Spice cookies

These cookies have a delicious spicy flavour and are fabulous dunked in a steaming hot coffee—plus they have the added bonus of being gluten and dairy-free.  Bake a little longer for crispy cookies, or take them out a couple of minutes earlier for softer, chewy treats.

Ingredients

Makes 12 large cookies

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• 2/3 cup soft brown sugar — Muscovado is great in this recipe, Demerara also works well
• 1/2 cup macadamia oil — or any baking oil, but the nutty flavour of the macadamia oil is delicious
• 1/3 cup golden syrup
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• 1 cup gluten-free flour—I used a gluten-free mix, but you could use rice flour, buckwheat flour, tapioca flour or a mixture of all three
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2/3 cup ground almonds
• 12 whole nuts (almonds or walnuts are nice), one to top each cookie.

Method

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• Preheat oven to 180˚C on Bake.
• 1. In a large heat-proof bowl, combine the sugar, oil and golden syrup. Gently heat (either in the microwave or over a double boiler), whisking to dissolve the sugar and achieve a syrup-like consistency.
• 2. Allow to cool, stirring to prevent the oil separating. Add the egg and beat briefly.
• 3. Add all dry ingredients and mix.
• 4. Put tablespoonfuls of mixture onto a lined baking tray, leaving a generous distance between each cookie* (you may only do 6 or 7 at a time). Top each cookie with a nut.
• 5. Bake for between 12-15 minutes, until golden. Keep an eye on these cookies when cooking—the high sugar content means they can burn quite easily.
• Place on wire rack to cool.
• *This is quite a wet mixture and the cookies will spread out a lot as they cook.