Kamut and oat flour shortbread biscuits

It's been about 2 years since I've had shortbread biscuits. Mind you, they're not all that healthy and so maybe it's a good thing I don't eat them anymore. 

I was in need of some dessert today and while I was flipping through the pages of my cookbook Now Vegan! by Lynda Stoner I found a super simple recipe for wholemeal shortbread biscuits. 

I altered the recipe a little to try and make it a bit healthier and they still turned out pretty good. 

Here's the original recipe. Any alterations I made I put in brackets.

Vegan Wholemeal Oat Shortbread Biscuits

Ingredients

• 125g (4oz) wholemeal flour (I used Kamut flour)
• 125g (4oz) unbleached flour (I used oat flour)
• 60g (2oz) raw sugar (I used Low GI cane sugar)
• 200g (6 1/2oz) vegan margarine
• 10 drops vanilla essence

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180C (350F)
2. Mix the flour and sugar together
3. Rub in the margarine with your fingertips until a coarse breadcrumb texture is achieved.
4. Add the vanilla essence and quickly roll the dough into a ball. Do not over-work.
5. On a lightly floured surface, roll the rough into a rectangle or circle 1cm (1/2inch) thick. 
6. Cut into fingers or triangles and bake for about 5 minutes. 
7. Turn over and cook for a further 5-10 minutes until golden brown on both sides. 
8. Cool on a wire rack.

Vegan cosmic cookies

While I was Googling healthier substitutes for white flour a while back, I came across something called Kamut flour. It is a good choice for baking because it has a higher protein content than normal white flour and will not make your baking heavy or dense like spelt flour does (more info here and here).

I bought a bag of kamut flour months and months ago, hoping to make a yummy cake but alas I never got around to it. Over time the poor bag of kamut flour had gotten pushed to the back of my pantry. That is, until yesterday when I found a super healthy cookie recipe that includes kamut flour. 

It was one of those rare moments when I find a recipe with a mega long ingredients list, and I actually end up having most of the ingredients in my kitchen. 

My brother asked me today what I was going to do as my something new and I told him that I'd be making cookies. His eyes lit up, but then I quickly told him that they'd be healthy cookies. He paused for a second and unexpectedly said, "doesn't matter. It's all the same". Lol. What 12 year old likes healthy cookies? He's s special kid that boy. Love him to bits.

I made a few variations of the recipe that I found on the website Food Doodles. The original recipe is from Planet Organic Market.  

As there are so many ingredients in this recipe, there's just so much happening in each bite. All the different flavours work well.

I rolled out my cookie dough so that the cookies would be thin because I like them crunchy, but they would taste just as good if they're thicker. 

I'm pretty sure these babies are jammed packed with so much goodness and energy. Get baking and enjoy these guilt-free cosmic cookies. 

These cookies also got the thumbs up of approval from my little brother. The boy who loves his vegetables non-existant and his junk food deep fried or covered in sugar :P

Vegan Cosmic Cookies

Makes about 36 thin cookies about 5mm thick.

Dry ingredients:

• 1 cup rolled oats
• ½ cup spelt flour (I used plain flour because I didn't have spelt. It still worked well, but spelt would be healthier)
• ½ cup kamut flour
• ½ cup raw sunflower seeds
• ½ cup pumpkin seeds or pepitas (I used 1/4 cup of sesame seeds and 1/4 cup dried pineapple pieces chopped)
• ½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• ¼ cup chia seeds
• ½ cup sucanat sugar (I used low Gi raw sugar)
• l tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• ½ cup vegan chocolate chips
• ½ cup dried cranberries
• ¼ cup raisins

Wet ingredients:

•  1/8 cup blackstrap molasses
• ½ cup coconut oil
• ½ cup unsweetened almond milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 18 C (350 F).  Prepare 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
2. In a very large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients from the oats to the dried cranberries.  Stir and set aside.  
3. In a medium sized bowl stir together the molasses, melted coconut oil and milk.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix with a large wooden spoon just until all the ingredients are combined.  
4. Using a 1/3 C measuring cup, scoop dough and place 9-12 cookies per baking sheet.  Gently press the cookie dough down to the thickness that you like. I used a cookie cutter to make then all even in diameter.
5. Place on sheets and put in the oven and bake for 24-26 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and let cool for 2-3 minutes before removing the cookies from the sheet and placing on a cooling rack to cool completely.

