Food & Wine
Gluten-free vanilla biscuits
These delicious biscuits are crispy and filling and much healthier to eat than the store-bought varieties that are full of fats, sugar and gluten.
Makes: About 30 cookies
Ingredients:
- ½ cup coconut or olive oil
- 1 cup gluten-free flour
- ½ cup arrowroot or tapioca flour
- 2 cups pecan nuts, finely chopped
- ½ cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
- 1½ teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract (vanilla essence)
- ½ cup pure maple syrup or coconut nectar
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 160°C
- Melt the coconut oil by placing it in a small saucepan over a very low heat.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, pecan nuts, coconut, baking powder and salt.
- Add the vanilla, maple syrup and coconut oil to the flour mixture and stir with a large spoon until a dough forms. It will be a little dry, but will quickly get softer when you roll it into balls due to the heat from your hands.
- Take small pieces of the dough, roll into small bite-sized balls and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Press each ball with a fork to flatten them and bake in the oven for 8–10 minutes until lightly golden.
- Turn off the oven, open the door and leave the cookies in the oven for about 10 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and leave to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.
Variations:
- Add ¼ cup dark choc chips (at least 70 per cent cocoa solids or more) that contain unrefined sugar to the dry ingredients and toss well in the flour before adding the wet ingredients.
- Add cranberries or currants in the same way as the choc-chips above.
- Replace the pecan nuts with almonds and add 1½ teaspoons pure almond essence (almond extract) to create ‘marzipan’ cookies.
Extracted from Feed Your Brain by Delia McCabe (Exisle 2016). Photography by Vanessa Russell. Available from www.exislepublishing.com.au and wherever great books are sold.
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