Allergen-Free Breakfast Cookies (“Oatmeal” Raisin Plus)

From a batch made 25 July 2015. With kaniwa and chia seed, plus cashews, in place of the sunflower seeds and pepitas.

“Mom, what’s for breakfast?”

So asked my kids of me, who hadn’t a clue.  I hadn’t gone grocery shopping in nearly two weeks.  We were out of eggs, out of breakfast meat, out of milk (most of us are dairy-free, though), and we’d already had hot cereal the day before.  Hmmm…  I perused the pantry, and came up with an idea.  Breakfast cookies!  I started pulling ingredients, and hoped everything would work together.

Oh, my goodness!  They turned out SO GOOD.  The results taste like glorified oatmeal-raisin cookies.  And, as someone who hasn’t had an oatmeal-raisin cookie in nearly six years, they were so dreamy.  Relatively low in refined sugar, high-fiber, whole-grain, high-protein, filling, soft and chewy, and absolutely delicious.  My kids, as they were eating them, asked me to make them again.  I’m going on a hiking trip in a couple of weeks, and I know I’ll be making these to take along.

Now, anyone who has ever baked gluten-free before knows that it’s tricky.  Make the item dairy-free, too, and it’s super-tricky!  Take out the eggs as well, and you have a recipe that’s in a profoundly delicate balance.  SO!  While a substitution may work here or there, I make no promises for the success of any cookies made with substitutions and/or omissions.  I know there are a lot of ingredients in this recipe, but I’d be really careful about what I’d leave out or add in…

If you’ve never used quinoa flakes before, it’s a good time to start!  They look like mini rolled oats, and are surely what give these cookies their oatmeal-like appeal.

Edited 07/15/09 and 08/29/12 with a few ingredient and instruction improvements.

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free, Nut-Free Breakfast Cookies

Makes 12 very large cookies

Preheat oven to 350° F.  Line an insulated cookie sheet with either parchment or Reynold’s Non-Stick Foil.  (If you don’t have an insulated cookie sheet, take two same-sized cookie sheets that nest together, and between them, lay some heavy-duty aluminum foil that has been crumpled and partially smoothed out.  This will give you an air gap between the two cookie sheets.)

In a large bowl, mix the following ingredients with a whisk:

• 1 cup brown rice flour
• ¼ cup coconut flour
• ¼ cup rice bran or ground flax seed
• ¼ cup brown rice protein powder
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

With a wooden spoon, stir in:

• ½ cup quinoa flakes (or 1/4 cup quinoa flour, though that defeats the “oatmeal” appearance and texture)
• ½ cup puffed millet
• ½ cup flaked or dessicated coconut, sweetened or unsweetened
• ¼ cup sunflower kernels, either raw or roasted
• ¼ cup pumpkin seed kernels — “pepitas,” either raw or roasted  (or a total of ½ cup of other nuts and/or seeds)

In a small bowl, or glass 2-cup measure, whisk together the following ingredients:

• ½ cup honey
• ½ cup canola oil (or other cooking oil)
• ½ cup rice milk (or other milk)
• 2 tsp vanilla
• Optional:  ½ cup dark brown sugar OR 2 tsp dark molasses

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.  This will make a very stiff dough.

Then, with a heavy wooden spoon, and a healthy bicep, OR, using the dough hook on your stand mixer, mix in:

• ½ cup raisins
• ½ cup sweetened, dried cranberries (or, use 1 cup total other small or chopped, dried fruit)

Next, either refrigerate the dough several hours until cold, OR, if you’re impatient like me, oil your hands.  Make 12 large balls out of the dough — each about ¼ cup of dough — and place on your cookie sheet.  Then, grease the bottom of a large cup, and dip the cup into a small bowl of sugar.  With the sugared cup bottom, flatten each cookie so that each cookie is approximately 3 to 3 ½ inches wide and ½ inch thick.  Re-dip the cup in sugar for each cookie.  OR simply flatten each ball of dough with the palm of your hand.

Bake for about 22-24 minutes at 350° F, or until the edges of the cookies are golden.  Cool on racks, or simply remove the parchment/foil from the pan with the cookies still on them and cool on countertop.  (I normally cool my cookies the way my mother and grandmother did — on cut-open brown paper bags spread on the countertop.  However, these cookies will stick to brown paper bags, due to their honey content.)

Serve warm from the oven, or, cool and wrap individually with plastic wrap, and refrigerate or freeze for an on-the-go breakfast.  I have also taken these cookies camping, and they have kept for a week with no refrigeration or loss of taste or texture.

Enjoy!