There’s Nothing Scary in These Coconut Ghost Cookies
Halloween has earned itself a bad reputation for kicking off unhealthy habits that last for the rest of the year. Once you get started, it’s hard to stop. But this holiday doesn’t have to set back your healthy lifestyle. We’ve partnered with nutritionist and wellness coach Dorit Jaffe of Whole Healthy Glow to create these six-ingredient cookies, because the scariest part of Halloween tends to be the indecipherable foods we put in our bodies. These flaky and light coconut shortbread cookies will have you shamelessly standing by the snack table, with no queasy stomach the next day. They’re paleo, gluten-free, low in sugar, and sweetened with a tad of maple syrup, but we bet nobody will know if you don’t tell them.
The secret to making your cookies as delicious and nutritious (had to) as possible is all about the butter. Using grass-fed butter means including a heavy dose of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin k2, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is linked to reducing body fat, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. CLA also helps to regulate proper immune function and inflammatory responses, and grass-fed butter contains five times more of this fat-busting component than butter from grain-fed cows.
We’ve substituted flour for decimated coconut, which is gluten free and more beneficial to your body than wheat flour, but still provides the light, airy texture we all expect when we bite into a cookie. These are guaranteed universal crowd pleasers.
Coconut Shortbread Ghost Cookie Recipe:
Makes about 12 cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup coconut flour
12 Tablespoons grass-fed butter
4 Tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup coconut flakes
¼ cup dark chocolate chips
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350’F. Lightly grease cookie sheet with butter.
Combine room-temperature butter and coconut flour in a mixing bowl with a fork until the mixture is flaky.
Add in the maple syrup and vanilla extract and mix until dough is smooth.
Mix in the shredded coconut.
Gently roll the batter with a rolling pin over parchment paper.
Use a ghost-shaped cookie cutter to form your cookies. Repeat this until you’ve used all of your batter.
Place your cookies on a cookie sheet and add the chocolate chips where the ghosts’ eyes and mouths should be. Make sure that the pointed sides of the chocolate chips are pushed into the cookie and faced down.
Bake for about 5-6 minutes until golden brown.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack. Enjoy!
By Dorit Jaffe as told to Devon Kelley
