Coconut cookies

I recently bought some xanthan gum – you can get it in powdered form in Sainsbury’s so I’m sure other big supermarkets will stock it.  I decided to add it to my baking because I usually use soya flour, which is very short.  I made courgette muffins and they were so bad I didn’t even attempt to describe them on my blog!

Xanthan gum appears in recipes for people with coeliac disease, as it replaces the gluten in gluten-free flour, so I was pleased to discover it worked a treat with soya flour too.

115g butter

1 egg

8 – 10g Stevia (depending on your taste – I only used 7g and they were sweet enough for me)

95g soya flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp xanthan gum (powdered)

110g desiccated coconut

whole walnuts to decorate

Put the butter, egg and stevia into the blender and cream until smooth and light in colour.  Sift the soya flour, bicarbonate of soda and xanthan gum together.  This is important – if the xanthan gum isn’t mixed in thoroughly, you’ll get lumps in your cookies (ouch!).  Add to the creamed mixture and blend well.  Add the coconut and mix well.

Grease a flat baking tray and put the oven on at Gas 4 to heat.  Form the cookie mixture into balls around 2cm in diameter – I got a baker’s dozen out of this quantity.  Place the balls on the baking tray and flatten them to under 1cm in height – you can decorate the tops with a walnut half on each or, if you’re throwing carb caution to the wind, half a glacé cherry on each would be lovely.

Bake at Gas 4 for 12 – 15 mins, checking to make sure the tops are golden brown.  Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.  although they look very crumbly, they shouldn’t disintegrate because of the xanthan gum.

Each cookie contains 150 calories; 13.9g of fat of which 9.2g are saturated; 2.7g of carbohydrate of which 2.1g are fibre; 5g of protein.