Almond Lemon Jots

As Little Sis told you in her post of some fabulous cookies that include garam masala, that intriguing Indian spice blend, we, like so many of you have a strong Christmas Cookie tradition in our family.  I particularly loved making cookie press cookies with my Mom and Little Sis and sprinkling red and green sugar on top of the various shapes.  So what’s a sugar-busting, gluten free baker to do?  Apparently lots of GF bakers are using almond flour.  Well, almond flour is a bit over the top price -wise, but why not make your own?  Especially in the interest of making a healthier iced lemon cookie!

I placed a handful of raw almonds in the Vita-Mix at a time and ground them until a few chunks were still flying.  You don’t want to go too long or you will create gooey, pre-almond butter.  Then I poured it through a colander to remove the big pieces which I threw back in with some more almonds until I had enough almond flour.  (I used whole almonds, Detoxinista suggests using blanched, slivered almonds, but again… I’m cheap!)

This lot of almond pieces got dumped into a container with sweet potato, rice, raisins and cinnamon for the next morning’s breakfast!

Now I was ready to adapt Detoxinista’s frosted almond sugar cookie recipe into Almond Lemon Jots.

Ingredients

• 2 cups almond flour
• ¼ cup coconut oil, softened (or use butter instead)
• ¼ cup honey
• 1 – 2 tsp. lemon zest (I say the more the better!)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• Frosting: 2 tablespoons coconut oil, softened
• 2 tablespoons raw honey
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• pinch of salt

 Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together cookie ingredients
   

   I doubled the recipe, so I used a LOT of zest.

3. Drop by Tablespoon-ful onto a baking sheet, lined with a Silpat or parchment paper.
4. Bake for about 8 minutes at 350F, or until the edges turn golden brown.
5. Allow to cool on the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. For the frosting, cream together the coconut oil, honey, lemon zest and salt, until well combined. If the coconut oil starts to melt (it melts at temperatures above 76 degrees), briefly place the mixture in the fridge to help it set.
7. Frost the cooled cookies, and let them set in the fridge for a more solid-frosting. 

  I really like these cookies, and both my boys young and young at heart love these cookies.  The original recipe states you can also chill the dough and then cut out shapes by smushing out a bit on the silpat/ parchment and using a cookie cutter.  I’m afraid I don’t have time for pretty this year… I’m so glad to have time for yummy!

We hope you are enjoying this phase of the holidays.  It can be so overwhelming and so hard to stick with dietary goals.  Just remember, every meal and every snack offers another chance to make healthy choices.  Don’t beat yourself up over the slips.  Remember the Baby Steps and which we’ll be getting back to very soon.  Happy Holidays!