Wheat and Egg-Free Almond Cookies

I have all of these alternative flours in my kitchen that I have been experimenting with in various recipes, but the most recent acquisition is a bag of oat flour from Bob's Red Mill. Now, I had not used this flour yet, and I was thinking bread might be my first experiment, but it turned out to be cookies. I guess a little extra fiber and protein in our dessert never hurt anyone, right? 

I am also still on a mission to replace white sugar with natural sweeteners in my recipes, so I used maple syrup in these cookies. I was afraid that it would make them too runny and that they would not cook properly, but they turned out great! They did take a little longer to bake than I was expecting, but they did bake.

This recipe is based on the one that is on the oat flour package. It is incredibly simple to make and uses very few ingredients.  Almond extract has been added for that extra almond taste and I used maple syrup instead of regular sugar. The result is a nice, tender and chewy oat cookie that is just slightly sweet, but deliciously almond.

• 1 cup almond flour
• 1 cup sifted oat flour
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine (Earth's Balance is terrific)
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon almond extract

1. Preheat oven to 325F/162C.
2. Using a mixer, blend the butter, maple syrup, and almond extract until creamy.
   
3. Add the almond flour and oat flour and mix until just blended
4. Form the dough into 1 inch balls and place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake 30 - 35 minutes or until the edges look brown.
5. Allow to cool for several minutes before transferring to a plate, as the cookies are quite fragile right out of the oven.

Makes about two dozen cookies.