Every year, my mom likes to host a cookie exchange with her four closest girlfriends. They call themselves the golden girls, how cute, right?!

The five of them each bake a dozen cookies (they’re Italian, so to them a dozen means a hundred), and get together to swap the goods and catch up before the whirlwind of the holidays hits.

And every year, when Christmas is hosted at my mom’s, I have to resist my deepest inner desire to sneak a cookie here and there between meals, since she (so conveniently) leaves them lying around in strategic places throughout the home!

I’ve always been one to prefer cooking over baking, but being surrounded by family, Christmas decor, and 500 Italian cookies wafting through the house, puts me in the mood to bake.

I keep saying that one day I’ll host my own cookie exchange, but maybe I’ll save that for my golden years 🙂

instead, this year I’ve decided to create a new cookie recipe from scratch and test it out on my family! To to pull this off, I’ve teamed up with the folks over at Krups to put my new convection oven to use, and bake what I’m hoping will be the perfect holiday cookie.

Ingredients

The dry:

1 ½ cups of rolled oats
1 cup organic all purpose flour
1 ¼ cup dried coconut flakes desiccated, unsweetened
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp pink himalayan salt
1 ¼ cup brown sugar
⅓ cup goji berries

The wet:

1/2 cup vegan butter Earth Balance
3 tbsp coconut oil
3 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 tbsp almond milk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F
Set your goji berries aside in a small bowl, and save until the cookies are already formed, on a sheet, and ready to go in the oven.
In a large bowl, add your vegan butter, maple syrup, coconut oil and vanilla extract, and mix together thoroughly until you get a fluffy, creamy texture.
Next, in a medium bowl, add your remaining dry ingredients (oats, flour, coconut flakes, cinnamon, baking soda, himalayan salt) and mix together.
Using a spatula, add your dry ingredients into the wet. Stirring until the cookie dough becomes crumbly.
Your mixture will likely be too dry to start forming cookie balls. If this is the case, begin to add your almond milk, 1 tbsp at a time, testing to see if cookie dough is soft and sticky enough to form a ball.
Next, place your rolled cookie dough balls onto a parchment-lined baking tray, and softly press down. Not too flat!
Gently place your goji berries both on top, and into the cookies.
Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the tops of the cookies begin to brown lightly. Remove from oven and let cool, cookies will firm slightly during cooling process!