Sift together all of the dry ingredients called for under the “Cookie Dough” list above.
Like fluffy piles of snow [smile].
Now, in a small bowl, fold together coconut oil and vanilla extract.
Fold into dough and with your hands, mix well and roll into four equal sized balls. Set aside.
Juice your beet. If you don’t have a juicer, you can blend your beet in a high powered blender and squeeze the pulp through a cheesecloth to get some fresh juice. If you live near a shop that sells fresh juices and smoothies, call and see if they have beet juice, or if they will juice a beet for you if you bring one in.
Beet juice amazes me every time—it is so pretty. Mother Nature is a genius.
Now, take one of your balls of dough and place it in a medium bowl and add 1 tbsp oat flour and 2 tbsp beet juice. Using your hands (its the best way), start folding the dough to mix in your natural dye. It may be sticky at first but keep going, the dough will absorb the juice. Roll into a ball and set aside. Let’s move on to green…
… you may remember our friend chlorophyll from the Halloween Witch Fingers post. It makes the handsomest evergreen dye. Just grab another ball of dough and place it in a bowl with 1 tbsp chlorophyll and 1 tbsp oat flour and get in there with your hands until it is thoroughly mixed and roll a beautiful ball and set aside.
For cocoa dough, just work in 2 tbsp cocoa powder. If any dough is way too sticky to work with, dust in a little brown rice flour or oat flour until you reach a rollable consistency—not too dry. But give it time first, the dough absorbs the liquids as you work.
Awww, look at these naturally dyed beauties.
My favorite tip for rolling cookies:
Make unbleached parchment your BFF—I can’t imagine rolling out dough without it.
Lay out a sheet of unbleached parchment (put a drop or two of water between it and the counter top if it wants to slip) and place your dough on top. Then place another sheet of parchment on top of your dough and roll out. Peeling back the parchment reveals smooth dough—it is a great way to ease dough rolling frustration and keeps things a bit cleaner. Check out this Pot Pie post for pics of these steps.
For swirled Cookies:
Rollout and shape two equal-sized rectangles and place one on top of the other and roll on up into a log.
What is cool about these cookies is that the properties of each “dye” mixed with the dough, results in a slight texture difference in the dough. This is where patience comes in. The red dough, and the green dough may want to crack a bit when you are working with it—don’t fret. I prepared this recipe about 5x last week and always had the same results. When making rolled cookies, keep the red or green as the center and make white or brown the outside layer, or once your “cookie log” is rolled up, just continue to gently roll the outside over on itself until the seams come together…
… use your fingers to work any particularly pesky crack by gently pressing and then rolling. Smile, whistle and roll. Smile, whistle and roll. Breathe. You are using real food ingredients and they don’t have the allergen gluten, or the science lab gums and chemical weirdness to make them flawless—appreciate this fact instead of becoming frustrated.
Place rolled dough in the fridge to chill a bit (10-15 mins) for easy slicing.
For circle cookies:
Roll up a 4″ length of dough about 1/2″ in diameter (brown below). Then roll out a rectangle of dough in another color the same 4″ length, and long enough to completely cover that first piece (white below). Repeat with one or two more colors until you get the cookie log size you want. Place in the fridge to chill for about 10-15 minutes for easy slicing.
Intimidated? Don’t be. You can always just roll out the dough out simply, in all it’s one-color glory, and use a cute cookie cutter instead.
Another tip:
Since we are sans gluten (without “glue”) in this recipe, it helps to use your freezer to firm up shapes so you can easily transfer them to baking sheets. I tend to roll out dough, cut some cookies, and if I find that they are too soft and sticky and may lose their shape, I slide my parchment (which they should be on from rolling) onto a baking sheet and pop ’em in the freezer for 2 minutes. The coconut oil is so sensitive to temperature changes that it firms up quickly. Then you can easily use a butter knife or offset spatula (my fave) to slide under rolled dough and lift out shapes, to place them on the baking sheet (see the stars below, how the corners are lifted a bit? They are fresh from the freezer. Once they bake, those corners will come down flat).
Once your swirly cookie logs are chilled, remove from freezer. You want them at just the right temp—not so cool that they crumble apart, and not so warm that they smush. So, test a slice at the end. If it’s crumbling, wait a bit for it to thaw more, until you can easily slice firm cookie shapes with a sharp knife. If it’s too smushy, put it back in the fridge. These cookies do not spread or “grow” when baking, so slice them about 1/4″ thick.
Have fun with any color combination you like.
To bake, preheat oven to 350°F. Bake cookies for 10 minutes, no longer.
Remove from oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet.
These guys were made using sucanat—you can see the difference in color here. A tad less vibrant, but they are delicious this way, too.
You can store in the pantry or in the fridge in an airtight glass container for up to two weeks if they don’t get gobbled up first.
