Crispy Chrunchy Cookies

The very best and oldest vegan restaurant in Victoria (and only all-vegan bakery!), Green Cuisine, had a fire a few weeks ago. Keeping my fingers crossed that they will be open again by the end of the summer. In the meantime, I thought I would celebrate my love of GC by baking some cookies from their cookbook of "Best Gluten-Free Recipes". I altered the recipe quite a bit, as I am wont to do, but they turned out to be the best darn cookies I have ever eaten. Period. Exclamation point! Perfection, in a carmely-ooey-gooey-crispy cookie.

For all those who just balked at the words "vegan" and "gluten-free" (and may I throw in "sugar-free"?), please, please don't be so quick to speed-read the rest of this post! These cookies will change your baking perspective. They will revolutionize the way you dip cookies in milk. Cooking without the pesky wheat, eggs, dairy and cane sugar, leaves room for more healthy and delicious ingredients, such as brown rice and oats, agave, and olive oil. Unlike a lot of what we might call 'health-conscious' baking, these ingredients are probably things you already have at home! You can have your cookies, and not be stuffing yourself full of 'junk' food. It can be done! Go out on a limb with me, and bake these. Bet you can't eat just one.

Perfect golden brownness

The Perfected Chocolate Chip Cookie

preheat 400 F

* A note about flours: If you don't happen to have rice or oat flour, simply take rice grains or oat flakes and put them in a food processor (a blender might work...never tried that) and pulse it until it become 'flour' consistency. Voila! Wheat-free flour was never so easy!

Ingredients
3/4 cup oat flour
2/3 cup brown rice flour
1 1/4 cup oat flakes
1 1/2 cup rye flakes or more oat flakes (for something totally w-f)
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup almonds (or other fav nuts, 1/4 cup fav seeds)
2/3 cup dark chocolate chips
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
opt: 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum (in place of gluten (found in regular flour), not called for in original recipe)

2/3 cup olive oil (or liquid oil of your choice)
1/4 cup rice syrup (or local honey, for a non-vegan version)
1/4 cup agave (or more honey or maple syrup)
1 tablespoon vanilla

Measure out and mix all the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and stir. The resulting mixture will be very crumbly and dry, so don't worry. Oil or line a cookie tray. Squeeze/shape the dough into balls as best you can and shape them on a cookie tray, then flatten them.

Bake at 400 F, for 9-11 minutes, until golden brown. Wait a big for cookies to firm up once removing from oven, then transfer to a rack to cool.

Best nibbled with a glass of icy non-dairy milk. Freezes beautifully, so you can bring them out for special treats!

(For a Oatmeal raison variation, subsitute raisons in for chocolate chips, and add a 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, and a 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg (or a quarter of a nutmeg nut, grated.)