These cookies come together in about 10 minutes, bake for 25 or so and cool for 10-15. They are a barley flour and ground almond based batter sweetened with maple syrup and moistened with olive oil and dotted with your favorite flavor of jam. You hand mix the batter and it's all pretty forgiving. I tossed some lemon zest and vanilla extract in, too and called 2 an afternoon snack yesterday. And then, we called them, along with some creamy dark coffee, breakfast this morning. Because if there were ever a cookie to eat for breakfast, this is it. Not too sweet and decadent, wheat-free and actually pretty filling and sustaining.
And now to the jam I used. Sometimes, items have a way of making their way to your refrigerator without any effort on your part. Such is the case with this delicious blackberry/blueberry jam from Cobblestone Farm in upstate New York that my aunt gave my mom who gave the second half to me. I've put it on toast as it was and it was delicious but wondered how it would fair with grander plans. Turns out the same theory holds true about baking a fruit as baking a jam. You are always better off if you start with a very stellar fruit, not a reject one just because it's going to get baked. What I mean is, the jam here definitely stands out, so I suggest you use something special and tasty. A few more notes here and then I'll just paste in the recipe with my adjustments.
As I mentioned, the recipe is pretty forgiving. Play around with different nuts, berry jams and zests/extracts but I would not go too
far. For example, I don't carry canola oil so I used light olive oil
and we thought they were fine that way. You want your nuts ground pretty
finely but there can definitely be variety. I used 2/3 almonds and 1/3
walnuts. The original recipe makes about 50-60 cookies but since I
haven't made them before I divided the recipe by 4 to get a standard
dozen.
Lalo's Cookies
1 c barley flour
1/4 t salt
1/4 t vanilla
3/4 whole raw almonds/walnuts
1/4 c light olive oil
1/4 c maple syrup
Pinch fresh lemon zest
Jam to dot
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grind nuts in a clean coffee grinder or food processor until fine. A bit of variety is fine. Don't veer too far on the almond "flour" side though. Coarse is good. Combine all ingredients except jam in bowl and stir until combined. Line a sheet pan with parchment and dollop rounds of the cookies spread a half inch or so apart, make an indent with your thumb and drop a bit of jam in there. Bake around 20 minutes when they begin to brown a bit. Cool on a wire rack.
