Believe it or not, these maple cranberry and orange cookies actually came about through a bit of good fortune and not planning… but isn’t that always how the happiest accidents appear?
If you are a regular follower of this blog, you know that I took an unplanned trip to my home state of Wisconsin last month to honor the memory of my maternal grandmother and then spent a few extra days visiting my parents at their lake house afterward. Since my love of baking was handed down to me from my mother, who received it from her mother, it only seemed appropriate that we should honor her memory with homemade cookies.
Of course, all the old recipes my grandmother and my mother taught me are not AIP-compliant, but the skills I learned from all those years of following those recipes has taught me the principles needed to come up with my own recipes that are! The unexpected bonus effect of that is that I’m very comfortable improvising, even when my first choice of ingredients are not available…
I was looking for raisins in the pantry, but found these sugar-free dried cranberries. Then I went in search of natural sweeteners, and found liquid maple syrup. No gelatin was available, but I did have a jar of homemade sugar-free apple sauce. And then inspiration struck and I remembered that my mother’s refrigerator reliably contained oranges and that she stocked cassava flour whenever I might come to visit as well as several healthy cooking fats… and voila!
These maple cranberry and orange cookies were born. They were a delicious comfort to us at that emotional time and I hope that you will find they do the same for you. Enjoy!
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Maple Cranberry Orange Cookie Recipe
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Maple Cranberry Orange Cookies (AIP)
- Total Time: 35 mins
- Yield: 18-20 cookies 1x
Description
Necessity is the mother of invention, and you have to love that mother when the results are as good as these naturally sweetened maple cranberry orange cookies!
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup (105 grams) Otto’s cassava flour
- 3/4 cup (90 grams) tapioca starch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) lard or palm shortening
- 1/2 cup (125 grams) applesauce
- 1/4 cup (8 grams) maple syrup
- zest of 1 large orange
- 3/4 cup (120 grams) dried cranberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a small mixing bowl, combine cassava flour, tapioca starch, baking soda, and salt.
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine lard or palm shortening, applesauce, maple syrup, and orange zest until smooth. Add the dry ingredients from the small mixing bowl and combine evenly. Stir in the dried cranberries.
- Use a tablespoon to measure out small cookies and use your hands to shape them into even balls. Place balls on parchment paper lined baking sheet and gently press down with the palm of your hand to form cookies that are about 1/4 inch thick.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cookies are firm and lightly browned, but not burning.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool on the cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes before using a spatula to transfer them one-by-one onto a cooling rack. They will be quite fragile until they are completely cool.
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 20 mins
- Category: Dessert
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6 replies on “Maple Cranberry Orange Cookies (AIP)”
These look delicious! You mentioned that you didn’t have gelatin on hand so you used applesauce instead. I tend to have gelatin more readily available than applesauce so I’m wondering if you would know how I would change up the recipe if I used gelatin instead? Thanks!
I really don’t know. I think if I were you, I’d try looking for a different recipe. There are probably similar cookie recipes out there that use gelatin, since that is pretty common in the AIP world.
No worries. Thanks for getting back to me.
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Flavor is ok. I’m really disappointed in the the texture though as these came out very gummy for me.