In a large bowl, cream together the butter and maple sugar (or cane sugar).
In a small bowl stir together the flaxseed meal and water. Let sit for 5 or 10 minutes, until it has thickened up a bit.
Add the flaxseed meal mixture and pumpkin puree to the butter-sugar mixture. Stir well. Add the vanilla and stir again.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and sea salt. Add this to the butter-sugar mixture. Mix well, until you have a uniform cookie dough. Gather into a ball and wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate overnight.
Make the colored sugar: Mix together the raw cane sugar with the food coloring until it’s uniform in color. Let it sit overnight, uncovered, to let it dry out overnight. You can even spread it out on a piece of parchment paper to help it get really dry.
The next day, unwrap the chilled dough. Depending how thick the dough shape is, you can cut it half to make two flatter disks of dough. Place it on a floured board. Using a rolling pin, roll it out to about 1/8-inch thickness.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly dust a baking sheet with a little flour.
Lightly dip the shamrock cookie cutter in flour, then press it into the dough to cut out shamrock shapes. Fit in as many shapes as you can over the dough’s surface. Then carefully pick them up using a spatula to place them onto the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, spacing them out an inch or so apart.
Sprinkle each shamrock cookie evenly with some of the green-colored sugar.*Note: You can make other cookie shapes and use different colored sugar, depending on the holiday. For example, you can make heart-shaped cookies topped with red sugar for Valentine’s Day. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes, checking them closely after 7 minutes. Lift one cookie with a spatula to check the bottom. If lightly browned and the edges are light brown, remove the baking sheet from the oven.
Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely. The cookies will crisp up more as they cool. Once completely cool, serve the cookies or store in a cookie tin or glass container, loosely covered. The cookies will keep up to a week.
