Coconut Cookie

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These coconut cookies are so light and delicious you will never miss sugar cookies. The trick is that by beating the eggs and the oil, you are incorporating air into the batter. This is the reason that people beat the butter with the sugar when making pound cakes or sugar cookies. So we get the same effect, only healthy.

Ease: involved Type: dessert, snack Prep Time: over an hour including dough chilling time. Yield: about 24 cookies

Cook's notes

The raw dough may be refrigerated for several hours before rolling and baking.

You may also freeze the dough and thaw it just before you are ready to roll and bake. If you were pressed for time, for example before a party, you could even roll and cut the dough several weeks or days in advance. You would need to freeze the cookies on a cookie sheet. Once they were frozen solid, you could move them to an airtight container. When you are ready to bake, place the frozen dough cookies onto an oiled or non-stick cookie sheet. Thaw and bake.

In order to save time, I highly recommend the use of large, cookie cutters with smooth shapes. For example, stars, pumpkins, snowmen, even letters if they are large enough. If you want to cut the dough into shapes with small parts, for example dogs' legs, elephant trunks or dinosaur tails and necks, it will take you much longer because the small parts can break off easily. So don't choose cookie cutters with small arms, necks or other parts unless you have the time and inclination to perform constructive surgery on most of the cookies.

Instead of grating the zest off of a lemon, I get dried lemon peel in granulated form. It saves me a huge amount of time. You can get it at natural food stores or at Frontier Co-op

Sucanat is pure crystalized, unrefined, cane juice made by Wholesome Sweeteners. It contains all of the original molasses and, therefore, all of the vitamins and minerals.

In the processing of evaporated cane juice molasses is separated from the sugar. The evaporated cane juice from Wholesome Sweeteners is the best I found. It is organic, is minimally processed, and has no chemicals.

Ingredients

2 extra large eggs
1/3 c canola or safflower oil
1/2 c less 1 T (or 7 T) organic Sucanat or organic evaporated cane juice
1 t vanilla
1/2 t lemon zest
2 c whole wheat pastry flour
2 t baking powder
1 c shredded coconut

Steps

• Beat the eggs and oil for 5 minutes in a large mixing bowl. Start at a low speed, working up to the highest speed on your mixer. Most of the mixing time should be on high. Add Sucanat or evaporated cane juice, vanilla and lemon rind. Beat well.
• In a separate bowl, mix together baking powder and flour.
• Add the flour mixture to the egg/oil mixture. Mix by hand and add the coconut. Finish mixing until completely blended. Wrap the dough and refrigerate. the colder the dough, the easier it will be to roll.
• Preheat oven to 375° convection or regular oven. Lightly flour a clean dry surface and your rolling pin. Roll the dough to 1/4" thickness. Don't roll too thin. Cut into shapes and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown around the edges.

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