Wheat-Free Chocolate Cookie Recipe and Ramblings

We have finally finished the leftovers from Sunday's feast. The last chicken carcass is being reduced to stock, as I write, the gentle aroma of chicken soup pervading the house and driving the dogs crazy with its tantalising nearness! I haven't had to cook a meal from scratch for the last few days as we had a whole roast chicken left, as well as scrummy bits of ham and stuffing to pick at, not to mention the choccie pudding.

Today though I had to roll up my sleeves and start baking again. Bread gets devoured at a rate of a loaf or two a day here. My son brought back three friends from school today and the lunchtime loaf was practically inhaled in seconds. The slow eaters had to make do with Ryvita for a second slice. Eight seems to be the age where a child makes the transition from picky eater living on air and crumbs, to voracious appetite never satisfied...with four eight year olds in the house, I thought I'd better do a batch of biscuits - chocolate oat cookies, in self defence or at least in defence of the rest of the supplies in the larder. Even with those the apple bowl was emptied.

They did use up enough energy to justify the depredations on the larder though. Hurtling through the restios in elaborate games of chase, outfitted in my son's camouflage trousers (he being the smallest, they looked like army fashion victims in 3/4 length baggies), then cricket, then bicycling down the farm road, with a short rest inside playing with lego. My six year old daughter valiantly trying to keep up and be included with the big boys, youngest wisely staying well out of it and playing her own complicated game inside, talking away to herself.

So now I have to decide whether to publish my recipe for wheat-free chocolate oat cookies, for those of you who also have ravening eight year olds to feed. I adapted this recipe so much that it is now my own personal recipe, that has nothing to do with the one it first evolved from, a new species altogether and as such I am quite protective of it, but now I think it is grown-up enough to go out into the world under its own steam and evolve some more.


Wheat-Free Chocolate Oat Cookie Recipe

115g/4oz margarine or soft butter
1/2 cup soft dark brown sugar or treacle sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup oat flour
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 dessertspoons cocoa powder
1 cup porridge oats

Cream together the marg or butter and sugars. Beat in the egg. Sift in the flours, bicarb, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and cocoa and stir to combine well. Stir in the oats. Grease two baking trays and put generous teaspoons of the mixture in dollops, well-spaced. Bake at 160C/320F for 15-20 minutes until firm and slightly coloured. Cool on a rack, they firm up as they cool.

This recipe started out as a way to keep my son off wheat and still happy, when we were trying to help his asthma/bronchitis tendency, but now we all like the cookies anyway and the wheat-free aspect is just a bonus. Now you know they are healthier than your average cookie you can eat more....!.