Paleo Dandelion Cookies from the Children’s Garden

Need a Paleo chocolate chip cookie with a twist?  Enjoy foraging for dandelions, but need a good recipe to use them up?  Well, make these Paleo Dandelion Cookies and win on both counts!

Paleo Dandelion Cookies?

Not familiar with the Paleo diet?  No worries, as far as this recipe goes, all that means is we used almond and coconut flour instead of a grain flour.  I totally just used my recipe for chocolate chip cookies from Danielle Walker’s book, Against All Grain and whipped these up easily – I love that book.  We’re not Paleo forever, we’re just using some Paleo methods right now to heal our tummies.

In Praise of Dandelions

Did you know you could make cookies with dandelions?  I didn’t until this year when one of the kids asked, “Hey, can you put dandelions in cookies?”  Google said we could, so we did.  Dandelions are an easy to forage plant because they’re very recognizable and because there are so many things you can do with them in the kitchen (cookies aren’t the only thing) and medicine chest.

Just take a look at this dandelion post from The Prairie Homestead – 16 Dandelion Recipes.

I’m just tossing this one into the mix because I think its really cool – from Little Mountain Haven Homestead Homeschool: Making Dandelion Oil.

Foraging on Pinterest

If you need more ideas on what to do with dandelions and/or other wild edibles, visit my Foraging/Wild Edible Pinterest board where I’m gathering, not just great articles, but great bloggers and friends as well to pin their knowledge.  Love that board.  If you’re constantly pinning articles on the topic of foraging and wild edibles, just follow the board, leave a message on that board and I’ll send you an invite to pin there after I check out your Pinterest page to make sure you’re not a whacko.  At least, not a whacko in a bad way.

A very obvious thing to do with any edible is to make cookies.  That’s what my five year old says, anyway.  She’s very smart and knows a good cookie when she finds one so we looked up a recipe for dandelion cookies are were not disappointed.  The Gallagher family, from Learning Herbs.com, shared a picture tutorial on how to make dandelion cookies and that’s what we tried first.   This is a wholesome, oatmeal cookie recipe with added dandelions and we made a batch of this kind, too.   (Alert – This recipe from Learning Herbs is not Paleo because of oats but if you’re using pure oats that you’ve rolled yourself OR you buy rolled oats from a source you trust, oats are gluten free.)

If you need a gluten/grain free version, here’s the recipe from Against All Grain that we used and just tweaked a bit.

Recipe for Paleo Dandelion Cookies

These are so simple that even the kids can make them, and they’re a great grain-free treat or snack.

Print Recipe

Recipe for Paleo Dandelion Cookies

Here's a grain-free version for dandelion cookies that every kid will love.  These make a great breakfast cookie, FYI.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup palm shortening
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup coconut crystals
• 2 Tbls honey - you don't have to use raw since this will be baked
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
• 2 Tbls coconut flour
• 1/2 Tsp baking soda
• 1/2 Tsp sea salt
• 1-2 cups dandelion flowers*
• 1/2 cup diary free chocolate chips cacao nibs or carob chips

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Mix shortening and egg until relatively smooth; add crystals, honey and vanilla and blend until combined.
3. Add the flours, baking soda and salt and blend again. Make sure you've incorporated all those dry ingredients, especially the coconut flour.
4. Fold in dandelion flowers by hand and then the chocolate chips.
5. Scoop onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet (or you can use silicone baking mats) with a nice sized spoon. Press them down a bit to flatten them to 1/2 inch.
6. Bake 10 minutes or until browned around the edges. Cool on a baking rack. These set up beautifully but you must let them cool down all the way or they're break.

Recipe Notes

*To prepare dandelion blossoms: Pick dandelions when they're fully open. Make sure you're gathering your blooms where they haven't been sprayed with herbicide. Pinch off or snip the green end of each bloom; this doesn't take as long as it may seem and its a fun chance to sit and talk. Your fingers will turn yellow with pollen, FYI.

Collect your blossoms with as little green parts as possible - some will get in there so don't worry too much about it. How many dandelion blossoms you put in is entirely a matter of taste. For our oatmeal batch we did two cups; for our Paleo batch we did 1 cup. I liked the two cups better.

Paleo-ish Substitution

If you, like me, run out of almond flour in the middle of baking your second batch as your family sits wolfing down the first batch and wonder what you’re going to do, never fear.

If you’re doing the Paleo thing, you probably have different nuts on hand. I had about 2/3 cup of almond flour and just ground up some cashews and pistachios to make the rest of the almond flour measurement.

Now, a Paleo purist would probably not use either cashews or pistachios but I’m not a purist. I did everything else the same as the original recipe and they turned out perfectly chewy, but if you do need to substitute nut flours, make sure to let them cool if you want to avoid broken cookies.

You’re going to need some help rounding up all those dandelions – fyi!!  To learn more about foraging with kids, please visit this post over at Hobby Farms on just that subject – click here.