Coconut Sugar Cookies with Paleo Frosting

Make some coconut sugar cookies for the paleo/gluten free santa in your life. Ice them with this paleo swiss meringue buttercream with a cute ombre pattern for the most adorable Christmas cut out cookies ever.

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This Christmas cookie business is serious. My family strongly holds the tradition of placing a plate of frosted sugar cookies, the abundance of translucent sprinkles catching the glow of the Christmas tree, by the fireplace to wait for Santa’s imminent arrival on Christmas Eve. It’s just gotta happen.

But maybe Santa doesn’t want to eat that much sugar in one night, and is kind of sometimes cutting back their grain intake, but totally loves Christmas cookies but like doesn’t want her brain to explode from the crazy sugar rush to ensue and also she needs to go to bed sometime.

Yes, this Santa is a she.

Or maybe Santa is gluten free or only eats sweets made from natural sweeteners or maybe Santa just really like Christmas tree shaped macaroons. Cuz that’s what these coconut sugar cookies taste like. Buttery, marshmallow cream covered coconut macaroons. HA-LLELUJAH!

Easy Food Processor Coconut Sugar Cookies

So besides the fact that these coconut sugar cookies are delicious, sweet, coconut nuggets of heaven, they are also very simple to make. You can absolutely make these without any kitchen power tools of any sort. But to make it quick and simple I made everything in the food processor.

Here is a breakdown of how it will go:

Cream some coconut oil together with maple syrup. This is just a technical way of saying mix that stuff together until it gets light and fluffy.
Add all of the other liquidy-ish ingredients (egg *if not vegan, nut butter, and vanilla) until it is super smooth.
Sift the coconut flour, baking soda, and baking powder through a fine mesh strainer. This is actually a really important step in order to keep the cookies from being crazy gritty.
Mix the flour, baking soda, and baking powder with everything else until it is cookie dough.
Gently press the dough out on a floured surface and cut cute little Christmas-y shapes (or whatever shapes you want) and bake. Voila!

*These coconut sugar cookies are vegan friendly so I am adding the vegan alterations to the right in the recipe below.

Paleo Swiss Meringue Buttercream

So guys, I made the coconut sugar cookie part extra easy. To get this marshmallow-y paleo buttercream, things are about to get a little technical. But I know that you can do it. Because we are going to walk through it together.

So why is this frosting so technical? Well, in coming up with a frosting recipe that is both low in sugar (like not 6 cups of powdered sugar), is naturally sweetened and tastes bomb ace, I had to get real creative. Like back to pastry school days.

Regular buttercream is basically tons of powdered sugar whipped into tons of butter. A swiss meringue buttercream is made from slowly cooking egg whites and a small amount of sugar until creamy, whipping it until extra fluffy, and then slowly adding butter, or in this case grassfed butter, ghee, or palm shortening if you’re fully dairy free. The sugar caramelizes a bit in the cooking process giving it a marshmallow flavor, the cooked egg white adds the stiffness that powdered sugar usually does, and the butter (obvs) that creamy fluff.

I know that may sound intimidating, but we can do it! And also, it’s so worth it.

I took a look at Serious Eats recipe for Swiss Meringue Buttercream and altered it in order to make a more paleo, coconut sugar cookie friendly version. Vegans, check out this recipe for aquafaba vegan swiss meringue butter cream .

Ombré Frosting Decoration

Is ombré even cool anymore? I think it might be slowly transitioning to passé. Like a little too 2012. But I still think it’s super adorable on these coconut sugar cookies.

Unfortunately I was not able to photograph how I frosted the cookies. Please blame daylight savings. So I have no visuals. But it was really simple. I’ll walk you through how to add an ombré effect to your Christmas cookies.

Make Your Darkest Color First:

To make the perfect ombré you want to make three shades of the same exact color. The key to doing this with frosting is to make the darkest color first. Use half of the frosting and add food coloring (try these natural, non-toxic food dyes ) to achieve the color you want your darkest shade to be. In order to make this softer sage, blue green, I added a ton of green food coloring and 3-4 drops of red food coloring.

Place the rest of the uncolored frosting into 2 separate bowls. In one bowl and 3-4 tablespoons of the dark green color in order to achieve a medium green. In the next bowl and the tiniest bit of the dark green color. Maybe just a tablespoon. You can then adjust the two light colors by adding a bit more of the dark green until you have three shades perfected to your liking.

Using a piping bag, make little dots:

Starting with the darkest color first, squeeze a row of little dots from a piping bag across the top of your coconut sugar cookie (obviously, a Christmas tree will only have one dot on the top). If you don’t have a piping bag, you can use a plastic sandwich or freezer bag and cut away a small portion of one corner.

Smear with a pairing knife:

After you’ve finished your first row on all of your cookies, take the point of a pairing knife and press down in the middle of each dot and pull it back slightly to smear the frosting downwards. Then you can continue on to your next row of dots. Repeat the process of smearing the frosting with a pairing knife after each row of dots you make.

End with your lightest color:

You want to make sure you have an even number of dots in each color. For instance, I did 4 rows of dark colored dots, 4 rows of medium colored dots and 4 rows of light colored dots. End with that light color and make your friends and family wonder how on earth you pulled that off.

