Hazelnut and Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies and memories of Grenoble

I first baked these delicious cookies while house sitting in France last year. I was looking after a gorgeous cat, called Wallace, in Grenoble, at the foot of the French Alps.

There were a heap of vegan cookbooks on the bookshelf, amongst them was the rather superb Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.

One flick through the book had me skipping to the local Bio store for ingredients.

This little book had fired my curiosity, baking vegan?

Simply put, even if you aren’t vegan, this book is awesome.

 The recipe I chose to bake was Cowboy Cookies, and this is the recipe which these cookies are based on. The only real change I made, right from that first bake, was to swap the pecan nuts to hazelnuts. I can’t bear pecans!

When ever I bake these cookies, just the smell of them cooking in the oven sends my mind drifting back to this wonderful city.

The batches of these cookies I baked in France turned out a little different to the ones I make back home. It must be to do with the sugar. I found that the sugar I bought over there was grainier than British sugar. This made the cookies drier and crunchier. I preferred them that way, don’t get me wrong, these are still awesome, but the French batches were even better.

Hazelnut and Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies

oven 180 C / gas 4

2 cookie sheets lined with baking paper

• 75 g hazelnuts
• 200 g rolled oats
• 250 g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 125 g golden granulated sugar
• 115 g light soft brown sugar
• 1 tbsp ground flaxseed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 125 ml milk {any milk of your choice}
• 100 ml sunflower oil
• 50 g desiccated coconut
• 100 g dark chocolate, or dark chocolate chips

First things first, pop your hazelnuts into a dry frying pan and toast over a medium heat, until the skin starts to crack and flake. Tip into a wire sieve, or a clean tea towel, and rub off as much of the skins as you can then chop them into halves. Chop up the chocolate if you’re not using chips.

Place the oats, flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt into a bowl and mix well. In a big bowl combine the two sugars, add the oil, milk, ground flaxseed and vanilla extract. Beat to a smooth batter with a wooden spoon.

Add half the flour/oats mixture to the batter and stir in. Mix in the rest of the flour and oats, then finally the coconut, hazelnuts and chocolate.

Use a spoon or ice cream scoop to put golf ball sized onto the cookie sheets, leave plenty of room for the cookies to spread. Flatten the tops down a little with a damp finger or a fork.

Bake for 15 minutes or so, until they start to brown around the edges. Leave on the baking sheets for 5 minutes to firm up then transfer the cookies onto a wire rack to cool.

Stick around!

I Left A Bit Of My Heart In Grenoble. I loved house sitting in this gorgeous city!

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Double Chocolate Cookies Super chunky, super tasty!

Scottish Shortbread, Two Ways. The King of biscuits as far as I’m concerned!

Lemon Meringue Gems (Shortbread in Hats) Nibbles of shortbread topped with lemon curd and meringue.

Oat and Sultana Cookies My favourite cookie recipe in the universe!