Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies -- Sans Sugar, and Gluten-Free

I always really liked sugar cookies. I liked the simple, vanilla redolent flavour, I liked the light texture, and I liked the cute shapes. When we were teenagers, my friend Jennifer and I made a huge batch of sugar cookies that we cut by hand into fantastic shapes and decorated with bright amazing colours of icing. We then took the whole batch down to Sick Kids hospital to give to the kids. A nurse confiscated them and promised they'd be distributed to the kids who were allowed to eat them. To this day, I have my secret doubts, and am at least halfway convinced that there were a lot of doctors and nurses grooving on the psychedelic effects of our beautiful creations. They were gorgeous, and back in the 80's, we all still believed sugar was good for you ... :)

Keeping with the theme of 'holiday' type cookies, I wanted to come up with a recipe for a sugar cookie that includes no sugar, and can be enjoyed without qualms. Like the gingerbread people of a couple weeks ago, these ones are also gluten-free. I'll do a not gluten free but still healthy alternative later on.

Coconut flour is an interesting flour. It absorbs water so prodigiously that you need much less of it than you would another flour. In fact, it could probably be used for disaster clean up following flooding ... I find the texture of cookies made with coconut flour improves after a couple of days, and then is really great, and keeps well for a number of weeks, even. In addition, coconut flour is very high in protein, with a good amount of fiber, won't spike anyone's insulin, is gluten free, and doesn't have the same inflammatory effects that many people experience with grain flours, even whole grain.

ingredients:

1/4 cup extra virgin coconut oil

1/4 cup agave

2 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 1/2 tsp ground vanilla bean (this is more or less optional, because it's a bit more esoteric, and the cookies will be nice without it, too)

1/4 tsp sea salt

1 cup almond flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup coconut flour

directions:

1. warm the oil to melt it

2. mix in the agave

3. mix in the eggs

4. add the vanilla and lemon

5. add the sea salt and vanilla bean

6. add the almond flour

7. add the baking soda

8. add the coconut flour, and mix well

9. wrap the finished dough in parchment, put it in an airtight container, and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled (this will make it easier to work with)

10. divide the dough in half

11. roll half the dough between 2 pieces of parchment until reasonably thin, and cut with your favourite cookie cutters and transfer the shapes to a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet

12. amass the scraps and repeat until the dough is gone.

13. repeat with the second half

14. you should fill two baking sheets. The number of cookies will depend on the size of the cutters ...

15. preheat the oven to 300, and bake the trays for 20 minutes in the upper half of the oven. After 10 minutes cooking time,  switch their positions halfway through.

16. After 20 minutes total cooking time, shut the oven off, and leave the cookies in the oven for another 10 minutes.

17. After 30 minutes total cooking time, remove the cookies from the oven, and leave to cool for a few minutes.

18. remove the cookies to a cooling rack.

19. store in an airtight container.

20. these cookies keep really well, and in my opinion improve with age, and are at their best after a few days after baking