Star Cookies for Santa Lucia
Last week, the boys’ Waldorf school, Shining Mountain had a Santa Lucia celebration. What is Santa Lucia, you ask - a pre-Christian feature of modern day Catholicism; a mid-winter festival of light on one of the longest nights of the year. Lucia translates to Lucy, which means light, as in lucid. She is the saint of radiant clarity.
Anyway, let me not digress into religious history and away from the most important aspect, to me at least, of any festival or holiday - food!
So, what is a gluten-free mom to do for a wheat-filled, sugar laden holiday celebration? I devised a recipe for the parents who had volunteered to bake star cookies. Then I assembled bags with the recipe, parchment paper, a cookie cutter and the ingredients.
The children dressed up in white robes and spent the entire day serving star cookies to everyone from ‘kindergarteners’ to high school seniors. And the five gluten-free kids in my son’s class? They were able to eat the cookies that they gave to others and break bread with the entire school. Now that’s Lucia magic.
2 ½ cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup coconut oil, melted
5 tablespoons agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- In a large bowl, combine almond flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon
- In a smaller bowl, mix together coconut oil, agave and vanilla
- Mix wet ingredients into dry, then chill dough in refrigerator for 1 hour
- Place dough in between 2 large pieces of parchment paper and roll out until ¼ inch thick
- Remove top piece of parchment paper and cut out cookies with a small star cutter
- Using a metal spatula, place stars on a parchment lined baking sheet
- Bake at 350° until lightly browned around the edges, 7-10 minutes
- Cool completely prior to handling cookies
Makes 32 cookies
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Subscribe by Email to elanaspantry.com:Posted on December 21, 2006 in children and desserts by Elana
you might also like: Pecan Shortbread Cookies
or Black and White Cookies
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My 3 year old and I made these last night. I used butter instead of coconut oil (due to a food allergy)and honey in place of agave (to stick to the SCDiet). They came out lovely. Trying to tranfer the cut out dough with a metal spatula just wasn’t working. So I rolled a golf ball sized dough between two 6″ x 6″ pieces of wax paper, peeled the top sheet off, cut out the cookie, flipped it onto the parchment lined cookie sheet, and then peeled off the other sheet. They were adorable. The theme this semester in my child’s Kindermusik class is “milk and cookies” so he was excited to make cookies. He enjoyed picking out the shapes, so we had airplanes and stars. When he took a bite of the first one he said “mmmmm”. They are not too sweet so I let him have three.
October 16th, 2008 8:17 am
Tracee,
Thanks for your sweet words. I really appreciate that you shared your substitutions with us; my favorite part of your comment was, “They are not too sweet so I let him have three.”
Thanks Again!
Elana
October 17th, 2008 11:10 am