Vegan Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies

Sometimes, you just want a heart warming chewy oatmeal cookie. Little Debbie knows this best as their Oatmeal Cream Pie has always been a best seller in most grocery stores. Well, guess what, a lot of us can’t eat these sadly due to the wheat, milk and whey in them. I pride mine on the secret ingredient. What is the secret ingredient? Keep reading to find out! My vegan gluten free oatmeal cookies are dairy free, egg free, refined sugar free (featuring coconut sugar & maple syrup unless you make the sandwich filling which has powdered sugar) and can easily be made with many of the staples you might have at home. You can throw them together in a flash!

I love this recipe because the vegan cookies are soft, slightly chewy and give you all the comforting feels with the right amount of spice thanks to our friends, cinnamon & nutmeg. The real star here though is the secret ingredient which some might say can be left out, which really, it could BUT what I like to talk about a lot in my blog is layers of flavor. With oatmeal cookies, you want that sort of nutty oat flavor, you want that warming spice that comes with cinnamon and you want it be brown sugary so your oats can basically caramelize while they bake. The secret ingredient is just a grating of an orange for its beautiful smell, flavor & essence of its zest. It really rounds out all the flavors and makes it even more gratifying when you take that first bite. This really is the best oatmeal cookie.

A few notes:

If you are serving these to true gluten free conscious folks, make sure to buy certified gluten free oats & certified gluten free oat flour. Oat flour can be processed on the same production lines as wheat flour so that can be a problem for those sensitive or allergic.

I’ve had some success with making my own oat flour using a food processor (or a high speed blender) but it just doesn’t do the same justice as the store bought stuff as heavy duty machinery can just get the oat into a fine powder that you can’t just seem to replicate at home. So if you try this at home, my best suggestion would be is to sift your oat flour once you make it to get any of the bigger oat chunks out of there to have a finer flour.

These vegan cookies are my new favorite cookie and are easy cookies to throw together on any night of the week. If you have any leftover you can store them in the freezer in an airtight container or a freezer bag (and try to push all the air out of it before zipping up.). Cheers to another great recipe with another great cup of coffee!

Print Recipe

Vegan Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

Wet Ingredients

• 113 g coconut oil (unrefined)
• 100 g coconut sugar (can sub brown sugar in a pinch!)
• 2 Tbsp maple syrup (can sub agave if you have that!)
• 1½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1 ea zest of orange (do NOT zest the white pith of the orange!)

Flax Egg

• 1 Tbsp flaxmeal (these are ground flax seeds, grind if they are whole)
• 40 g water (this is about 2½ Tbsp of water)

Dry Ingredients

• 115 g oat flour
• 150 g rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp nutmeg (you can grate a whole nutmeg or use powdered)
• ½ tsp sea salt (I use pink salt)

Sandwich Filling, optional but a good idea

• 100 g plant butter (can sub refined coconut oil in a pinch)
• 400 g powdered sugar
• 5 g vanilla paste (can sub vanilla extract too!)
• pinch salt

Instructions

Flax Egg & Wet Ingredients

• Make your flax egg by combining the flax meal with the water and let sit about ten minutes.
• Grab a large bowl and cream all of your wet ingredients with a hand held mixer or stand mixer with paddle attachment: coconut oil, brown sugar of choice, maple syrup, zest of an orange and vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed to get all ingredients cohesive.

Dry Ingredients

• In a small bowl, combine your dry ingredients: oat flour, rolled oats, baking powder, salt, cinnamon & nutmeg. Mix into your wet until all ingredients are thoroughly combined and no dry clumps of flour remain.
• Refrigerate cookie dough for 1 hour or until easier to scoop. Scoop cookie dough balls onto a prepared cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I squish them down gently so they will spread a little more during baking. I like to freeze for 1 hour just to let the cookie dough rest before baking. Preheat your oven to 350℉
• Bake cookies for 17 minutes or until slightly golden on the bottom and cooked on the top. Let cool completely on a cooling rack and eat as is or make your filling!

Sandwich Filling

• While your oven is preheating, make the sandwich filling by creaming with your mixer, the plant butter (or coconut oil) with salt and vanilla. Once that is mixed well, add your powdered sugar. Keep mixing until the filling looks like a paste (give it a few minutes, it'll go from looking like sand to a crumble until finally a paste texture).
• Depending on how many cookies you scooped out (and divided by 2 for each sandwich to have two cookies), divide your filling into the amount of sandwiches you need. Portion out how many you need and I like to roll them into balls and then flatten with the palms of my hands into the size I need to match my baked cookie size. Put one in the center of each sandwich and smush gently to create your sandwich. Enjoy!