Description
Beautiful salted caramel shortbread cookies. Rich salted caramel date paste sandwiched between buttery shortbread cookies. Vegan, gluten-free, oil free, refined sugar free and nut free.
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 1/4 cup Gluten Free 1-1 Flour Blend (can also use oat flour), more as needed
- 1/3 cup tahini (as an alternative, use cashew butter or sunflower seed butter)
- 1/2–1/2 cup maple syrup
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
salted caramel date paste
- 12 pitted medjool dates (soak in hot water beforehand if not soft and gooey)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup warm water or coconut milk (more as needed)
- optional pinch of maca powder
- optional pinch of lucuma powder
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350F while you prepare your cookie dough
- In a large bowl, whisk tahini, maple syrup, vanilla and baking powder until smooth. Sift in gluten free flour and use a spatula to stir until cookie dough forms. Dough should be workable and not sticky.
- Transfer dough onto a nonstick surface and roll about 1/4 of an inch thick using a rolling pin or bottle. Use a circular cookie cutter to cut out cookie shapes (make sure to make an even number of circles).
- Next use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out a small heart in the center of half of the cookies, then transfer onto a baking tray and bake for 9-12 minutes, or until edges are lightly golden brown. Cookies will continue to bake while cooling so don’t overbake!
- Allow cookies to cool completely, and while you wait, start by preparing your salted caramel date paste. Drain soaked dates, transfer to a food processor and process to break down into a paste. Scrape sides down in between as needed, add vanilla, maca and lucuma if using and stream water or coconut milk into the processor as you continue to blend until completely smooth. Finally, add salt to taste.
- Once cookies are completely cool, fill with about a tablespoon (or as much as your heart desires) with salted caramel paste*
Notes
*I highly recommend filling cookies just before serving. The moisture in the salted caramel paste can soften the cookies if stored after filled. It’s actually quite delicious soft, so if you like a soft cookie, then fill all the cookies, and store in an airtight container. Otherwise, to keep cookies snappier, fill before enjoying.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Category: desserts
- Method: baking
Keywords: valentine's day, cookies, desserts, baking, healthy, refined sugar free, oil free, gluten free, vegan