Growing up Valentine’s Day was always special to me.  I loved how my sweet mama always gave (and still gives) my brother and I a little gift and a card.  I loved the Valentine’s Day parties at school.  I remember many trips to Target looking for my little valentines to give to my classmates.  And of course, I loved the goodies! Heart-shaped candies and cookies, more chocolate than I thought possible, and sweet, sweet cupcakes.  Talk about a sugar rush!

These days I still love Valentine’s Day.  It’s such a great reminder to find ways to really show your friends, family, and significant others how much you care for them and love them.

Of course, finding tasty Valentine’s Day desserts to share that are gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, peanut-free, etc… can be difficult!

To help in your celebration of this day of love, I have a “sugar” cookie recipe to share with you. These cookies have a wonderful soft and chewy texture and have the perfect amount of sweetness without the sugar rush!  Even more fun they have little color and tang from raspberry juice.

I must confess that my hope was to create a pink sugar cookie through the use of the raspberry juice – they turned out much more like a light purple! Which, purple is Valentine’s Day-ey 🙂 so I say it works!

I hope that you enjoy it!

Valentine’s Day Sugar Cookies

Prep: 20-25 minutes          Bake: 8-10 minutes          Yields: 28 cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups blanched almond flour (I love Honeyville)
• 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp coconut flour (Let’s Do Organic is well-priced at Whole Foods or on Amazon)
• 2 tbsp arrowroot powder
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp sea salt
• 1/4 cup palm shortening or grass-fed butter (room temp)
• 1/2 cup honey or maple syrup
• 1 egg (room temp)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp raspberry juice (optional – directions below)

Tools:

• large mixing bowl
• medium mixing bowl
• rolling pin
• parchment paper
• cookie cutters (or a mason jar lid!)
• 2 large baking pans
• hand mixer or KitchenAid mixer

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Add the dry ingredients to the medium bowl, mix well.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the large bowl and cream well with the mixer or hand mixer.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the large bowl – mix well until coming together and dough-like. Press the dough into a ball with a cake spatula in the bowl.
5. On a clean flat surface lay out an 18 to 20-inch long piece of the parchment paper, sprinkle with coconut or almond flour. Pour the dough out onto the sheet.  Sprinkle the top of the dough with a bit more flour.  Lay a second piece of parchment paper over the top of the dough (same size as the piece on the bottom.) The dough should be sandwiched between the parchment paper.  Using your hands press down on the dough a bit to make rolling the dough out easier.  Using the rolling pin roll the dough out to 1/4 inch thickness.
6. Remove the top sheet and set aside for later.  Grab your cookie cutters and start cutting out cookies.  I recommend after cutting out a couple cookies rinsing the cutters under a bit of warm water or dipping them into a bowl of warm water – this will allow a smoother cookie and make cutting them out easier.
7. Lay out the cut-out cookies on the parchment paper lined baking sheets about a half inch apart from each other (they will not expand very much). Now with the leftover dough repeat rolling out the dough and cutting out the cookies until the dough is all used up.
8. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until lightly browned on the bottom.  With a spatula carefully transfer them to a cooling rack if you have one (not necessary – just helps with the cooling process). These are delicious warm right out of the oven and when cooled! The texture is soft and chewy. Enjoy!

Raspberry Juice:

Ingredients:

•  1 cup frozen or fresh raspberries
• 1/2 cup water

Directions:

1. Add the water and berries to a small saucepan.
2. Bring the berries to a boil over medium-high heat.
3. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let the berries reduce and simmer for 5-10 minutes until thick and broken down.
4. Pour the berries into a mesh strainer placed over a bowl.  Press the berries down to extract the juice. This may take 3-5 minutes to get the amount of juice you need.  Add 2 tbsp of it to the cookies! Set aside the rest of the raspberries as a healthy fruit spread 🙂

This post does contain affiliate links.  If you purchase anything through my Amazon store I receive a small portion of the purchase – which goes to help keep this blog going. Thank you for your readership! 🙂