These lovely cranberry pistachio cookies are made with almond meal, coconut flour and stevia with added vanilla and orange zest. With the most delicious, golden syrup, and floral and coconut flavors, they are perfect for Christmas, birthdays, and with a cup of tea. Thes cookies low-carb, gluten-free and grain-free.
I’ve been getting into cookie-making lately. Perhaps I am inspired by the Christmas holidays. In any case, these cranberry pistachio cookies are healthy, low-sugar can be enjoyed any time of the year. They are also grain-free and gluten-free.
Each cookie has about 5-5.5 grams net carbs and 3 grams sugar (mostly from nut meals and the cranberries, so you can reduce that even further).
The texture of these cookies is slightly softer and more fragile than regular wheat-flour cookies, but they hold well together and the flavor is delicious. I quite like the texture, actually, it’s like the softer part of a regular cookie but all throughout.
You may also want to try this pistachio cherry pavlova.
Sweetened with stevia, these cookies are low-carb but the addition of citrus, vanilla extract, coconut and almond meal give that sweet, nutty, caramel-y flavours…which if you can describe it in a color would be golden brown. They are somewhere between a vanilla cookie and a coconut macaron. Cranberries add that lovely tangy, chewy bite white pistachios give a unique hint of nutiness.
How To Make Cranberry Pistachio Cookies
The recipe is pretty simple but I’ve replaced regular flour with almond meal, coconut flour and some shredded, unsweetened coconut. I used butter but you could make it with coconut butter or ghee for a dairy-free version. Ghee is about 99% fat with most of the milk solids removed, so usually save for those sensitive to lactose.
I’ve added chopped pistachios and dried cranberries as I wanted to give these cookies a festive, Christmas feel but you can add any chopped nuts or chocolate chips. You can find dark chocolate, dairy-free chips these days.
Recipe Tips
Once the batter is mixed, it should be very thick. I use an ice cream scoop to shape and add the cookie batter onto the baking sheet. You can use a tablespoon. Don’t flatten the batter before you put it in the oven. When you bake these, the batter will literally melt into a pancake shape.
Once you remove the cookies, they will be really soft to the touch and a little bouncy. This is NOT their final texture! You have to let them cool completely and ideally in the fridge before they become firmer.
I like to store them in the fridge as they last longer but you could keep them in an airtight container for a few days.
More Grain-Free, Gluten-Free Baking
- Low-Carb 5-Ingredient Chocolate Cake (Paleo)
- Keto & Paleo Gooey St Louis Butter Cake
- Soft & Chewy Gingerbread Cookies (Paleo, Gluten-Free)
- Lemon Drizzle Bliss Balls
- Coconut Rough Slice (Paleo, Gluten-Free)
- Hemp Seed Anzac Biscuits (Paleo)
- Coconut Honey Joys (Nut-Free, Paleo)
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Ingredients
- ½ cup pistachios chopped
- ⅓ cup dried cranberries chopped
Dry ingredients
- 1.5 cups almond meal
- ¼ cup coconut flour
- ¼ cup shredded coconut unsweetened
- ½ teaspoon bi-carb soda
Butter mixture
- 5 oz unsalted butter cubed and softened (150 g)
- ⅓ cup stevia granules or another low-carb sugar alternative equal to 1/2 cup regular sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence or extract
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- ½ teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 small eggs if using large eggs, add a little extra flour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 C / 355 F. Line two flat baking sheets with non-stick parchment paper.
- Chop pistachios and cranberries and set aside.
- Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
- Using an electric whisk, beat together butter and stevia until just combined. Add the other ingredients and whisk together for 10-15 seconds until well combined.
- Add the dry flour mixture in 3 batches and whisk. Finally, add the nuts and cranberries and fold together with a spatula.
- Using a small ice cream scoop or a tablespoon, add small blobs of the dough to the baking sheets (about 6 per sheet, with enough space between as the cookies will drop and flatten out while baking).
- Either bake one tray at a time, or do them in two lots. Bake for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Don’t panic if it looks like the cookie dough is melting. The balls will melt and flatten into pancake shapes. When you remove the trays, they will feel soft to touch and a little bouncy. Leave them on the tray to cool for 5 minutes, then move with a spatula to a rack to cool completely. They will firm up and become more stable. I like to pop them in the fridge for an hour, and they get a really nice texture.
- I also prefer to store mine in the fridge as they last much longer and stay fresh.
Hey can I reduce the fats in your pistacchio cookies perhaps by replacing wth low fat alternatives? and for the whole eggs can I use only the egg whites? Please reply to me soon. I like your cookies.
I guess you can try butter alternative of some sort and if using just egg whites, you would need an extra egg. But to be honest, instead of trying to change this existing recipe so much, I would look for low-calorie pistachio cookies on Google. This recipe was designed to be gluten-free and low-carb and not low-calorie so it wasn’t tested with low-calorie ingredients, and I can’t vouch for the final result with alternative ingredients. You are welcom to try and experiment and let me know how you go.
Am going to use in place of traditional shortbread this year – guilt-free!