December 31, 2017

Almond Shortbread Vegan Rosehip Cookies

One of the best parts of the holidays is blending sweet, comforting flavors into warm freshly baked cookies. The cookies I ended up making use a simple, crispy shortbread cookie with sweet, nutty almonds and pops of tart, fruity, winter rosehips. The rosehip cookies are the perfect mix of familiar and a bit special. There’s nothing like a bit of winter foraging to make you really appreciate the warmth of your oven!

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Foraging in Winter

During the spring there are new shoots and greens, come summer we see fruits and berries, and as autumn rolls around the forests are filled with fungi. Foraging in winter is more of a minimalist activity- it’s unlikely the bulk of your meal will be found out in the snow-covered woods. Instead, you might find a few birch twigs to make tea, or some spruce needles to infuse into your cookie dough. If the ground isn’t frozen, you may be able to dig some roots and tubers. There may be some rosehips clinging to their thorny branches, or some wintergreen berries hidden beneath a fresh layer of snow. You may get lucky and find some frozen winter oyster mushrooms or some wood ear mushrooms, but for the most part, foraging in winter is about adding that little touch of woodsy flavor to your homecooked dishes. The perfect example of winter foraging- these rosehip cookies. Just a touch of the outdoors inside them to go with the crunchy, almond shortbread.

How to Forage for Rosehips

Rosehips are a wonderful item to forage- they are the tart and sweet berry that grows on rosebushes after the flowers have wilted and died. The bright red berries are one of the few wild winter plants to forage where I live. Best of all, they are widespread, common and easy to identify. The red hips can be found starting in early autumn and will remain through the winter until picked. While there are many types of rosehips that vary greatly in size, most are edible (as always, when foraging use caution and verify that you have indeed found rosehips before consuming). The biggest downside to rosehips is they are filled with tightly packed seeds and thin seed-hairs that are irritating to the human digestive system so they need to be removed before the fruit are eaten. This can be time consuming but the tasty, vitamin C rich berries are well worth the effort. They add a delicate, tart and bright vibrancy to the shortbread cookies that will brighten even the darkest winter day.

Wild roses grow all over the world, on the trailside, woods, thickets and more. I picked mine along the cliffsides overlooking the ocean. Cultivated roses grow wherever people plant them, although if the flowers were picked the hips will not form. The hips form after the flowers have fallen from the plant, and can stay on the plants from Autumn into the winter- they are perfectly good to pick in the winter, but you may find animals eat them before you get to. If you need help identifying roses and rose plants, you can check out this guide. Rosehips are generally orange-red, and vary from small to larger, oval to globular. Rosehips get sweeter as they sit on the plant, and tend to have a good boost in sugar after a frost or two. Honestly, in this recipe I think the tartness is perfectly lovely so I wouldn’t worry about getting sweeter hips. I always go for the hips that are blemish free, large, red, and firm.

Looking for Foraged Vegan Dessert Recipes? Try one of these!

How to Make Rosehip Cookies

Shortbread cookies are super fun to make, and you don’t need a whole lot of ingredients around to make them. You start with some vegan butter- there are plenty of good vegan options out there these days, but if you can’t get your hands on any you can try out some coconut oil instead. The vegan butter gets whipped with some sugar, so it’s all smooth and fluffy. Add a little vanilla to that as well. Turn down your mixer, to avoid getting flour anywhere, and slowly add the flour to form the dough. The final elements are the almonds and rosehips. You want both to be cut into fairly small bits. The almonds will add a little nutty, crunchy texture, and the rosehips will give that fruity, floral, hibiscus or cranberry like notes. Make sure you give yourself time to properly clean and process the rosehips, as they take some work. The dried bud ends need to be removed, and each hip cut in half. The seeds and hairs inside get scooped out and discarded. After that, just chip them a little into pieces.

Once your dough is made, it should be chilled so that it’s easy to work with. Wrapping it in plastic wrap is a good idea, as it keeps it nice and tidy in the fridge. You can also keep it in that same plastic wrap once you start shaping the dough, which helps to keep everything nice and tidy. To shape the cookies, make a long rectangle and cut slices out of it, almost like if you were cutting a loaf of bread. The slices get placed on a baking sheet, and the cookies go into the oven. After about 12 minutes, they’re done! Let them cool fully, so the go from soft to crumbly.