Gluten Free Hazelnut Spice Cookies

I love reading A Gluten-Free Day because Emilia’s gluten free baking is so beautiful. It doesn’t feel like she’s substituting, but like she’s found legitimate alternatives that taste good in their own right. Her photos are gorgeous too. The daffodils on her Easter Cheesecake were so pretty. One of the things I noticed about this recipe was that Emilia had made her biscuit base from home made gluten free cookies. I had a look at her recipe for them, which looked simple enough for me to try right away.

I was really pleased with these cookies. I loved the chewy texture and I was really glad I’d tried the version with spices and dried fruit. Emilia suggested sultanas with cinnamon and I added some nutmeg to this combination. I also used hazelnut meal rather than almond meal because I had some leftover dry roasted hazelnut crumb from Australian Gourmet Hazelnuts. This resulted in a hazelnut flavour which I liked with the spices. Being a coarsely ground nut meal it also gave the cookies a rough texture. This gave them an unsophisticated, homely look. If cookies were people, these would be honest characters.

The other thing that I have to mention about this recipe its simplicity and the small amount of washing up it produces. I used one bowl to melt the butter and one to mix the cookies in. Other than that there was only the baking slide to wash, which was very easy because I’d used baking paper.

I’m looking forward to making variations of these cookies with different nut meals and different combinations of dried fruits and spices. These are a really practical and tasty gluten free cookie and I’m very grateful to Emilia for sharing her recipe.

Ingredients
1 cup hazelnut meal (or almond meal)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla extract
50 grams melted butter
1 egg
1/2 cup sultanas

Method
Preheat oven to 175 C.
Combine dry ingredients, then add butter and egg. Add the sultanas last.
Line a baking tray with baking paper and place teaspoon sized balls of batter on the tray.
Bake for 15 minutes or until the cookies begin to brown at the bottom and edges.

This post is for Bookmarked Recipes, an event started by Ruth from Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments. This week’s host is Laurie from Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska.

About these ads

Tagged: Biscuits and Cookies, Dried Fruit, Nuts

Posted in: Blog events, Recipes and methods