Veggies on the counter

My first idea was to share with you a chocolate dessert today, but unfortunately the dish I envisioned – a beautiful chocolate and toasted oatmeal mousse – didn’t really work out. Instead of a mousse, I ended up making a ganache, and a ganache is just a dessert component, not a dessert in itself. For that reason, I threw it into the freezer and decided to go on a totally different direction. In the end, I made something I was actually craving for quite a while – thin and crisp oat cookies.

Ginger and orange are ingredients that I almost always have in my fridge, and I knew beforehand how well they go together (they’re the base of a Moroccan inspired marinade I make quite often to flavour tofu). The only thing I had to do in the process of making this recipe was to taste the cookie dough a few times and adjust the amounts of both ingredients to make sure the flavours were discernible.

I’m very pleased with how the cookies turned out, they’re wonderfully spicy thanks to the ginger but also fresh and citrus-y because of the orange. Just a little note: after you take them out of the oven they’ll be soft to the touch, but after 5 minutes or so they’ll crisp up and be ready to eat. :)

Ginger & Orange Oat Cookies

Makes about 35 cookies

Dry mixture

138 g / 1 ¼ cups old fashioned rolled oats

110 g / 1 cup oat flour

50 g / ½ cup desiccated coconut

3 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon sea salt

Wet mixture

1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

1 ½ Tablespoons orange zest (from about 2 ½ medium sized oranges)

80 ml / 1/3 cup olive oil

185 ml / ¾ cup brown rice syrup

2 Tablespoons flaxseed meal

60 ml / ¼ cup water

In a small bowl, combine the flaxseed meal and water together. Whisk well, cover, and let it rest for about 5 minutes or until it thickens.

Mix the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the remaining wet ingredients and the flaxseed mixture.

Pour the wet mixture over the dry and mix with a wooden spoon until everything is well combined. Refrigerate the cookie dough for at least 1 hour before using. In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 180 C and line a large tray with baking paper.

After the dough is chilled, scoop out 1 tablespoon of it at a time. Wet your hands and flatten each piece of dough between your hands, until you get a cookie that is about 2 mm thick. Arrange each cookie at least 4 cm (1.6 inches) apart from each other in the prepared baking tray. They’ll spread out quite a bit.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown around the edges. Let them cool on a rack before eating and store them in an airtight container.