Almond Chocolate Cookies with Pink Sugar Free Glaze
These cookies are fun. Fun to make, fun to decorate and fun to eat. They make a great weekend project with your little ones (if you have them) and like most of the recipes you’ll find here, they’re simple to make and are whole food based. You can decorate them or leave them plain, they’re delicious either way but understandbly, they are slightly more desirable and appreciated by the little one’s when they’re decorated with chocolate or this deliciously pink sugar free glaze.
What’s Inside these Almond Chocolate Cut Out Cookies?
Almond Flour
Almond flour is gluten free and grain free and packed with healthy fats and protein. It won’t spike your blood sugar the way other flours might, and is a great way to keep the cookies lower in sugar than a grain flour based cookie.
Cocoa/Cacao Powder & Dark Chocolate
The cookie dough calls for a small amount of cocoa or cacao powder. If you like things more chocolatey, feel free to increase it, but be sure to decrease the almond flour by the same weight measurement. So if you add an additional 15 g of cacao or cocoa powder, take out 15 g of almond flour. Otherwise you’ll have to play around with the liquid measurements to get the texture right for rolling. You can use raw cacao powder or dutch processed cocoa powder. The choice is yours. While I normally recommend raw cacao powder for beverages and such, in a baked cookie or dessert, it doesn’t make much of a difference in my opinion.
Melted dark chocolate is used to decorate some of the cookies. You can dip them in melted dark chocolate or drizzle it over top. The choice is yours. I recommend a dark chocolate with 85% cacao content or higher.
Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is what gives these cookies a crispy texture. I don’t have a substitution for this, so if you’re looking for something oil free, your best bet is to find another cookie recipe. You’ll want your coconut oil to be in a liquid state before adding it to the dry ingredients. You can opt for refined coconut oil with a more neutral taste or unrefined coconut oil that tastes like, surprise, coconut. We’re only using 2 tablespoons so it doesn’t make a huge difference to the flavour of the cookies.
Maple Syrup
The maple syrup adds sweetness here obviously, but also helps bring the dry ingredients together. You can chose to use another liquid sweetener in place if you prefer, but do not use a granulated sweetner as it won’t work to bind. Your best substitutions if you need one is honey or brown rice malt syrup. Honey will be a bit sweeter while the brown rice malt will be slightly less sweet. They’ll both be more stick than maple syrup, which may not be a bad thing when rolling out the dough.
Erythritol
Powdered erythritol is the main ingredient in the optional pink “sugar” glaze. It’s completely sugar free, calorie free and has a glycemic index of 0. It’s quite the sugar imposter, though. I feels and tastes just like sugar, without all the negative side effects associate with regular sugar. I’m currently writing a more in depth article on Erythritol and will link to it here once it’s ready.
Almond Chocolate Cookies With Dark Chocolate Drizzle & Hot Pink Sugar Free "Sugar" Glaze
Author Nissrine Boufawaz @ HolisticNiss.com
- Time 30 minutes
- Difficulty Easy
- Servings 22 Cookies
- Diet vegan, gluten free, grain free
- Category Dessert
Ingredients for the Cookies:
- 200 g Almond Flour
- 1 Tbsp Cacao or Cocoa Powder
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/8 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/8 tsp Fine Sea Salt
- 1/4 tsp Pure Bourbon Vanilla Powder
- 2 Tbsp Coconut Oil, measured in a liquid state
- 3 Tbsp Maple Syrup
To Deocrate the Cookie with a Pink "Sugar" Glaze:
- 2 Tbsp Powdered Erythritol
- 1 Tbsp Filtered Water
- 1/2 Tsp Powdered Natural Food Colour (beet root powder, raspberry powder, etc...)
- 1/2 - 1 Tbsp Coconut Butter
To Decorate the Cookies with Dark Chocolate:
- 40 g Dark Chocolate Bar, melted
- 1/2 Tbsp Coconut Oil (optional, but it helps keep the chocolate liquified while using it to coat the cookies)
Method:
- Preheat your oven to 180° Celsius
- Mix almond flour, cacao or cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, sea salt and vanilla in a large bowl.
- Pour liquid coconut oil (see note*) and maple syrup over dry mixture and stir with a spatula to combine, then use your hands to knead into a ball of dough.
- Let the dough rest for about 5 minutes then roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper, to between 1/8 inch - 1/4 inch thickness and use a small to medium sized cookie cutter to shape the cookies.
- Repeat with leftover dough, until it has all been rolled and cut out. Try not to roll out the dough more than 3 times. By the third roll out, the almond flour starts to release it's natural oil and it gets a bit messy.
- Carefully transfer the cookies to a parchment paper lined baking sheet using a spatula and bake them on the center rack until they are slightly golden, about 8-10 minutes. Keep a close eye on them to make sure they don't burn. Almond flour goes from golden to burnt very quickly. Try baking 1 cookie to start to see how long it takes to get a good golden hue and adjust baking time as needed based on the strength of your oven.
- Let the cookies cool completely before you decorate them.
To Decorate the Cookies:
- To decorate the cookies with pink "sugar" glaze: combine the erythritol, water, natural food colour powder and coconut butter and stir until smooth and creamy. Spread about 1 tsp onto the cookie, forming any shape you like. This is enough to decorate 6 cookies. If you want to decorate more than that, just double or triple the recipe accordingly.
- To decorate the cookies with chocolate: melt the dark chocolate bar using a double boiler method. Place a pot of water on the stove. Place a bowl slightl larger than your pot over the top of the pot, making sure it doesn't get submerged into the water. Add the chopped dark chocolate bar to the bowl, and turn the stove on to medium low heat. Stir the chocolate with a whisk until fully melted. Turn off the heat and add 1 tbsp of coconut oil if using and stir through until melted. Leave the bowl on top of the pot, the heat trapped in there, as well as the coocnut oil, will help keep the chocolate perfectly liquid as you use it to decorate the cookies.
- Store the cookies in the refrigerator to keep them fresh and crisp for up to 3 days. They will still be good to eat after that, but may lose their crisp.
Note: If your coconut oil is in a solid state, you'll want to melt it down and measure 2 tablespoons when it's fully liquified. About 3 tablespoons of solid scraped out of the jar coconut oil from the refrigerator will give you 2 tablespoons of liquid oil once melted.
