Twelve(ish) days of Treats! A short(bread) introduction...

Christmas is coming, and it can be a tough time of the year to be paleo - so many wonderful treats, all laden with refined sugar and white flour, seemingly await you around every corner!  Well, I'm going to see if I can help you get through the season with your diet (relatively) intact - over the next ten days I'll be posting recipes for various seasonal treats.  And don't forget, I've previously posted this yummy recipe for Christmas muffins too!

These are still "treats" though - some of the recipes will use a fair amount of dried fruit and/or paleo friendly sweeteners such as honey or maple syrup, so they should still be eaten in moderation...

Now that that's been said, let's get baking!  Today we'll be making paleo "shortbread" cookies, courtesy of Danielle Walker (author of three "Against All Grains" cookbooks)

Ingredients

• 2.25 cups almond flour
• 0.25 cup arrowroot flour
• 0.25 tsp salt
• 0.25 cup maple syrup
• 0.5 cup palm shortening (I usually find mine at "Whole Foods" stores in the US, but can't seem to find a reliable source in Canada)

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350F.
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
3. Combine the almond flour, arrowroot flour, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer, and affix the paddle attachment to the mixer.
4. Add in the maple syrup and mix until well-combined.
5. Drop the palm shortening in one tablespoon at a time while the mixer is running, allowing each to combine fully before you drop in the next tablespoon-full.
6. Process until the dough forms a crumbly ball.
7. Roll the dough ball out between two sheets of parchment paper to 0.5 inches (about 1 cm) thickness.
8. Cut the rolled dough into 1" by 3" rectangles and place these rectangles on the parchment-lined baking sheet, leaving a bit of space between each rectangle.  You can poke small holes in the top of each rectangle to make it look more like "real" shortbread if you want.
9. Bake for around 12 minutes, until the edges are looking nicely browned.
10. Allow to cool, and store in a sealed container in the fridge.