In First Person: Oat Cookies Recipe

In First Person is a monthly meme here on Books and Hot Tea. Every first of the month I talk about a certain lifestyle topic I’m passionate about. Feel free to leave comments and chat with me!

---

It’s the first of April, the month I was born. 🙂 Birthdays used to be fun but they’re not that fun anymore. Guess I’m getting old. XD Another proof that I’m getting old is that I started to take care about what I eat. One of the biggest changes in my diet was to cut back on sugar.

I used to eat too much sugar, a day wouldn’t go by without at least a chocolate. To be honest, I don’t believe in any of the diets I see around, I think you should eat home cooked food whenever you can, and everything in ballance. That’s it. Sugar, however, is definitely bad for you if you eat as much as I did. This lead to the decision that I would try to make my own sweet bites. That way I’ll know exactly what goes in them, I’ll cut back on sugar, and I’ll still be able to eat sweets. Life is just meaningless without them, isn’t it? 😉

The first cookie recipe I developed was this one. Oat cookies are great to eat with your tea, so this is a nice continuation of my previous In First Person post. I love Grancereale oat cookies, so I looked at the ingredients list and started experimenting. My cookies taste quite similar, but are softer, which I actually prefer. Here’ how they look like:

Here’s what you need (for about 15 cookies):

• 100g almond flour
• 80g oats
• 2tbsp baking powder (or 1 tbsp baking soda)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds + 2 tbsp water (for chia egg)*
• 1 1/2 tbsp honey* (you can replace it with maple syrup if you’re a vegan)
• 1 tbsp plant milk (I use oat milk or almond milk, you can use regular milk if you want to)
• 1 tbsp (extra virgin) olive oil**

* Yes, this is hard to measure. I usually take one big, overflowing spoon of honey. XD
** I’m from the Mediterranen, I must use olive oil. In everything. XD You can replace it with something else, but olive oil is good for you, so… 😉

And here’s how you make them:

1. Preheat the oven to 140°C.
2. Put chia seeds and 2 tbsp water in a little bowl or plate to make chia egg. It will turn into a “paste” soon. Feel free to add a little bit more of water if that’s necessary for all the seeds to get wet.
3. Mix almond flour, oats and baking soda in a big bowl. I use hands for this recipe. They will get sticky, but it’s the best way.
4. Put wet ingredients in the bowl and mix. Do it slowly, little by little. They have to spread evenly. I usually put chia egg first, then milk, then honey and a drop of olive oil in the end. I try to spread it as I put the ingredients in, for example, this is how I put honey:

5. Now you have a sticky dough!

6. Put baking paper on a baking dish and form cookies. Make small balls in your hands and then press them. They won’t grow much so you don’t need to leave too much space between them.

7. Bake the cookies on 140°C for about 20 minutes. Look at the lovely result! (I got 16 cookies this time.)

8. Store them in your cupboard and enjoy!

I really hope you’ll like them! These cookies are vegetarian, but can easily be made vegan if you replace honey. They are dairy and egg free. Also, white sugar free, of course – the only sweetener used is honey. (Feel free to add more, if you want them even sweeter, it won’t change the outcome.)

You can play with the cookies, if you want to. I once made them with cacao powder, but you can use other tastes you like, for example vanilla extract or coconut flakes (in this case it might be nice to replace olive oil with coconut oil). You can do anything with them! If you decide to experiment, please, tell me how you made them! 🙂