Coconut and cardamom alfajores
You may think you don’t need another holiday cookie recipe, but these are subtly spiced, barely sweet, and super easy. Win, win, win!
First of all, who’s had Alfajores before? If not, get thee to an Argentinian bakery because they. are. delicious. This South American staple uses dulce de leche in between two soft, cakey, vanilla cookies and is then rolled in shredded coconut.
In the US version, we often swap the softer cookie for a crispier vanilla shortbread, which I prefer. Also, I decided to skip the shredded coconut on the outside and opt for a coconut-flavored shortbread because, while I love the taste of coconut, I don’t always love its texture.
I started with this Coconut Shortbread recipe from Food52, but simplified the method, dialed down the sugar, swapped two egg yolks for one whole egg, and added a tiny bit of cardamom for a warmer, spicier flavor that felt right for the holidays.
You know what else feels right for the holidays? Shortcuts. In this version of the recipe, we use only one bowl and mix up cold fats with the rest of the ingredients in a food processor instead of a mixer.
AND, this part might seem like sacrilege to some, but I used jarred dulce de leche. I know, I know. Bad food blogger, bad! I like this one the most and found it at World Market, but you can also find it online. If you feel like making your own, here are some options:
Smitten Kitchen’s stovetop dulce de leche
Displaced Housewife’s olive oil dulce de leche
Live Well Bake Often’s oven-baked dulce de leche
The Spruce Eats boiled condensed milk dulce de leche
Here we go!
Coconut and cardamom alfajores
Yield: 24 cutout cookies; 12 sandwiches
Time: 90 minutes (about 30 active)
½ cup (1 stick) butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
6 Tbsp coconut oil (solid)
½ cup cane sugar (can substitute granulated sugar if necessary)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup coconut flour
1/4 tsp cardamom
¼ tsp sea salt
1 15-oz jar of dulce de leche
Cube the butter and add it to a food processor. Add the coconut oil (making sure it’s solid). Run the food processor until the butter and coconut oil have combined and are smooth, about 30 seconds. You may have to scrape down the sides.
Add the sugar, vanilla extract, and egg. Run the machine until the ingredients are well combined. Again, you may have to scrape down the sides.
Add the dry ingredients and pulse just until the dough comes together. I often need to scrape the sides once. The end result of the dough should be a crumbly wet dough that’s in large and small sandy chunks that come together easily when pressed. The dough should be wetter than a pie dough, but slightly more crumbly than your typical sugar cookie dough.
Divide the dough roughly in half and place one dough chunk on a sheet of parchment paper. Using the paper or your hands to form a ball. Place another piece of parchment on top of the dough ball and roll out to a ¼-inch thick disk. Repeat with the other half of the dough. Chill both dough disks in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
When the dough has chilled for about 25 minutes, preheat the oven to 325.
Working one disk at a time, remove the top parchment sheet from each half and use it to line a cookie sheet. Cut out as many shapes as possible and gently transfer them. Re-roll the dough to cut out more shapes. For the cookies that will be the base of each sandwich, score gently with a fork. For the top cookie, cut out any shape you like from the middle.
Bake the cutout cookies for 14-17 minutes, turning once during baking to ensure even cooking. The cookies are done when they just begin to brown. Let cool.
When the cookies are cool, top each bottom portion with 2-3 Tbsp of dulce de leche and top with a cutout cookie.
Healthier apricot carrot cake
Cake with vegetables sounds healthy, but is usually far from it. This version lightens up the traditional recipe with dried apricots, applesauce, and coconut sugar; reduces the fat and swaps in coconut oil; and swaps out half of the white flour for whole wheat. Add in walnuts for Omega-3s (or leave them out to make this school safe) and you have a healthier option for your Easter table that’s equally delicious and showstopping.
I’m still struggling with the eternal question: Is it worth it to healthify desserts? If my kid factors into the equation, then yes. He’s often satisfied with a “healthy” sweet. I, on the other hand, really wanted a doughnut for breakfast and no amount of healthy treats was going to cut it.
However! If there’s a recipe ripe for healthifying, a dessert starring a vegetable is it.
I started recipe testing this cake by dumping everything into a bowl and calling it a day. The results were delicious, but dense, so I decided to do as others have done and whip the eggs and sugar at the start to make the crumb a bit lighter. Often, cake directions tell you to cream butter and sugar / butter and eggs / sugar and eggs (as in this case) until they’re “light and fluffy.” Unfortunately, the coconut sugar is so dark that you’ll never really achieve this. What you want instead is just to aerate the eggs, sugar, and other liquids. Don’t worry about it too much, just make sure that you see lots of bubbles once all of the liquid is combined.
Alone, this cake is delicious, but tastes like a muffin or a quick bread, not a cake. But slathered in cream cheese frosting, this is a CAKE.
Can I tell you a secret about making the frosting? I don’t measure the sugar. You heard that: I don’t measure the sugar. I mix in a couple of large spoonfuls and then add more to taste. I like a frosting that isn’t too sweet and the beauty of cream cheese frosting is the tang, which gets totally masked by too much sugar.
Apricot carrot cake
Adapted from Bake from Scratch and Natasha’s Kitchen
Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (about 45 minutes of active time, including frosting the cake)
Yield: 8 GIANT slices, 10-12 normal slices
1 cup apricots, chopped
1 Tbsp flour (AP or Whole Wheat)
4 eggs
1 cup coconut sugar
¼ cup coconut oil, melted
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat flour (pastry or white whole wheat are also great)
1 cup AP flour
1 tsp baking soda
1½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice
¼ tsp fine sea salt
12 oz carrots; trimmed, peeled, and shredded (about 3 cups, lightly packed shredded carrots)
1 cup walnuts, toasted (optional)
Preheat the oven to 375.
