When I saw Michelle’s delicious looking giant hazelnut cookies a few weeks ago, I knew I had to try them out.

Hazelnut is a new thing for me – I tried hazelnut coffee at work two months ago and now I have a cup of it every morning!

This is the first time that I made this recipe (I promised I would make something new for What I Ate Wednesday, Min!) and I definitely could make a few adjustments the next time I make them, especially because I switched up some things that I probably shouldn’t have, i.e. flour choices.

And I WILL be making them again, not only because they tasted great but because the ingredients were so damn expensive and I have a lot left over. I’m really encouraging you to make these, huh? 😉

No, but really. They are good.

Ingredients

1 cup oats (I used oat flour)
1 cup wholegrain spelt flour (I used oat flour)
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup apple sauce
2 tbsp almond milk
1/4 cup hazelnuts coarsely chopped
1 tbsp ground flax+ 3 tbsp water
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp powdered sugar (nixing this in the future)

(Also – note: next time I’m going to add 1/4 cup of Truvia Natural Sweetener. I have a sweet tooth!)

Directions

Dump the ground flax seed into the water in a little bowl and mix it together. Let it sit for 15 minutes while you’re making the rest of your batter.

Preheat oven to 350F.

I skipped Michelle’s step: “Process oats in a food processor until you’re left with a coarse flour” and used regular oat flour instead since I don’t own a food processor. Maybe next time I’ll just dump in the oats as is for more of an oatmeally cookie.

Chop up your hazelnuts.

That was the first time I’ve ever tried an actual hazelnut! It was softer than I thought it would be – I was thinking it would be harder, like an almond.

Put the flour, hazelnuts, cocoa powder, and baking powder in a large bowl and mix together.

In a smaller, separate bowl mix together the brown sugar, apple sauce, and almond milk and stir generously.

Add in the flax/water combo to the wet bowl and stir some more.

Dump the wet bowl into the dry bowl and keep on stirrin’.

Once the batter starts to get thick and gooey, begin to separate the dough into six equal sized balls and place on a non-stick cookie tray. It helps to wet your hands before rolling the dough – it kept sticking to my hands!

Flatten down the balls on the cookie sheet so they look like cookie pies.

Put your tray in the already preheated oven and bake for 10-12 minutes while keeping your eyes glued to the TV watching Olympic gymnastics and biting your nails.

My pies didn’t turn out to look as pretty as I’d hoped…

So I decided to add a little sprinkle (or a big blob) of powdered sugar on top.

Much prettier!

Like my cheap-ass cooling rack? I don’t own a cooling rack, and my middle refrigerator rack has been resting next to my fridge since girls’ night. Perf.

Every time I bake something I end up burning some part of my body.

This time it was my finger.

The cookie pies are SO dense and chewy that they needed a little something extra to soften them up.

I’m not a huge milk person, but you sure can’t beat cookies and milk.

I think these are going to become a comfort food ’round my apartment. They could be especially good on cold winter nights – maybe served warm!

Did you bake anything this week?

What is your favorite comfort food?