Gluten Free Chia Breakfast Cookie

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This recipe was adapted from another oatmeal chia cookie I read about a while back. I wanted to make it a gluten free cookie because I’ve been doing some other experimenting with gluten free baking these days. I turned it into a “breakfast” cookie because the original recipe called for enough white sugar to keep a 4 year old up for a week and I’m not a fan of that. I have a post coming up on the best sweeteners for your health – but for now, I’ll just say quickly, I’m really excited about palm sugar, maple syrup and honey for baking. Also, between the chia and the oats, this cookie has a good amount of protein so it can be more than just a sweet treat!
The other thing I did to the original recipe was substitute avocado oil for the butter. If you have never used avocado oil for baking I would HIGHLY recommend it. Don’t get me wrong, I love butter and I use high quality butter in a lot of my cooking, but when it comes to baking, avocado oil is my favorite. Lots of people substitute olive oil to get some of the health benefits from monounsaturated fats, but olive oils tend to have too strong of a flavor for sweet items in my opinion. Plus, avocado oil has even more monounsaturated fats than olive oil. Also, when you are replacing avocado oil for butter, you can use a little less oil. The reason is that the avocado oil is a little thinner than melted butter so it absorbs the dry ingredients better. That’s a savings on fat, calories and your wallet!

Gluten Free Oatmeal Chia Seed Breakfast Cookies

¾ cup AvOmega avocado oil

1/3 cup palm sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 eggs

2 egg whites whipped to soft peaks

2 ½ cups Certified Gluten Free oats

1 ¾ cup gluten free flour (I used brown rice flour)

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp sea salt

¾ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ cup AztecChia

½ cup cocoa nibs

 

Preheat oven to 325° F. Grease a cookie sheet or get out your silicone baking mat.

Cream butter and sugar until light. Add vanilla, eggs.

Stir in oats, flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, chia and cocoa nibs. Dough will be slightly stiff.

Fold in the whipped eggs. These just add a little bit of fluff to the dough.

 

My husband is the sweets taste tester and after sampling my dough he decided that they weren’t quite sweet enough. So I added about 3 TBS of maple syrup to the mixture.

Bake in the oven in the center rack for about 12 minutes. These don’t bake down like regular cookies so if you want a flatter cookie, press them down a bit before baking.

I have to be honest….these ended up a little dry and crumbly for my taste although the flavor was great. This recipe made 20 cookies and we’ve already eaten half of them despite their dryness! I did a little research on how to resolve this and I think next time I make these I’ll be adding some chia gel to help moisten them up! Over all though I’m pretty pleased.