*These Toasted Coconut Cardamom & Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are gluten free, dairy free, and contain no refined sugar.
Summer has officially arrived for my family since school ended a few weeks ago. It’s kind of sad that for a few months I was looking forward to it since in my mind summer equates to relaxation, food, and general slow living, but within the first week all of those preconceived expectations were shattered. Why is summertime SO much busier than the rest of the year?! I feel like I was busy in May and now it’s all gone into overdrive. Summer relaxation my foot. When things get crazy I need sweets. I need sweets and I need sweets that are simple and easy to grab when I occasionally (read: frequently) have the urge to stress eat. To me, simple & easy treats mean one thing: Cookies.
I love cookies but have never been one to make them often. If I do make cookies there’s a pretty good chance that it will be some sort of variation on my all time favorite gingersnap recipe. It’s a cookie base that is easily adapts to gluten free, dairy free, and refined sugar free ingredients and it to this day has yet to disappoint. The cookies are always soft and chewy (provided they’re not over-baked) and the tops are perfectly folded in with textbook crinkles.
Cardamom, coconut, and chocolate is my summer cookie flavor combo of choice. To add the best cardamom flavor to these cookies I take a seed from a cardamom pod and blend it with the dry ingredients so that the seed is ground directly into the flour, giving it the freshest, most potent cardamom flavor you can get. You can use ground cardamom powder as well, but remember that it is not as fresh and flavorful as using cardamom pods. The flavor in ground cardamom dissipates quickly as it sits on the shelf.
Instead of rolling these cookies in sugar like I normally do, I rolled them in toasted coconut for a dose of texture and cozy coconut-y flavor. Note that when toasting the shredded coconut you want to be careful to not over-toast it. The coconut will technically be baked twice so if it’s already dark after the first toasting, it may scorch when baked with the cookies the second time. You could roll the cookies in un-toasted coconut but it won’t gain much color when only baked once.
More cookies:
Chocolate Covered Strawberry Macaroons
Raw Chocolate Dipped Oreo Cookies
Soft Sugar Cookies with Spiced Vanilla “Buttercream”
- 1 Cardamom Pod (or ¼ teaspoon Groun Cardamom)
- 1 cup Quinoa Flour
- 1 cup Gluten Free Oat Flour
- 2 teaspoons Baking Soda
- ¼ cup Cocoa Powder
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- 1 large Egg, room temperature
- ½ cup Coconut Oil, melted
- 2 tablespoons Molasses
- ¼ cup Honey
- ⅔ cup Coconut Palm Sugar
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla
- ¾ cup Finely Shredded Unsweetened Coconut, lightly toasted
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Open the cardamom pod and place the seed in a high speed blender (discard the pod) along with the quinoa flour, oat flour, baking soda, cocoa powder, and salt. Blend the dry ingredients together for 1-2 minutes, or until the mixture has a strong cardamom aroma. Sift the mixture into a mixing bowl and discard and pieces of cardamom seed that remain.
- In another bowl, whisk together the egg, coconut oil, molasses, honey, palm sugar, and vanilla.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until well combined.
- Scoop out 2 tablespoon rounds of dough and roll each round into a ball.
- Roll each ball of dough in the coconut until well coated and place on the prepared baking sheets spaced about 2" apart. Do not flatten cookies.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 8-9 minutes. You want the cookies to be just slightly underdone in the center so that when they cool they retain a soft, chewy texture.
- Let the cookies sit on the sheet for one minute, then move to a wire rack to cool.
- Store in an airtight container for up to a week.
