When You Can't Eat Anything Good But Still Want a Cookie Forthelove

Me, eating most gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan things:

Me, eating these fudgy oatmeal cookies (that are still gluten-free, essentially refined sugar-free, and vegan):

Fake desserts usually aren't desserts. It's cruel really to call some of this nonsense dessert. Butter is life. Sugar is breath. An afternoon without chocolate leads to Himalayan mountains of regret.  

But what if you can't eat anything good? What if your body or your doctor or your nursing baby decides that it's nothing but hummus and green tea for you, that the closest you'll get to dessert is eating a pear or wearing Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers?

Chin up, intestinally fragile friends. These cookies have nothing good in them and still taste positively delightful.

No one is winning any beauty contests here; we're barely in Miss Congeniality territory. These are more stagehand cookies - dependable, not flashy, and good at their job. The flavor is intensely fudgy, feeding your chocolate fix like whoa, and the texture is 87% cookie-like because let's be real - flaxseed is not an egg. Don't pretend. But if you expect a cookie that's more like shortbread than bakery chocolate chip, you're all set.  

A word on the oats: if you don't like oatmeal cookies, i.e. the chewy nuttiness that makes you think of breakfast and gets a little stuck in your teeth, try toasting the oats first to make the texture less chewy. Or eliminate it altogether by running your oats through a food processor. I haven't tried either of these alternatives (my bad), but I'm extremely confident they'll yield very similar results with a little less oatmeal chew.

Fudgy Oatmeal Cookies That Are GF, Vegan, and Mostly Refined SF, Too

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups gluten-free oats

• 1/3 cup coconut flour

• 1/3 cup brown rice flour

• 1/3 cup white rice flour

• 2/3 cup cocoa powder

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 1/2 cups coconut sugar (you can use white sugar if you don't want to go full hippie)

• 2 tbsp ground flaxseed

• 1/4 cup almond milk (sweetened or unsweetened)

• 1/3 cup canola oil

• 1/3 cup coconut oil

• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

• 3/4 cup chocolate chips (check that they don't use milk - Trader Joe's brand is my favorite)

• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

• 1/4 cup shredded coconut (mine was toasted and super yummy)

Ohmygosh that's so many ingredients. Really, you could just eat a banana and call it a day. I won't judge. But cookies are life, so we'll carry on.

HOW TO MAKE THEM

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. On a sheet of wax paper, stir together the dry ingredients with a fork - the oats thru the salt.

3. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, flaxseed, and milk until smooth. Next, whisk in the oils and vanilla until that's smooth. Even though the coconut oil is solid, it'll incorporate well and add a nice thickness to the batter.

4. Switch from a whisk to a spatula and gently stir in half of the dry ingredients just to get it started. Then add the rest along with the chocolate chips, walnuts, and coconut. It'll be pretty thick, so don't fret.

5. The cookies have very little natural rise or spread, so essentially they'll come out the same shape as they went in. I tried balls, thick cookies, and thin, and I think the best way is to scoop out a ball with a cookie scoop or spoon and flatten it just a bit, kind of like a Reese's Cup peanut butter egg - round and squat. You get a nice little crisp on the edges, but the inside texture crumbles in big chunks like shortbread. Again, because they don't spread, you only need to separate each cookie by about an inch on the pan. And make sure you bake them on a sheet of parchment. Oh my goodness, you don't have to wash the cookie sheet, plus the cookies are a bit fragile warm and will go full diva if you try and move them with a spatula too early. Parchment all day, every day.

6. Bake for 11 minutes until the outside looks done. There's no egg to cook, so you're in little danger of a raw cookie. (P.S. I 100% ate little dough balls raw, and they're delicious. Call them energy bites instead of cookies, and you're golden.)

7. Slide the piece of parchment - cookies and all - onto a cooling rack to cool. Store these in an airtight container at room temperature, and they'll last a solid three days or more (mine were all devoured by early morning day three).

P.S. On Friday, we're voting for our favorite famous Tom. Holy cow, y'all, it's an impossible choice. Bake these cookies and eat them emotionally as we share this load together. See you turn.