gluten-free eats

These breakfast cookies are made with powdered peanut butter (also known as peanut flour) which makes them lower in fat than traditional peanut butter cookies. They're also hearty and delicious, with a firm, chewy texture. Or skip the oven and eat the dough raw.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups rolled oats or quick oats
3/4 cup powdered peanut butter, packed
2 tablespoons chia, hemp seeds, or flax meal
1/4 teaspoon fine salt, heaping
1/4 cup neutral flavored oil
1/4 cup maple syrup or honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons water
2/3 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Time: Comes together in under ten minutes and uses a food processor—but you can work around it—and then fifteen minutes in the oven.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In your food processor fitted with the S blade, combine rolled oats, peanut butter powder, chia/hemp/flax, and salt. Process until the oats are coarsely chopped. If you don't have a food processor, you can keep your rolled oats whole or use quick oats instead, your cookies will just have a different texture.

3. To your oat mixture, add the oil, maple syrup or honey, vanilla extract, and water, and process (or stir) until the ingredients come together to form a thick paste. If it looks dry or crumbly, trickle in a little more water. Dough should be thick and sticky and hold together easliy.

4. Stir chocolate chips in manually, if using.

5. Scoop your cookie dough onto your cookie sheet, being careful not to eat all the dough before it gets to the oven because it's really delicious. I recommend using a disher for this job as this dough's super sticky, but I've also used a spoon and my fingers. Both work. You can make them bite size (~1 tablespoon of dough) or big size (~3 tablespoons). The cookies don't spread at all in the oven, so you don't have to leave much room between them. Flatten the cookies with your spoon or a wet fork. The water will help prevent the dough from sticking to it.

6. Cook on the middle rack for 10-15 minutes, giving the pan a turn at 8 minutes. It's kind of hard to tell when these are done because they don't change color; they just stop looking wet. Gently push on their centers with your finger and if they resist, take them out. I have no problem moving these directly from the sheet to a cooling rack as they're very sturdy little cookies.

7. Let cool for at least five minutes before eating. The outside is at its firmest and most pleasing now, but I think they taste much better after they've cooled completely.

8. Store in an air-tight container at room temperature or freeze. Mine last on the counter for at least four days.

If you make them small, you can get about 20; larger cookies give you around 9.

Notes:

Some peanut butter powders have added salt and sugar, but mine's 100% peanuts. If your PB powder has additional ingredients, you might want to mess with the recipe's salt and sugar levels, but I suspect that this recipe was originally written for a PB powder that contains salt and sugar.

I use flax meal, avocado oil or light olive oil, extra salt (hence the "heaping" 1/4 tsp; I actually put in 1/2 tsp these days) and have used both honey and maple syrup with similar results. I've made these with and without chocolate chips and they're both good, but I have to say the chocolate chips really add that extra something. For some reason after the dough is cooked the peanut butter flavor isn't as prominent, so the extra excitement of the chocolate is welcome.

Honestly, I like the raw dough (without chocolate chips) way better than the cookies. It's sweeter, saltier, and peanut butterier, and since it doesn't have any eggs in it, there's nothing stopping me from making up a batch and eating it with a spoon. Though, disclaimer: Eating a lot of uncooked oats may not be the right thing for your guts. Usually I compromise and cook about seven big cookies and just eat the rest of the dough with a spoon.

Cooked, I don't find these to be very sweet, but then I love sugar. If you want them less sweet, just drop the sweetener a bit and maybe add a little more water in its place. If you want them to be dessert, you know what to do. (The opposite.)

And I'm SURE you can make these with actual peanut butter, but I haven't tried it and can provide no guidance, except for the idea that you might use less oil; the rest will depend on if your peanut butter already has salt or sugar in it.

Variations:

• Oil-Free: Just replace 1/4 cup of oil with some other liquid like applesauce or a milk product, or just more water. The cookies will still hold together, but the flavor will be quite different.

• PB&J cookies: Throw 1/4 cup of dried fruit—I like dried cherries—into the food processor at the end or chop by hand. Maybe throw in 1/4 cup of peanuts, too, for a chunky peanut butter effect. Give it a few pulses and proceed as normal. This version might require a little more water.

Questions? Ask 'em!