I only very, very rarely try my hand at developing my own recipes, because there’s so much already out there on the Internet that I want to try. But every once in awhile the inspiration strikes me. I wanted to make cookies for an event and, because of dietary restrictions, they needed to be refined sugar free. Luckily for me, I have ready access to some high-quality local honey from Bee Quest Honey, which my aunt and uncle run. And I had previously served these Mexican chocolate shortbread cookies to rave reviews, and I knew that the unique taste of honey as a sweetener would offset the hint of cinnamon and cayenne pepper just perfectly. Using the Mexican chocolate cookie recipe and this recipe for honey cutout cookies as a base, I put together this recipe for sugar-free spiced chocolate cutout cookies. The recipe yielded about 4 dozen cookies (ymmv, depending on the size of your cookie cutters). I was super pleased with how they turned out, and I got the chance to use some recently acquired cookie cutters. Enjoy!
You’ll need:
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 – 3/4 cup honey, depending on how sweet you want your cookies to be
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp finely ground coffee
- 1/4 tsp cayenne powder
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 2 cups flour
Cream the butter and honey together, and beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients and stir them into the honey butter mixture. Flatten into a disc and refrigerate 30 mins. Then roll out to 1/4 inch thickness and bake 15 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Enjoy!