Make the Real Santa Happy

You know what this Santa wants left on the fireplace for her this Christmas? A plate of these coconut sugar cookies and a warm matcha latté! There is nothing that does not scream Christmas about all that green. Plus, I want to match my Christmas tree with that inside-out glow. Not that eating a plethora of these cookies will make you skinny by any means. But for the Santa who might be avoiding processed sugar and carbs (or not Santa is you’re not into that), this is the perfect treat to get into the holiday spirit.

HEALTHY HOLIDAYS AND ALWAYS

I recently asked you folks over on my Instagram account which you’d rather see over the holidays: healthy sweets or savory treats. Well it was an exact 50/50 split. So look forward to a lot of everything as we move toward the New Year.

These coconut sugar cookies fall under the healthy sweet category and will be right at home next to your other fave holiday treats. Only, with a much less volatile sugar crash.

Happiest of Holidays to you from me, Stacy, here at POP KITCHEN!

When you make these coconut sugar cookies, let me know! I absolutely love seeing your photos of POP KITCHEN recipes up on Instagram . Like POP KITCHEN on Facebook and follow along with all of my recipe inspiration on Pinterest ! Oh, and can you tell your friends about me? K, thanks, luh ew, bye!

Recipe

Coconut Sugar Cookies with Paleo Frosting

Ingredients

½ cup coconut oil (solid, not melted)
¼ cup maple syrup
1 egg (skip if vegan)
½ tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp nut or seed butter (almond, peanut, coconut, sunflower all work)
1 cup coconut flour (1¼ cup for vegans) plus a little extra for rolling out the dough
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
⅛ tsp sea salt
3 large egg whites
¼ cup honey
¼ cup maple syrup
pinch of sea salt
⅛ tsp cream of tartar
2½ sticks or 1¼ cup cold, grass-fed butter, ghee or palm shortening
1 tsp vanilla extract
Food processor (optional)
Cookie cutters
Baking sheet
Parchment paper
Medium sauce pan
Large metal bowl
Silicon spatula
Thermometer
Electric Beaters or mixer
Piping bag and tips (optional)

Instructions

MAKE THE SUGAR COOKIES: First, preheat the oven to 350F/180 C/4 gas. In a food processor, add the coconut oil and maple syrup. Process until the mixture combines together and gets lighter in color and more fluffy, about 1 minute.
Add the egg to the oil and maple and process until fully combined, about 2 minutes. Then add the vanilla and nut butter and process until smooth.
Sift the coconut flour, baking soda and baking powder by placing the flour into a fine mesh strainer of sifter and shake over a piece of parchment paper until all of the flour has gone through. You may need to press some of those last lumps through with a spoon. Pick up the edges of the parchment paper and dump the flour into the food processor along with the salt. Mix about 10 seconds, scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with a spatula and process 10 more seconds.
CUT THE SUGAR COOKIES: On a clean countertop, sprinkle some coconut flour over the surface of the counter and dump the cookie dough out of the food processor onto the counter. Gently press out the cookie dough (don’t roll it with a rolling pin) to make it evenly flat and about ½ inch thick. Think of the thickness of shortbread. Sprinkle a little coconut flour on top of the dough if it is sticking to your hands. Cut out shapes with your cookie cutter and very gently place them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. These cookies will barely expand while baking so they can be relatively close together.
BAKE THE COOKIES: Place the cookies in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes or until just slightly turning golden brown around the edges. Be careful not to touch the cookies until they are cooled. They are extremely soft at first but crisp up as they cool. My mom definitely smooshed one of mine. Do not frost the cookies until they are 100%, completely cooled.
SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM: First, take the butter, ghee, or shortening out of the fridge. You want it to be somewhere between chilled and room temperature.
Fill a medium sauce pan halfway with water and bring to a boil. You want to find a metal bowl that will fit on top of this same sauce pan that will seal the top of the pan but not go down enough to touch the water. If you have an electric mixer, the metal mixing bowl is perfect and you won’t have to clean an extra bowl.
Whisk together the egg whites, maple, honey, salt, and cream of tartar in this bowl until fully combined. Turn down the heat of the boiling water to medium and place the bowl with the egg whites on top. This part is a little tricky. You need to constantly whisk the egg whites to keep them from turning into scrambled eggs. If you stop for just a moment, you will have scrambled egg white frosting. So keep this mixture moving for about 10 minutes. The egg whites are technically supposed to reach 180F but it’s really hard to read the temperature of this stuff while constantly mixing. You want the mixture to get pretty creamy, lighter in color, thick and almost sticky, which should take about 10-12 minutes. Take the temperature if you are feeding these to children or elderly people. It should be between 165 and 180 F.
Remove the bowl from the heat and either add to a electric mixer or begin to beat with electric beaters on high. You want the meringue to get fluffy, sticky, very shiny, and cool to the touch. This takes 3-5 minutes.
Slowly add in the butter, ghee, or shortening 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing well before adding another tablespoon. Once the butter is fully incorporated mix in 1 tsp vanilla extract. The frosting should be fluffy, light, mildly sweet, and delicious. If you are going to color your frosting, note that it doesn’t stir in easily with a spoon. It will need to be mixed in with a mixer or beaters.