I love to make healthy-ish cookies (like this long-running recipe), but I rarely take the time. This holiday season I’ve been feeling the fever—we did holiday cards, for, er, Christ’s sake (also because when you have a baby you sign some sort of cosmic Christmas contract that compels you to send Christmas cards even if you never have before). Anyway, on the cookies I always use coconut sugar, which has a lower glycemic index, and some type of alternative flour. Right now, it’s sprouted spelt, which should have lower impact on blood sugar, easier digestion (sprouting), and no phosphates. My cookies are less sweet than traditional cookies, but that’s a good thing to my taste buds! Here are the recipes I’m currently playing with (I’ll be adding protein soon…)
I made these for the WLAG cookie exchange:
Made both with and without peppermint, both were good!
I used crushed candy canes as the peppermint extract because I didn’t have any and don’t like it and wasn’t going to buy it, and it still infused a good bit of peppermint flavor. So there you go, if you’re stubborn and lazy like me 😉
For my WLAG box (pictured), I also added a pecan bark that was basically just sugar, butter, and pecans. I will paste the recipe at the end of this post, it’s dumb.
I made these for the UPS guy that I love but Bob ate all the gingerbread so they had to go to the dog trainer and walker instead … I used chocolate chips, pistachios, and dried mango, and topped them with melted chocolate.
Gingerbread
lol. Bob got in the way of these.
I don’t know how much more baking I’ll get to this season, but hopefully more! Drop a recipe in the comments if you have one I should try!
Simple Pecan Bark
Couldn’t be easier. For snacking and topping cookie boxes.
Ingredients List
- 1.5 Cups pecan pieces
- 10 graham crackers (I used nut sweet thins and would recommend full-size grahams; these made for very tasty but oddly breaking barks)
- 3/4 Cup unsalted butter
- 1/4 Teaspoon salt
- 3/4 Cup coconut sugar, packed
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
Preparation
- Preheat your oven to 350°
- Line a 9×13 baking sheet with parchment paper. Arrange the graham crackers in a single, even layer on the sheet and set aside.
- In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the pecan pieces, brown sugar, and salt.
- Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
- Remove the pan from the heat and mix in the vanilla extract.
- Carefully pour the hot filling over the graham crackers and spread it evenly to cover them.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Allow the bark to cool completely before breaking it into pieces and enjoying.