make your dough extremely dry and unmanageable.  As such, the first batch of dough was crap.  Oy.

After regrouping and having the Roommate research sugar free recipes for me online, we noticed that people who were baking with Splenda were only using 3/4 the amount of Splenda when substituting for sugar.  My recipe called for 1c sugar, so I substituted 3/4c Splenda instead and added 1-2 tbsp warm water to make the dough less dry.  If we're being honest, I probably could have used a 1/2c and it would have been fine.  

Once the dough had been chilled, it was difficult to beat it into submission.  Just ask Jenny.  I coerced her into rolling and cutting so I could play some Dance Central.  The end result (before baking) looked like this:

  

The dough was still a bit dry, but much more manageable than the previous batch.  The taste wasn't terribly bad, either.  However, the icing was an entirely different challenge.  It called for 4 1/2c powdered sugar, so I used 3 1/2 c Splenda, which was not enough.  I'm usually a fan of Splenda, but the taste of the icing was just not...good.  It wasn't horrible and when it on a cookie, it balances out, but as a stand alone icing, not so much.  

After the cookies were baked, the Roommate, Jenny and I put our color theory skills to good use.  You don't know how difficult it is to get Boba Fett green when you're starting with a stark white base!  Bah!  In the end, they turned out pretty well, though:

I will definitely be experimenting with different types of icing.  I just can't get behind the Splenda-fied royal icing.  

In fact, I may go entirely icing free as Jenny suggested dying the dough instead of icing the cookies.  Another thought would be to create a color wash from the food coloring and apply it with a brush.  

The (no) sugar cookies definitely need more exploration, but all-in-all it was not a horrible experience.