Toasty Coconut Vegan Shortbread Cookies
These cookies are inspired by my personal favorite boxed cookie, re-imagined as a shortbread style, low carb, vegan bite. They are super nutty, with notes of caramelized coconut and lots of dark chocolate.
Makes 12 cookies
Ingredients
1 cup almond flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tbsp powdered sugar
3 tbsp coconut oil
1 vanilla bean
1 bar of bittersweet baking chocolate
pinch of salt
TL;DR
Preheat your oven to 350
Toast 1 cup of the unsweetened shredded coconut in a dry pan over medium heat until roasty brown and fragrant.
Reserve 1/4 cup of toasted coconut.
Place the rest of the toasted coconut in a food processor with the remaining 1/2 cup of raw unsweetened shredded coconut.
Blitz until the coconut has formed a dry paste.
Combine coconut paste with almond flour, powdered sugar, coconut oil, vanilla bean and salt.
Use your hands to mix and massage the ingredients together until they are homogenous. The dough should stick together if you squeeze it in your fist. If it does not, add more coconut oil or a tiny bit of water.
Squeeze and roll 2 tbsp portions into balls. Take the reserved toasted coconut and press it into the outside of each ball as you roll it. Place on a baking sheet.
Chill in the freezer for 5 minutes.
Remove from freezer and press each ball into a patty with a warm fork (see details below).
Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown, rotating the pans half way through.
Remove from the oven and let cool to room temp. Then chill in the freezer for around 15 minutes.
While the cookies chill, melt the baking chocolate in a double boiler.
Dip the bottom of each cookie in melted chocolate and set on parchment paper.
Drizzle the cookies with more melted chocolate.
Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes, then enjoy.
Store in the fridge.
The Deets
These cookies are inspired by my very favorite boxed cookie. One of the ones you buy from kids just outside the grocery store, or subway station. Specifically the coconut, caramel and chocolate variety.
Now, while the classic cookie combines the coconut with chewy and stretchy textures via a bunch of caramel, I wanted to make something with way less sugar. So I forgo the caramel for deeply toasting the coconut and replace the chewy-ness with a super addictive and delicate crumbly shortbread texture.
These cookies are vegan and are held together entirely with coconut oil. But I do think they would be VERY good if you subbed some or all of the coconut oil for butter. More deep and rich, less coconut flavor. I wanted this recipe to be vegan, but this is YOUR cookie. If you like butter, do butter!
The first step is to almost make a coconut butter. (If you haven’t heard of coconut butter it is like a nut butter, ie. nuts blended until the oils come out and they become creamy and spreadable). In this case we are going to stop just short of fully “buttering” the coconut. Begin by toasting 1 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut in a dry pan, over medium/low heat.
To clarify, this is the unsweetened coconut that is shredded really small. its almost like snow. It is not the long sticky sweetened shreds of coconut. It is also not the big thick hard flakes of coconut.
Toast the coconut until it is a medium/deep golden brown. You can initially let it sit for a couple minutes on the heat, but then start watching and stirring. And really don’t stop until you take the coconut out of the pan because it will burn easily and quickly.
Once toasted, reserve 1/4 cup and add the rest to a food processor. Add another 1/2 cup of raw coconut to the food processor as well. Now blend. I do 10 second intervals until the oil starts to come out of the coconut and it begins to clump together. Once it is heavily clumping, but hasn’t gone fully to paste, you are done.
Combine that paste with 1 cup almond flour, 1 tbsp powdered sugar, 3 tbsp coconut oil, paste from 1 vanilla bean, and a pinch of salt in a medium bowl.
Here is where it get fun. Use your hands to mix and squeeze and press and massage the dough. Your goal is to spread the coconut oil across all the other ingredients. If your coconut oil was stored in the fridge you may need to warm it in your palm and press it between your fingers a lot.
Once the dough is homogenous start to squeeze hand-fulls together. It should stick into a large solid clump that will then break apart a bit as you set it down. If it doesn’t hold together like this, add a bit more coconut oil or a tiny bit of water.
Now we roll it into individual balls. Set up a station with a baking sheet lined with parchment, a small plate with the reserved 1/4 cup of toasted coconut, and your dough. Take about 2 tbsp of the dough in your palm and really squeeze the hell out of it a few times. Then roll it between your palms gently. If it doesn’t hold as a ball shape, just squeeze it hard a few more times and try again. The heat of your hands of really helping you here.
Once you have it in a firm ball, press a little bit of the toasted coconut onto the outside. I do this by adding some coconut to my palm, along with the ball, and just squeezing it in. Then set your ball on the baking sheet.
Repeat with all the dough (should make about 12 balls) Then, and THIS IS IMPORTANT, chill the cookies in the freezer for around 15 minutes. The thing is, these cookies are held together with just coconut oil, so temperature is so important. If the dough isn’t behaving, chill it, then chill it more.
Here is where we really use temperature to our advantage. Take a small mug and fill it with boiling water. Then place a fork in the mug. You are going to use this warmed fork to press down the balls of dough into cute little ridged patties.
To do so, remove the cookie balls from the freezer. One at a time take the warm fork and press it into the top of the cookie, while using your other hand to hold around the edge of the cookie and encourage it to all stay together. Then rotate the fork and press again at a 90 degree angle to your first press. Repeat with all the the cookies, letting your fork warm up in the water between cookies.
Now bake your cookies in a 350º oven for around 15 minutes or until they are nicely browned around the edges and on the bottom. Rotate the pan once in the middle of the bake time.
Once the cookies are baked, let them cool on the baking sheets until room temp and then chill them in the freezer for around 15 minutes.
Time for the chocolate! Melt 1 bar of bittersweet baking chocolate in a double boiler. Then place about 3/4 of the melted chocolate on a small plate. You need to move fast here. Take each cookie and place it, bottom side down, in the chocolate so the underside gets coated. Swirl it around a couple times so the chocolate comes up the sides a bit. Then use a fork to lift it out and set it back on the parchment.
Once all the cookies have chocolate bottoms, we drizzle. To do this rewarm the remaining chocolate and put it into a small zip top plastic bag. Squish it all into one corner and snip a very small bit off that corner of the bag. Then drizzle the chocolate back and forth over the cookies.
Chill the cookies in the freezer for another 15 minutes and they are ready to enjoy!
Store them in a sealed container in the fridge.
