This recipe uses oatmeal and whole wheat pastry flour for a cookie that’s chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside.  The next time I make these, I am going to increase the spices and also experiment with not using a mortar and pestle on the whole chai spices to save a step.

 

Yields 36 cookies (plus raw dough to devour sample)

 

Ingredients

Oil, for greasing cookie sheet

 

Spices

10 whole cardamom pods (crush enough so that seeds fall out and remove pods)

1 teaspoon whole fennel seeds

5 whole black peppercorns

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 small knob of ginger, grated (I found out this is optional, since adding it slipped my mind this time around)

 

Wet

1 cup maple sugar granules (or unrefined dry sugar of your choice)

¼ cup maple syrup

150 g coconut oil (about 2/3 to ¾ cup)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon ground flax

3 tablespoons black tea or water

 

Dry

1 cup steel cut oats (uncooked)

1 ¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

 

Preheat oven to 375°F and grease two large cookie sheets.  Get your cooling racks ready for when the hot cookies come out of the oven.

 

Grind spices with mortar and pestle (this step may not be necessary if you are processing your own oat flour).  Add steel cut oats to food processor, add spices, and process until it looks like flour.  This may take a while.  Add pastry flour and the rest of the dry ingredients and pulse to combine.

 

Prepare egg substitute by adding boiling water (or hot tea) to ground flax, mixing and letting stand.

 

Whip together sugar and syrup with coconut oil and vanilla until smooth.  Add egg substitute and mix until smooth again.  Gradually add dry ingredients.  Roll into two-teaspoon-sized balls, place on greased cookie sheet, and bake.  It didn’t seem to make a different whether or not I put the dough in the freezer before baking, but feel free to experiment with this if time allows.  Bake 5 minutes and switch and rotate top and bottom sheets.  Bake 3 minutes more.  Cookies will be tender and they should not be too brown on the bottom.  Immediately transfer to cooling rack—they don’t fall apart as long as you’re gentle.  Feel free to experimenting with cooling on the cookie sheet for desired texture.  Using the method described above, the room temperature cookies are crispy on the bottom and otherwise chewy.  They get crispier as they sit.

 

This recipe has passed the test for raw, hot out of the oven and room temperature tests. For the brief amount of time these cookies spent in my kitchen (a couple days), they stayed about the same level of chewy/crispy as when they cooled while stored in a semi-airtight container.