Healthier Blood Orange Poppy Seed Vegan Cookies (Gluten Free)

These Healthier Blood Orange Poppy Seed Vegan Cookies are full of fresh citrus flavour and tasty poppy seeds. The texture is super soft and pillowy, melt in your mouth sugar cookies. These vegan cookies are gluten free and made with healthier ingredients. It’s hard to enjoy just one!! These cookies are not only delicious, but they are sooo cute with the pink frosting and little spots from poppy seeds! These cuties are absolutely perfect for enjoying citrus season. When you bake these cookies your home will smell absolutely divine of sweet blood oranges. So delicious!

Since these cookies are made with coconut flour and almond flour instead of all purpose flour, they are therefore gluten free! These two kinds of flour also add a lot of healthy nutrients to the cookies which makes them a much more satisfying sweet treat and not just empty calories. Almond flour and coconut flour also add lovely, subtle flavours to the cookie which match so wonderfully with the blood orange and poppy seed flavours.

So what’s the pink frosting you might be wondering? Well these cookies are truly delicious without any icing, but if you’re craving something a little extra fancy I’ve included not one, but THREE different icing alternatives! 😮

The 3 recipe alternatives differ in nutrition value, and ingredients. The first alternative is a delicious and classic icing made with confectioner’s sugar, but the other two have healthier swaps and are made with coconut butter or cashew butter for the base. The healthier icing versions are naturally sweetened with agave. The pretty colour comes naturally from freshly squeezed juice from blood oranges. So no nasty artificial colouring here! But as I mentioned before, these cookies are so delicious that they are great on their own too!!

Healthier Blood Orange Poppy Seed Vegan Cookies (Gluten Free)

by Baking Me Healthy

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Chilling Time 30 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Course Dessert

Cuisine Plant Based, Vegan

Servings 16 cookies

Ingredients

  

The Cookies

• 300 ml almond flour
• 55 ml coconut flour
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• 100 g softened vegan butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 75 ml granulated sugar either white or raw sugar, coconut gives a bit too much flavour I find since there is already coconut flour in this recipe. unless you love lots of coconut flavour!
• 2 tsp poppy seeds
• 2 ½ – 3 teaspoons fresh finely grated blood orange zest *
• 2 tsp freshly squeezed blood orange juice

Icing alternative 1

• ½ cup powdered confectioner's sugar
• 2 tbsp melted coconut oil
• 3 tbsp blood orange juice

Icing alternative 2

• ⅓ cup coconut butter
• 2-3 tbsp blood orange juice
• approx 3 tbsp agave

Icing alternative 3

• ⅓ cup cashew butter
• 2-3 tbsp blood orange juice
• approx 3 tbsp agave

Instructions

 

• Take the fine blood orange zest and rub some together with sugar between your fingers to really bring out the flavour and oils.
• Then cream the softened vegan butter and sugar together in a medium mixing bowl.
• Once the mixture is combined add the rest of the wet cookie ingredients.
• Add all of the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl and once they are combined add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture. 
• Chill the dough for about 30 minutes. 
• Preheat the oven to 165°C when the dough is almost done chilling.
• Remove the dough from the fridge and make approx 16 cookies on two baking sheets.
• After making approx 16 cookie dough balls, flatten them a bit ensuring they keep a nice shape. These cookies do not spread much in the oven.
• I baked the trays one at a time so they'd all bake evenly. Bake for approximately 10 minutes, until the edges are slightly golden brown. 
• If you would like to make the frosting for cookies, let the cookies cool completely before frosting them. While you wait for them to cool and you can make the frosting.
• Icing alternative #1 – Sift the powdered sugar into the liquid ingredients and mix until it's perfectly smooth. Taste the icing to see if you'd like to add more citrus. If the icing is too runny, add more powdered sugar.
• OR Icing alternative #2 – If the coconut butter is too firm to scoop out of the jar, soften it in a water bath on the stove (make sure no water gets in the jar though!). Mix all the ingredients together to make a perfectly smooth and creamy icing. Taste the icing to see if you'd like to add more sweetness or more citrus. If the icing is too thick, add more citrus and sweetener, or water.
• OR Icing alternative #3 – Mix all the ingredients together to make a perfectly smooth and creamy icing. Taste the icing to see if you'd like to add more sweetness or more citrus. If the icing is too thick, add more citrus and sweetener, or water.
• Spread the icing on the cookies and let the icing set a bit before enjoying! (or before putting the cookies in a container)
• I store these cookies in an airtight container in the fridge if they have icing, but if the cookies don't have icing, I store them in an airtight container on the counter. Enjoy! : )

Notes

*Make sure you use an organic lemon for the zest if you want to avoid nasty chemicals and pesticides! 

Keyword blood orange, citrus, cookies, gluten free, plant based, poppy seed, refined sugar free, vegan