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Almond-oatmeal cookies with dried cherries

Almond-oatmeal cookies with dried cherries

You can't go wrong with recipes on Food52. These recipes are crowd tested and come from the best home cooks I know. So, when I wanted to convert a recipe, I turned to Merrill's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They're fabulous. Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. We didn't have chocolate chip cookies in the house, but we had dried cherries. When I started thinking about flavors that play well with cherries, I remembered almond and coconut. Why not use almond flour and coconut flour for the flavor? Well, playing with almond flour means cutting some of the butter in the recipe, since almond flour contains fat as well as protein. It also means playing with the salt, since the bittersweet flavor of the chocolate probably needs more salt than the sweetness of cherries requires. So, yes, there's an easy way to make Merrill's cookies gluten-free: use 180 grams of gluten-free flour for her AP flour. But I wanted these cookies to be mine, based on the flavors of our home and what we had in the cupboards. They're crispier than Merrill's original seem to be. They're full of bigger flavors and the oats play a more minor role. All I know is that a big plate of these disappeared as soon as some of our daughter's friends came over for a play date. They were a hit. Kitchen notes: We use almond flour that has been finely ground. Most of the time, at the store, you'll find almond meal. Simply grind it up finer in your blender before baking. Oats themselves do not contain gluten. But in the way they are grown, transported, and processed, they are contaminated with gluten. The only way to serve oats to someone with celiac is by purchasing certified gluten-free oats.