Vegan Gluten Free Whole Grain Thumbpring Cookies with oil free option

If you're the kind of person who enjoys nibbling on a cookie with your morning beverage, an afternoon tea and/or after dinner and are looking for something less indulgent, lower in sugar and on the healthier side of things, here's my thumbprint recipe.

It's made with whole grains and nuts gets most of its sweetness from the filling, as the base itself is only slightly sweetened with brown rice syrup or honey. So it’s perfect for a cookie monster who’s also trying to keep their sugar intake to a minimum (spoiler alert, all of us should be doing that).

The fun part is that these can be customized in so many ways. I’ve added a note below the recipe with some of the variations you can make.

Vegan, Gluten Free Whole Grain Thumbprint Cookies

Author Nissrine Boufawaz @ HolisticNiss.com

Time 30 minutes
Difficulty Easy
Servings 12
Diet vegan, gluten free
Category Dessert

Ingredients:

For the Cookies:

1/2 C Buckwheat Flakes, ground into flour
1/2 C Rolled Oats, whole (use certified gluten free oats to keep these cookies gluten free)
1/3 C Nuts, ground into flour (I used almonds and walnuts)
1/2 Tsp Pure Bourbon Vanilla Powder
1/2 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/8 Tsp Baking Soda
2 Tbsp Nut Butter
2 Tbsp Honey or Brown Rice Syrup
2 Tbsp Coconut Oil, melted (or apple sauce for oil free)
Filtered Water, as needed

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 C and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Combine ground buckwheat flakes, ground nuts and whole rolled oats, add cinnamon, vanilla, baking soda and mix well to combine
Add hazelnut butter, brown rice syrup, and coconut oil and mix together.
Add water slowly, as needed, to create a compact ball of dough that is neither too wet and sticky, nor too dry. You want it to hold together enough to form the cookies.
Divide into 12 parts and form little balls of cookie dough.
Use your thumb or the back of around measuring teaspoon to create a dent or thumbprint in the centre of each dough ball.
Spoon your choice of filling into the dent and bake for about 20 minutes.

Variations:

Use oat flour in place of buckwheat flour
Use any combination of nuts you like. I've tried with just almonds, almonds and walnuts, walnuts and chashews, pecans, hazelnuts
Use any nut butter you like or sub the nut butter with tahini (be sure to use honey if you use tahini because the combo is a match made in heaven)
Use any storebought naturally sweetened jam, I like Rigoni di Asiago
Whip up some homemade apple butter from this recipe
Whip up some dried apricot jam by soaking the apricots in water for a few hours until they puff up and get really soft. Strain all the water completely then add them to a food processor and blend them on high speed until jammy and spreadable. You add vanilla if you like. Pro tip: use this jam when using tahini butter and honey, so yummy)
Whip up some homemade nuttella. I have a recipe for this that I'll be posting soon, but in the meantime, there's a quick short cut you can use to have instant homemade nutella. Combine a 2 tablespoons of hazelnut butter with 1 tsp of cacao powder and a 1 tsp of maple syrup. Add a few splashes of plant milk to thin it out if it's too thick and voilà you have instant "nutella" filling to use without all the powdered sugar and palm oil that comes in a nutella jar. Pro tip: make sure to use hazelnuts and hazelnut butter in the base if you do use this filling option)