Vegan Cranberry Coconut Christmas Cookies – first Advent Sunday

Hey there!

First I want to wish you all a peaceful first Advent Sunday. Here in Switzerland the first of advent opens Christmas season. There are Christmas markets popping up everywhere, next Saturday we’ll celebrate Saint Nicholas and the best thing Christmas cookie-baking marathons are held in every single Swiss household. There is even a jingle bells version about Christmas cookies in Swiss German, that’s how extraordinarily important those baking sessions are. The baking day in my household won’t be until two weeks before Christmas but I can’t wait for it. My mum and her best friend always have a whole day dedicated to baking. Usually I was allowed to help though when I was a little girl I only got to do the boring jobs. Such as taking the baked cookies from the tray and transferring them onto plates to cool, doesn’t sound like much fun does it? This year however I’ll finally be old enough to actually participate. Well I have been old enough for the past years, due to time reasons though we haven’t got around to having actual baking marathons for over three years now. Hence I am even more pumped to finally be an actual part of the annual Christmas cookie marathon.

To survive the two-week long stretch between the first of Advent and the day we’ll finally start the big baking sesh I decided to already do some baking on the Saturday before the first of Advent so Christmas season can be started with a plate of amazing homemade cookies. I decided to bake some vegan cookies, just to challenge myself a little.

A friend of mine mentioned some amazing coconut cranberry cookies she tried recently. She also found that they would be a perfect addition to my blog. Therefore I came up with my very own version of vegan coconut cranberry cookies.

For the ingredients I like to stay away from refined sugar, hence I decided to use agave syrup. The other liquid ingredients were water and some melted coconut butter. Though make sure to use coconut butter not coconut oil, they’re not actually the same thing.

Then for dry ingredients I used half coconut flour half spelt flour and then also some chia seeds. Other than that you obviously need to add lots of dried cranberries and well I also added some vanilla and baking powder and that was already it. This cookie recipe really only requires a handful of ingredients and it turns out absolutely delicious.

The consistency is slightly different to an ordinary chocolate chip cookie. Though I didn’t mind that fact. They’re really soft and chewy and I just find the cranberries and the coconut to be a perfect combination. And you know what, I am actually not a big fan of sweets with coconut flavour at all those cookies however made me overthink that fact. I even had kind of a hard time to keep myself from eating the whole batch all at once; well they were extremely delicious so you have to bear with me.

Now you should probably start baking yourself so I won’t be the only one to enjoy Christmas season with those delightful vegan cookies. So there you’ve got the recipe, which by the way makes enough batter for about 13 to 14 fairly large cookies.

• 100g spelt flour
• 100g coconut flour
• 100g agave syrup
• 100g coconut butter
• 1tbs chia seeds
• 150g dried cranberries
• 1tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp vanilla
• water

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C
2. Mix your chia seeds with 4 tbs of water and melt your coconut butter. I just put my coconut butter in a bowl, boiled some water and then placed the boil in the boiling water for about 10 minutes.
3. Cream together your melted coconut butter and your agave syrup.
4. Sift in your flour and also add the coconut flour and your chia seed water mixture, which should have thickened by now, mix well
5. The consistency you’ll reach will be rather dry so you’ll need to poor in about 1dl of water. Also add your vanilla and baking powder and combine the mixture
6. Add the dried cranberries and distribute them evenly through the batter
7. Shape your cookies. I just used an ice cream scoop to get evenly sized cookie balls and then I flattened them to about 1cm thickness
8. Bake at 180°c for about 10 to 15 minutes.*

Voila now you’re amazing vegan Christmas cookies are finished and you get to enjoy them with a cup of tee or coffee on this lovely first of advent or really at any time during the fifth season of the year.

Enjoy your Sunday

Bisous

Fanny, the foodie

*Baking Tipp: In my oven, which is a fairly new one, the cookies had exactly 13 minutes in the oven and they were perfect. I recommend setting the timer to 10 minutes and then check if they’re done. If not just adjust the time but keep an eye on them because you wouldn’t want them to burn.