Oat Flax Currant Cookies

May 7, 2006 at 5:51 am (B_minus (2.5 stars), Cookies, Dessert, From a friend)

3My friend gave me this wheat, dairy, egg, cane-sugar free cookie recipe. She said they’re allergen free (except for the nuts), but not taste-free. She claims they’re superb out of the oven, but even better the next day.

1/2 cup hot water (not boiling)
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/2 cup safflower oil (I used canola)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla flavoring (I used extract)
1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup unsulfured currants
1 cup brown rice flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1/8-1/2 tsp. cardamom powder (I used 1/3 tsp.)
pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven at 350 degrees.
2. Heat up 1/2 cup of filtered water. Do not boil it. In a small dish add flax seeds and cover with water. Let sit until ready to use.
3. In a bowl add oil, maple syrup and vanilla and mix together.
4. In another bowl combine oats, walnuts, currants and brown rice flour.
5. To the dry mix add cinnamon, baking powder, cardamom and salt.
6. Pour oil mixture into the dry and fold until well blended. The flax seeds by now should look like egg white texture (gelatinous). Pour the flax seeds into the batter and with a mixer or hand blender combine and blend until it begins to get lighter in color and mixes altogether. If you need to add more water it’s okay. (It will have an appearance of goop.)
7.Spoon or scoop with an ice cream scooper the batter on an ungreased cookie sheet. These make very good large cookies. Small too, but if you want a big cookie this will be a success. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown on top and brown on bottom. Let cool completely. Flavor is enhanced overnight if there are any left.

The batter freezes well also. I use an ice cream (large one or small) and scoop it and place on a cookie sheet and freeze. Than put in tupperware and pull out any time you want to cook some.

My notes: the batter was suprisingly wet, much more so than a typical cookie batter. I made 16 very small cookies, and 7 large cookies in the second batch. On a first taste right out of the oven I found the cookies not very sweet, but not terribly nutty tasting either. The texture from the oats and flax seeds was quite nice, but I thought the cookies were a bit greasy tasting. I wonder if really emulsifying the flax and oil and maple syrup together rather than just stirring with a spoon would reduce the greasiness? The thing I liked least about the cookies was that they didn’t get crispy. The larger ones almost had the texture of muffins it seems. Perhaps by reducing the liquid slightly and making the batter less wet these would crisp up more. Don’t get me wrong, I obviously liked these because in the end I ended up eating about half the batch, and probably would have eaten all of them if I hadn’t sent them home with Derek!

Derek liked the texture, especially that they were a bit greasy, but thought they were somewhat bland.

Rating: B
Derek: B-