Food and Drink

I was having trouble finding a simple recipe for breakfast cookies, so I adapted a top-rated oatmeal cookie recipe to suit my needs. This recipe is still a little too addictive for me for regular use, but it was tasty with a butterscotch flavour coming through from the brown sugar. Also, I was very happy with the texture, it was very biscuit-like.

Breakfast Cookies With Pumpkin Seeds

1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup chickpea flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds

Mix together the oil and brown sugar, beat in the egg, and stir in the vanilla. Mix together the dry ingredients and stir them into the creamed mixture.

Grease a cookie sheet and preheat the oven to 375F. Roll the dough into balls and place on the cookie sheet. Flatten the cookies with a fork.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes before removing them from the sheet to either a rack or a plate.

NOTES:

1. I tried a variation on this recipe: half the brown sugar and 1/4 cup chopped dates added with the dry ingredients. This still makes for a tasty cookie and I don’t find it as addictive.
2. The original recipe is found here: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/19247/soft-oatmeal-cookies/

I’m eating a low oxalate diet and I wanted to make low oxalate muffins using chickpea flour. I also like the idea of eating food lower on the glycemic index, which chickpea flour is, so it has less impact on my blood sugar levels.

I learned as I was searching for recipes using this flour that it is being used more and more in vegan recipes because chickpea flour works well to bind food and can substitute for eggs. I also learned one shouldn’t to taste the dough (I did anyways . . .) because the flour tastes awful until it has been cooked (. . . it wasn’t that bad).

The recipes I found were all for chocolate cake (high oxalate), so I decided to adapt my Mom’s carrot cake recipe to my purposes. I substituted 1/3 cup rice flour and 2/3 cup chickpea flour for the 1 cup of flour in the recipe. I also reduced the eggs to just one to test how well the muffins would hold together with less egg and chickpea flour.

The muffins turned out really well, especially after they’d spent a day in the fridge. Once they cooled off, they held together nicely and after a day in the fridge, they were incredibly moist.

For my next version of this recipe, I’ll test using a banana instead of some of the sugar. Or maybe making a banana loaf.

Carrot Cake Muffins with Chickpea Flour

1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1/3 cup white rice flour
2/3 cup chickpea flour
1 tsp each baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp chopped pecans

Shred carrots with food processor. Empty carrots into measuring cup. Process together oil and sugar. Add in egg and vanilla and process. Mix together flours and spices, then process them into the wet mixture. Add pecans and process briefly.

I baked these as very small muffins at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Test that they are cooked all the way through with a knife. Cool before removing from the muffin pans. Store in fridge or freezer, the chickpea flour probably won’t keep well at room temperature.