A Healthy Cookie that Doesn't Taste Like Sh-t

Today I decided to make cookies. Only I wanted to go for something with minimal sugar and "natural" ingredients. Oh, and I wanted them to taste good (go figure). After a brief visit to Google, I stumbled across 101 Cookbooks...a blog I am only slightly familiar with (mostly because the author of said blog is an earth-mother vegetarian sort and as such, doesn't really have a lot of recipes that are of interest to me). However her honey-sweetened thumbprint cookie recipe intrigued me. It looked simple (check) and substituted honey for sugar (check) and used whole wheat pastry flour in place of white flour (check). Best of all, in the event that the cookies ended up tasting like cardboard, a tiny dab of jam in the middle would keep the mouth from slipping into a coma.

So dear reader, I made them. And I have no regrets. My kids like them, I like them, and K likes them. They have more flavor than typical "healthy" cookies...but you don't have to feel guilty when popping several into your mouth.

If you decide to walk on the wild side with me, here are a few tips:
1) The author used clover honey (if I recall correctly) but I opted for a darker, raw organic honey from Hawaii (a la Costco). The darker honey tends to have a molasses/maple syrupy taste to it which, when added, provides some additional depth of flavor to foods and teas. But that's my opinion.
2) I used an apricot fruit spread for the filling and I think it worked well with the rest of the cookie.
3) The recipe recommends coconut oil or ghee as the fat component. I have heard a lot about cooking with coconut oil but I didn't happen to have any around the house. Oddly enough, I did have ghee. Ghee, in case you aren't familiar with it, is clarified butter...and very popular in Indian cooking. It's made by simmering unsalted butter until the milk proteins separate out. Ghee is apparently much healthier than pure butter and unlike some oils, it has a high-smoke point which means you can heat it at high temps and it doesn't lose any of it's nutritional value or break down as a result. I'd always been wary of ghee...let's face it, a room-temperature jar of butter doesn't really call out to me. But it's really good and nothing to be frightened of! And it leant a lovely buttery taste to the cookies.
4) Do not make the mistake of using regular old whole wheat flour for these. You really want to use whole wheat PASTRY flour. Pastry flour is a much finer consistency which means whole wheat pastry flour is less dense and more like regular unbleached white flour in texture. If you aren't sold on the idea of using whole wheat pastry flour for baking...I recommend going half and half (1/2 ww and 1/2 unbleached white).

Enjoy!