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Ingredients

  • 1/3 cup cocoa
  • 1 1/2 cups oat flour we use gluten free oat flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda or swap for 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
  • 1 cup icing sugar Swerve
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp peppermint flavour or 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • Vanilla ice cream we use Chapman’s in a box
  • 6 maraschino cherries cut in half
  • Icing gel I used red and white, but you can get away with just the white
  • Candy eyes

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • Depending on how lumpy your cocoa is, sift it first. Mix cocoa, oat flour, baking powder, salt. Set aside.
  • With electric beater, cream together the butter and icing sugar for a few minutes. Add the egg and flavouring (peppermint or vanilla). Mix the dry ingredients into the wet and combine on low until incorporated.
  • Mixture will seam crumbly, but will come together as you roll it into balls. Scoop out some dough, bring together into a ball and roll out to 1/8” thick between two pieces of parchment paper (or roll all dough into one sheet). Cut out with reindeer cookie cutter and put onto Silpat lined baking sheet a few inches apart. Re-roll all the scraps. You should end up with at least 12 cookies spread over two baking sheets (6 on each).
  • Bake for 6 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes. Put cookie sheets into freezer when pan is cool for at least a 1/2 hour.
  • Bring cookies out of freezer and carefully remove from Silpat. If using a box ice cream, slice about 1/2” thick. Cut out with cookie cutter. Save scraps. Sandwich ice cream between two cookies. If preferred, you can scoop the ice cream instead.
  • You can prepare these in advance, wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze until ready to serve. Will keep up to 3 months in the freezer.

Notes

IMPORTANT - since substituting Dutch Processed Cocoa for the natural cocoa we used originally, we learned that sometimes you have to also swap the baking soda for baking powder. According to this article, you might want to also swap 1/2 tsp of baking soda, and use 1 tsp of baking power instead.  We haven't tried this and thought the cookies turned out fine with baking soda, but we'll leave that up to you. 
Keep in mind, as with all substitutions, that the outcome really depends on the recipe. But the above is a good starting point for substituting one cocoa powder for the other in general!