Friday, April 24, 2009

Maple Oat Peanut Butter Cookies



A while back, my roommate Dragonfruit spent a crazy amount of money on some high quality maple syrup for a breakfast-for-dinner party. Some other friends brought another bottle of syrup, which was used first - presumably under the pretense of not wasting the "good stuff". Needless to say, we still have a big thing of syrup in the fridge. What is a "special occasion" for syrup?


Enough time elapsed without the syrup being opened that it was obvious it just had to be used. I whipped up these cookies, inspired by Ashley over at Sweet & Natural, and they were a hit! Baking with maple syrup is great when you just need something sweet, but don't want to load your body with empty calories. Loaded with fiber, these are great - no white flour, no refined sugar, vegan - and they taste great. The pickiest of my friends thought they were so fantastic, he kept sneaking to the kitchen for more. You don't need the fanciest, schmanciest maple syrup, but make sure it's actually syrup - trust me, you'll be able to tell the difference.

Just a tip, take these out of the oven a bit before you think they are done. These were meant to be on the soft side. Like me. ;)

Eat well!



Maple Oat Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup natural peanut butter
1/2 cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or AP flour)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dry toasted oats

Preheat the oven to 350. In a large bowl, combine peanut butter, maple syrup, canola oil and vanilla extract until well blended. In a separate bowl, mix together whole wheat pastry flour, baking soda and salt. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, along with oats, and stir until just combined. Let sit for five minutes. Roll heaping tablespoons of dough into balls, flatten to about 1/3 of an inch and place onto cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Makes 18 cookies.

4 comments:

  1. Hooray! Isn't maple syrup the perfect compliment to nut butter?!

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  2. Mmm - maple sounds like a perfect flavor to pair with peanut butter!

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  3. Mmmmmmm.....just made a double batch! I was looking for a recipe that I could feed to my baby and this was perfect. He'll try them in the morning. They are very delicious. How did you learn to cook so young? At your age all I could make was mac n' cheese and tuna fish sandwiches!

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  4. Hello from way across the pond!

    This recipe looks totally yummy! I'm very fortunate that a Canadian friend gave me a can of maple syrup a little while back. Then I got to thinking that I must make some cookies with it - for a birthday this Sunday.

    Your recipe is just the ticket! But....here in the UK we get completely conflummoxed by cups and half-cups and sticks and all that stuff. Here we have rather pedantic grams and suchlike.

    So I've hunted all over the web for conversion tables - and each gives a different equivalent (and not for maple syrup, which I imagine has a corn syrup consistency. We don't have corn syrup here, so I have no idea what this is like!)

    Given that I have scant concept of what a half-cup of maple syrup amounts to, I'm wondering if you could kindly help me out somehow?

    E.g. is half a cup 170mls? Or 240mls? Is a cup of flour 200gr or 300? What does half a cup of peanut butter amount to? And so on...Do you have any ideas? And are your measurements crucial - will this recipe turn out nice, gooey cookies if I get some measures wrong?

    Thanks in advance!
    deb

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