Paleo Mocha Cookies Recipe- Egg Free, Dairy Free, Grain Free, Gluten Free, Vegan Option

Rose couldn't keep her hands off these cookies!

I've been doing a lot of kitchen experimentation lately, trying to come up with some good grain free dessert recipes, trying to keep them as low cost as possible. Added clincher? I was trying to make these refined sugar free, and didn't have access to my usual coconut sugar which I find works really well in desserts- but I did have honey. I don't have much experience making desserts with honey, and I find the liquid sweetener makes recipes much more likely to flop.
And yes, I did flop some recipes recently. I tried making cookies with homemade quinoa flour on Friday, and they tasted pretty icky in my opinion. (Fortunately a friend enjoyed them, so I passed them on happily.) But my grain free banana bread was a success!

Since I was all out of desserts once my banana bread was finished, I decided to attempt making some grain free cookies today, sweetened with honey. Since nuts are expensive (as a commenter in my banana bread post rightly wrote), I tried to use as little nuts as possible in this, stretching the nuts with potato starch and coconut, which end up being cheaper per pound. After my last attempt at cookies flopped I was super antsy while they were in the oven, but fortunately these came out decently. They're not super sweet, but I've gotten used to less sweet things- its also healthier and also works out cheaper since sweeteners are often the most expensive part of these recipes.

Paleo Mocha Cookies Recipe- Egg Free, Dairy Free, Grain Free, Gluten Free

Ingredients:
1 cup desiccated coconut (that's what they sell here instead of shredded coconut- if you only have shredded, try pulsing them in the food processor until they're as fine as you can get it)
1 cup ground nuts or ground sunflower seeds
2 1/4 cups potato starch or tapioca starch (or corn starch to keep the price down)
1 1/4 cup honey (to make this vegan I'm sure you can use maple syrup or jaggery syrup in its place)
3/4 cup oil of choice
1/2 cup ground flax seed or ground chia seeds
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2-1 teaspoon instant coffee granules (optional- if you leave this out, they'll just be chocolate cookies)

Instructions:
1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

2. Add the liquid ingredients. You'll see it looks very oily and you'll be sure the recipe will flop/you did something wrong... but don't worry! It is supposed to be like that, it'll come out fine.

3. Form cookies with your hands- slightly wet hands work best so they don't stick to your hands, flattening them, and putting them on a baking sheet. I got 35 large cookies; if you make smaller cookies you'll get more.

4. Bake at 350 for 10-13 minutes. When you take them out, they shouldn't really have changed color, but their texture will have changed. They still won't look fully solid- once they cool off they'll have a better texture. They're somewhat soft cookies but not super soft. They aren't crumbly.

Enjoy!

Do you do much kitchen experimentation? Are you, like myself, more nervous to experiment with baking vs cooking, or does it not make a difference to you? Or are you the type that needs to follow exact recipes and doesn't want to experiment in the kitchen?
Does this look like a recipe you'd try?