Dairy & Soy Free Cookies

I have been commissioned to bake a batch of cookies for a baby shower tonight. The expectant mom is allergic to dairy AND soy, and so the task of trying to find something that she could actually eat at her own baby shower began. I came across this recipe and thought it should be easy enough to modify so I went out and got some butter flavored crisco, only to read the label and see that it's practically all solidified soybean oil. Stink.

Happily, I had some coconut oil in the pantry so here's how I modified the recipe to work. If you haven't used coconut oil before, it's awesome. It's a solid with a melting point of 76* - which I did not know a year ago, so I thought some of you might not know that either.

I think this recipe would also be fantastic with other extracts or maybe cocoa powder. It's not "healthy" as it's chock full of white sugar, but it sure is tasty and I'm hoping the guest of honor will be able to enjoy a cookie.

Lemon Crinkles
2/3 cup (scant) coconut oil
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp lemon extract
1 T honey
1 lemon
2 cups flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
extra sugar for rolling

Cream together coconut oil and sugar. I used a hand mixer, but a food processor would work well for the task of breaking down the coconut oil - it is pretty solid and doesn't cream well like butter would. If you use a mixer, you will have to keep scraping and mixing. It worked fine for me to use the mixer, though.

Add egg, extract, honey, and zest from about half of the lemon. Juice the lemon and reserve. Mix until creamy. Stir in (by hand) flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Slowly add lemon juice, a little at a time, until the dough sticks together and feels like cookie dough. Cover with plastic wrap and chill about an hour.

When the dough is chilled, roll into balls using a tablespoon of dough - these should be pretty small balls. I used my Pampered Chef small scoop, level. Roll balls in sugar and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, bake at 325* for about 12 minutes or until lightly golden. It's fun to watch these brown up before your very eyes in the last 30 seconds of bake time, but keep a close eye!! Remove to a cooling rack, repeat. You can most certainly reuse your parchment paper.

If you end up trying these and tweaking them to be all vanilla, or cinnamon -sugar rolled, or adding cocoa powder, please let me know how it goes! These seem like they'd be a great base cookie! It was really fun to experiment with a new challenge and have it be a success!!