Paleo and Vegan Raisin Cookies

I’ve tried (and failed) several Paleo cookie recipes since my husband has gone grain free. Most of my mishaps are around coconut flour. We just don’t like the coconut flavor enough to eat a cookie with all that coconutty flavor. Plus, coconut flour is so dense – and by itself it makes a really dense, hard cookie. Like it sits in your gut or you could take someone’s eye out if you threw it.

I was inspired by these Paleo breakfast cookies from The Preppy Paleo and loved that they didn’t include eggs since my husband is allergic to them, but I wanted to try incorporating almond flour. Plus, without the egg these babies are vegan too.

I’m so happy I did – we just love this recipe. In fact, after I mixed it I had a bite of it pre-cooked, and honestly I could have just eaten it like that. I could see just rolling these puppies up into little balls for a delicious snack.

But I was determined to make a cookie. In my original batch, I cooked these at 350 degrees like the original recipe. But my oven has been funky and the temperature goes up and down. I think the heat was too high and my original batch burned the edges a bit. Burned nut butter is not good. So I tried again at a lower temp, and they were much better.

Keep in mind when you form these cookies that they won’t shrink down and spread out like regular gluten cookies. So get them fairly thin as you press them out and place on the cookie sheet. Or if you like thicker cookies then keep them thick and bake a minute or two longer. I prefer my cookies a bit thinner and crispy.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 1 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (almonds, macadamia or walnuts)
• 1/2 sunflower seeds
• 1 cup almond flour
• 1 cup almond butter
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Grease baking pans.
2. Combine all ingredients in a mixer (Kitchen Aid or I used a mixer paddle with my Ninja blender). Mix for 30 seconds or so.
3. Form tablespoon-sized balls and pat down to about 1/4-inch thickness. Lay out on cookie sheet.
4. Bake for 8-10 min. Let cool and enjoy.