GRANOLA COOKIES
Every now and then I get a cereal or granola* craving. It’s a real childhood thing, tucking into big bowls before and after school and later at university for any meal I didn’t have time to cook. But cereal and cold milk I came to understand does not my stomach like, or vice-versa. Cold foods have a cooling and dampening effect on our digestive fire and an hour or so later, my tummy area would feel uncomfortable, and even right up to my throat area — sometimes with a feeling it might repeat on me.
Cold milk as opposed to hot is also mucus-forming and, while a bit of mucus makes our body function, a lot of mucus slows it down. So after my cravings would come to an end (there is only so much hot cereal I want to eat and only so many times I’ll do the cold version before I learn my lesson again), I would end up with a half-eaten bag of granola or cereal flakes that have lost their crunch a bit and need to be revived and finished off.
Enter the granola cookie, a way of re-toasting that granola and putting some fire back into it for digestion. Speaking of fire, I also add some warmth by way of ground ginger and cinnamon (a tasty addition as well as being fire-stoking), some ghee and a bit of jaggery (feel free to skip it if your granola is already quite sweet — it’s actually great with a pinch of salt instead, too).
Lay out the unbaked cookies on an oven tray in advance if you like, then bake for 20 minutes when guests are due to arrive, so they can enjoy the smell of the cookies cooking and anticipate the oven alarm going off. I like mine with a topping of butter or ghee or a creamy drink (to offset the drying qualities) such as a moon milk (try the Golden Milk, Red Velvet Beetroot Latte or Almond Moon Milk), as a bedtime snack, morning start or something to tide me over between meals. Served as they come with a ginger tea will be great for Kapha types or anyone with aggravated Kapha.
INGREDIENTS
Makes approx. 20 cookies
4 cups (520g) gluten-free granola
1 cup (160g) gluten-free self-raising flour (or normal gluten-free flour plus 2 tsp baking powder)
½ tbsp ginger
½ tbsp cinnamon
¼ tsp sea salt
2 tbsp jaggery or maple syrup (depending on the sweetness of your granola plus your sweet tooth)
3 tbsp ghee, coconut oil or your favourite cooking oil
1 cup soured milk or, 1 cup plant milk with 2 tbsp lemon juice added to it
Raisins (optional)
METHOD
Melt the ghee, butter or coconut oil in a small pan.
In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients: self-raising flour, spices, sea salt and jaggery (if using) until well mixed.
In another bowl, combine the liquid ingredients: the soured milk (or plant milk plus lemon juice), melted oil, and maple syrup if using.
Add the liquid mixture to the dry mixture, plus the raisins if using, and mix again until everything is thoroughly distributed and you have a slightly gloopy cookie batter.
Then, choose from the following two methods:
When still a wet mixture, immediately use a ¼ cup scoop to scoop up some mixture and pour onto the baking paper lined tray, using the scoop to shape it into cookies approx. 7cm across and 1.5 cm deep at the centre.
Or, allow the mixture to sit for 10 minutes or so (you can even refrigerate at this point if making in advance) and then take two heaped tablespoons of the mixture into your hands, roll into a ball and flatten with the palm of your hand until it’s the same dimensions as above.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C fan for 20 minutes, until lightly browned on the edges. Leave on the tray to cool completely and crisp up (I tend to turn them over at some tpoint to help excess moisture escape from beneath them) before storing — but obviously tuck in when they’re cool enough to eat! Store in an airtight container for up to 4 days.
East by West tip:
*A note on picking granola: Cooked honey is an Ayurveda no-no, so I look for granolas that are flavoured with maple syrup. Although mostly oat-based, some granola mixes contain wheat, barley or bran, so do check the ingredients for that too if you are avoiding gluten!
For those who don’t have a strange granola habit, you could sub the 4 cups of granola with 3 cups of rolled oats and ¾ cup of chopped nuts/seeds, dried fruit and some extra sweetener and a dash of extra oil. You could even toast it all first to get that toasted granola flavour.