Notes: You might want to warm the milk slightly before mixing it with the coconut oil and molasses otherwise the coconut oil will solidify fairly quickly once mixed.  This is not a problem if you’re using any other kind of oil.

 

Vegan white chocolate macadamia cookies

The main reason I went vegan was because I wanted to start living a healthier lifestyle. I really enjoy being vegan and I don't see myself going back anytime soon. 

There have been many things that I've given up since going vegan such as ice cream, chocolate and a lot of my favourite types of store bought cakes and biscuits but I'm quite happy to do this because it means that I'm also cutting out a lot of junk out of my diet too. 

One of the unhealthy things that I don't eat any more are white chocolate macadamia cookies. I remember them tasting delicious, but I like being vegan far more than the taste of those cookies. 

I've been vegan for nearly two years now and in that time I've come to realise that there is usually a way to make vegan versions of most foods. 

Now don't fall into the trap of thinking that just because there's a vegan version of something that it is automatically healthy. Sure, it may be healthier, but it may not necessarily be healthy. And it certainly doens't mean you can eat ten servings of it.

I recently discovered vegan white chocolate. The brand is called Sweet William and they do dairy free chocolates. The white chocolate actually tastes pretty spot on to what I remember normal white chocolate tastes like. 

Even though I try to eat clean, I have the biggest sweet tooth and so when I was flipping through my Veganomicon cookbook and came across a recipe that I could change in order to make vegan white chocolate macadamia cookies, I just couldn't resist. I have googled some other recipes for these cookies but they all include a lot of vegan margarine and I didn't have any at home. Plus I don't really like using it unless there is absolutely no other substitute.

These cookies turned out pretty delicious. Even my mum (who usually doesn't eat anything that is unhealthy, let alone my vegan baking) enjoyed these :)

Suitable for vegans

So this is my variation of the Veganomicon recipe for white chocolate macadamia cookies. This recipe was originally for chocolate-chocolate chip-walnut cookies.

Vegan White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies

Makes about 24

Ingredients 

2 1/4 cups white spelt flour (you can use plain flour)
2/3 cup oat flour (I just processed rolled oats)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 canola oil (or 1/2 cup should be ok too)
1 1/2 cup Stevia (or any baking sugar substitute)
4 teaspoons ground flaxseed
1/2 cup soy milk
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
3/4 vegan white chocolate bits
3/4 halved unsalted macadamia nuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Line three baking trays with baking paper.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add the oat flour. 
In a separate large bowl, mix together the oil and sugar. Add the flaxseeds, soy milk, vanilla and almond extract, and mix well.
Fold in the dry ingredients in batches. When the batter starts to get too hard to mix with a fork then use your hands.
Add the chocolate and nuts. 
Roll dough into 1-inch balls (or whatever size you like. Each ball of dough was about 1 table spoon for me) and flatten into disks (I prefer these cookies to be quite thin so I flattened them out as much as possible).
Bake for 10-15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer onto cooling rack to cool completely.  

Oat, raisin and chocolate chip cookies

The original plan was to make vegan waffles this morning, but my new waffle iron decided to be temperamental and wouldn't turn on :( So I pulled out my Veganomnicon cookbook and found an oat and raisin cookie recipe. I chose this one so that I could use the raisins I had made the other day. The raisins were a bit sour because I used grapes that weren't ripe yet, but luckily the cookie recipe was sweet enough to counter balance this. Plus I added some chopped up dark chocolate to sweeten it even more.
Take note: use ripe grapes to make raisins/sultanas. 

Tea always tastes better with cookies :)