Grease two 9-inch cake pans, or a 12-cup muffin tin liberally with melted coconut oil or cupcake liners. Set aside.
In a small bowl, chop the apricots and toss with 1 Tbsp of flour (either AP or whole wheat). Set aside.
Toast your walnuts in the preheating oven, keeping an eye to ensure that they don’t burn while you continue prepping your other ingredients. Set aside.
Trim, peel, and shred your carrots. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl with a hand mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk together the eggs and sugar for about 3 minutes on a medium high setting (or on high if your hand mixer isn’t very strong). The eggs won’t get lighter in color because the coconut sugar is quite dark, but you will see lots of little air bubbles formed and the volume of the liquid should increase.
Reduce the speed of your mixer to low (medium-low for a hand mixer) and slowly add the oil, applesauce, and vanilla extract.
Sift the dry ingredients together into the wet ingredients. Fold until just combined and no lumps remain.
Fold in the carrots, apricots, and toasted walnuts (if using).
Pour half of the mixture into each cake pan (or, fill each muffin cup until about 2/3 full).
Bake, rotating halfway through, for 20-23 minutes for the cakes or 15-18 minutes for the muffins. You want the cakes to be springy when touched and for a tester to come out with a few crumbs or clean.
Let the cake cool entirely before icing.
Cream cheese frosting
2 blocks cream cheese, softened
2 sticks butter (1 cup), softened
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar, plus more to taste
Combine the cream cheese and butter in a large bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment on your mixer or your hand mixer, combine and whip the butter and cream cheese on high for 3-4 minutes. Add the vanilla and salt and whip on medium to combine.
Add the powdered sugar a few Tbsp at a time and SLOWLY whip the sugar into the rest of the mixture on low (otherwise you’ll have powdered sugar all over your kitchen). Once the initial amount of powdered sugar is incorporated, add more, a few Tbsp at a time, to taste. When all of the sugar you want is incorporated, turn the mixer back to high and whip for 3-4 more minutes.
Lemon poppyseed hamantaschen
Don’t hate me, but my favorite cookie holiday is Purim. Not Christmas. Not Valentine’s Day. Purim. I love a hamantaschen almost more than any other cookie. Is that weird? I don’t care.
Why do I love these cookies so much? I think it’s because Purim means that spring is FINALLY here. I reached the nadir of my winter depression last week but we’re making our way back. I can see grass again! We have an extra hour of light! We have green buds popping up despite still-freezing temperatures!
I rejiggered my hamantaschen dough recipe from last year because I wanted the cookie to be slightly more crumbly. I also left out the baking powder because my (and probably everyone who’s ever made hamantaschen) biggest pet peeve about this cookie is that it can open up during baking and lose it’s shape. Whelp, if you leave out the baking powder, there’s a lot less leavening happening. Problem solved.
Also, I stand corrected about one hamantaschen-related statement: Last year I didn’t think that freezing the dough after forming the cookies made a difference, but this year, it did. Go figure.
A couple of notes:
I used a store-bought lemon curd, but feel free to make your own. It will bubble out while the cookies bake, but you can always fill in any holes that develop with a bit more curd once the cookies cool.
There is a teeny amount of cardamom in this recipe because I didn’t want the cookies to taste too strongly of cardamom. The little hint of it actually makes the lemon taste more lemony.
Lemon poppyseed hamantaschen
6 Tbsp butter, melted and slightly cooled
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 heaping tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
Heaping ¼ tsp salt
2 Tbsp poppyseeds
1/8- 1/4 tsp cardamom
2 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp lemon curd per cookie
Melt the butter in a large mixing bowl in the microwave until half melted (heat on high for 30 seconds and then in 10 second bursts until your butter is only half formed). Stir the butter to let the residual heat of the melted half take care of the half that is still solid. Let cool slightly.
Add the sugar, vanilla, and eggs and whisk to combine thoroughly.
Add the salt, poppyseeds, and cardamom, and stir again.
Add ½ of the flour and stir with a spatula until just combined. Add the rest of the flour and mix until the dough comes together. Use your hands to get the last bits of flour to come together in the dough. If it feels too flaky or dry, mix in some water, 1 Tbsp at a time, until the dough feels slightly wet, all of the flour is easily incorporated, and there are minimal cracks along the edges of the dough when squished down.
Divide the dough into two discs, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, and chill for 20 minutes in the freezer.
Preheat the oven to 350.
After 20 minutes, roll out the dough to 1/8th of an inch on a floured surfaced with a floured rolling pin. (Be liberal with the flour as this is a sticky dough. If it feels too sticky to work with, put back in the freezer for 5 minutes and try again.)
Cut out 2.5-inch circles and transfer them to a parchment-covered baking sheet.
Fill the center of each circle with ½ tsp lemon curd.
Fold the cookie dough into a triangle by folding and pinching three sides of the circle together.
Bake the cookies for 5 minutes and rotate in the oven. Bake until the bottoms of the cookies are browned but the tops are still light, about 4-5 minutes more.
If lots of the filling has bubbled out, let the cookies cool and add another ½ tsp of the lemon curd.
Yield: 36 cookies
