Vegan Thumbprint Cookies

By á-4939

Delicious vegan friendly thumbprint cookies filled with your favorite jam.

Ingredients

• 2 cups whole almonds
• 4 cups quick-cooking oats
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups flour, divided
• 1 cup canola oil
• 1 cup maple syrup
• Assorted jams of your choice

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a Silpat.

In a food processor, pulse the almonds until they are chopped into smallish pieces. It's OK if you have a variety of sizes, just don't grind them to almond flour. I tend to leave them chunkier than most people because I like to bite into a decent piece of almond when eating these cookies. But you can grind them pretty fine, too. Dump the almonds into a large bowl.

Using the same food processor bowl, grind the oats with the salt into a fine meal and add to the almonds. Again, I like to leave a little texture in the oats. Add 1 1/4 cup of flour, reserving the remaining 1/4 cup.

Measure and pour the canola oil into the bowl, followed by the maple syrup. (Doing it in this order, and using the same measuring cup, means that all the maple syrup will glide out effortlessly. Cool!)

Mix with a wooden spoon until combined. If the dough seem runny, add the additional flour but don't worry if it is too soft, as it will stiffen up a bit as it sits. I usually let it sit for about 15 minutes.

Form into rough balls about the size of a whole walnut. The dough will be slightly wet but surprisingly not too sticky. You may want to use one of those cookie-sized ice-cream scoops if you have one (I don't). The cookies can be fairly close together as they don't spread much.

Using the back of a round quarter-teaspoon measuring spoon, make an indentation in the top of each cookie. Wipe the spoon clean and use it to fill the indentation with your jam of choice.

Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the cookies begin to brown slightly. Remove from oven and let cool for about 15 minutes before moving to a rack to cool further (they're a bit fragile when they first come out of the oven).