Quinoa, oats and raisins super cookies (no refined sugars)
After the countless family dinners, cakes, Belgian chocolate and eating out in restaurant that Arnaud and I experienced the past few weeks during our trip back to Belgium, we decided it was about time to try and “re-balance” what we eat in order to give our bodies a rest (and re-load on some much needed energy). We intend to do so by skipping on the refined sugars, and lowering our intake of any kind of sugars in general, but also by diversifying the kinds of fat, grains and flours we use. In order to have some heathy and yummy snacks on hand for example to go to work or if we want a sweet dessert after dinner, we baked a few different kinds of nourishing cookies for the whole week. Here’s the recipe of our quinoa, oats and raisins cookies, adapted from this double chocolate cookie recipe I posted a while ago.
Makes about 30 cookies:
- ¼ cup (50gr) quinoa white (uncooked)
- 1 cup (100gr) whole grain rolled oats
- 5-6 (about 50gr) pitted dried dates
- 4/5 cup (100gr) whole wheat flour (or rice flour for a gluten-free version)
- ½ cup (50gr) almond meal
- ⅓ cup (30gr) either coconut flour or almond meal
- 1 pinch of salt
- ⅓ cup (75gr) melted butter (or coconut oil for a dairy-free version)
- 1 egg
- 3-4 tbsp apple butter spread or “sirop de Liège” (a sirup made from apple and pears) for you lucky Belgians 😉
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup raisins or a little more
In a food processor, grind the oats into a powder-like consistency. Add the quinoa and pulse again to a fine powder (although some small chunks can remain). Add the pitted dates to the mix and grind into a kind of sweet flour.
Stir the dry ingredients together in a bowl: whole wheat flour, almond meal, coconut flour if using any, cinnamon, pinch of salt, and the quinoa-oats-dates mix. Mix in the melted butter, egg and apple butter (or “sirop de Liège”) into a ball of dough, mixing by hand when it gets to thick (or pulse everything in the food processor). If the dough is too dry to hold into a ball, add in one or a few tbsp of milk or almond milk for example. Add in the raisins and mix briefly by hand. Roll the dough to a cylinder shape of about a 2inches diameter, and place it in the fridge for an hour.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a large baking pan. Take the dough out of the refrigerator, and cut slices the thickness of a cookie out of the cylinder. Slightly press the cookie with your fingers if the shape disintegrate a little. Place the cookies on the baking pan, and bake for about 15′ in the preheated oven. Let them cool on the baking pan before trying to move them, as they break easily when still hot (but not when they’re cold). Enjoy!
NB: if easier, you can also form some small balls of dough between your hands and then press each ball into a cookie-like shape instead of rolling the dough into a cylinder.
