Almond

Almond-Oatmeal Cookies with Dried Cherries

by:
June 24, 2013
5
1 Ratings
Almond-Oatmeal Cookies with Dried Cherries
Photo by Shauna Ahern
  • Makes 18 cookies
Author Notes

You can't go wrong with recipes on Food52. These recipes are crowd tested and come from the best home cooks I know. So, when I wanted to convert a recipe, I turned to Merrill's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They're fabulous.

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. We didn't have chocolate chip cookies in the house, but we had dried cherries. When I started thinking about flavors that play well with cherries, I remembered almond and coconut. Why not use almond flour and coconut flour for the flavor? Well, playing with almond flour means cutting some of the butter in the recipe, since almond flour contains fat as well as protein. It also means playing with the salt, since the bittersweet flavor of the chocolate probably needs more salt than the sweetness of cherries requires.

So, yes, there's an easy way to make Merrill's cookies gluten-free: use 180 grams of gluten-free flour for her AP flour. But I wanted these cookies to be mine, based on the flavors of our home and what we had in the cupboards. They're crispier than Merrill's original seem to be. They're full of bigger flavors and the oats play a more minor role. All I know is that a big plate of these disappeared as soon as some of our daughter's friends came over for a play date. They were a hit.

Kitchen notes:
We use almond flour that has been finely ground. Most of the time, at the store,  you'll find almond meal. Simply grind it up finer in your blender before baking. 

Oats themselves do not contain gluten. But in the way they are grown, transported, and processed, they are contaminated with gluten. The only way to serve oats to someone with celiac is by purchasing certified gluten-free oats.  —glutenfreegirl

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 160 grams almond flour (see kitchen note above)
  • 20 grams coconut flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 180 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 200 grams (1 cup) brown sugar
  • 150 grams (1/2 cup) white sugar (we prefer the taste of unbleached sugar)
  • 1 large egg, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 250 grams (2 1/2 cups) certified gluten-free oats (see kitchen note above)
  • 250 grams dried cherries (make sure they're gluten-free)
Directions
  1. Preparing to bake: Heat the oven to 350°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 
  2. Combining the dry ingredients: Whisk together the almond flour, coconut flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a large bowl. Set aside. 
  3. Creaming the butter and sugars: Put the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer. (You can do this by hand as well.) Using the paddle attachment, whip the butter on the lowest setting of the stand mixer until it is fluffy. Add the brown and white sugars and mix until they are thoroughly combined with the butter. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. With the mixer running again, add the eggs and vanilla extract.
  4. Finishing the dough: With the mixer running at the lowest setting, add the dry ingredients. When the flours have disappeared into the dough, add the oats and dried cherries. The dough should form a ball around the paddle of the mixer. Take off the paddle attachment and scrape the dough off it and into the bowl. 
  5. Baking the cookies: Grab a ball of dough and weigh it. You want a 60-gram ball. If you have too much dough, take some off. If you have too little, add some. After weighing a couple of balls of dough, your instincts will kick in and you won't need to weigh them any longer. Line up 6 balls of dough in 2 evenly spaced rows on the baking sheet. Refrigerate the rest of the dough while you are baking. 
  6. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes. At that point, flatten the balls of dough a bit with the back of a spatula. Turn the baking sheet halfway in the oven. Bake the cookies until the edges are crisping, the top is browning and the center of the cookie is still a bit soft, about another 8 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven. 
  7. Allow them to cool for 10 minutes on the sheet try then move them to a cooling rack. Bake the remaining cookies the same way. 
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glutenfreegirl
Shauna writes about food. Danny cooks it. We grow excited every Saturday morning to go to the farmers' market. This time of year, a Billy Allstot tomato is enough to make us look like goons at the stand, jumping up and down with excitement. We will eat one slice with sea salt, standing over the sink. Another goes to our baby daughter. The rest might go into the smoker to make smoked tomato salsa, or thrown together with watermelon and good olive oil for a watermelon gazpacho, or stacked with smoked salmon and drizzled with horseradish sour cream. Every day is new. I have no idea what we're having for dinner tonight. But I'm sure interested to find out.

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11 Reviews

Jennifer T.
Jennifer T. January 21, 2019
These were so delicious that even my non-celiac teenagers loved them! I did make a few substitutions due to a lack of some of the ingredients: 1/4 cup rice flour replaced the 20 grams coconut flour, 1/4 cup chopped dark chocolate replaced the dried cherries, and I left out the ground cloves. Note 3/4 cup almond flour is about equal to the flour called for in this recipe. They did spread quite alot, no need to press them down, but they were crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.
 
tessga
tessga October 15, 2014
for those having trouble with conversions, the best baking tool you can get is a scale that does both oz and grams.

these didn't turn out great for me, they spread really far (even at 60g) and I tried making them smaller and they just spread farther. The taste was ok, but too much spice overwhelmed. Sorry, I wouldn't make these again.
 
Carolyn
Carolyn June 19, 2014
I can't figure out what 160 grams is suppose to be. I live in US and we go by cups and have no clue how much that is suppose to be in the recipe.
 
Tammy G.
Tammy G. April 23, 2016
You need to purchase kitchen scale. They are inexpensive and come in handy for weighing many things.
 
SweetLisa
SweetLisa April 1, 2014
I've made this recipe "as is" and it's very, very good. Due to new dietary restrictions I wanted to make these but with a higher fiber/lower carb count. I doubled the recipe (large family) simply swapped all sweeteners for 1/2 c. Truvia and replaced 125 g. of oats with 65 g. flaxmeal and 60 g. chia meal. Truly yummy...with no dried fruit, nuts, chips added. Try it!
 
ozbaker
ozbaker January 19, 2014
150g of white sugar is 3/4 cup not 1/2 cup! There are 200g of white sugar in 1 cup.
 
Susan
Susan December 30, 2013
Thank you Jane for the conversion info.
 
shani
shani December 19, 2013
These are really good! I only had 130 g of the oatmeal so I subbed the difference of 120 g with chocolate chips and used 150 g dried cranberries and the remaining 100 g with chocolate chips as well. My kids really enjoyed these, which is saying something considering my daughter does not like coconut in any form and my son typically won't eat dried cranberries in cookies.

Shani
 
Susan
Susan December 18, 2013
Are you located in England? I'm in the US & don't have a way to measure ingredients in grams. I wish you would give all the measurements in cups or pounds so I could measure them. It looks like a great recipe if only I could measure it.
 
Jane G.
Jane G. December 30, 2013
Hi Susan. There are any number of converters online that you can access. Any decent digital scale offers grams or ounces for weight measurement. Hope you find this helpful!
 
Where I.
Where I. June 24, 2013
Please consider changing your stylesheets so that when someone tries to print the recipe, it does not include the lengthy editors comments - which cause the recipe to print on two pages, and also consider reducing the text size it sets in the printed page version. Save a tree - use as few pages as possible in your print options please! :-) Also, thank you for the GF recipe - it looks superNOM.