There is a time and a place in the crunchiest of diets for a chocolate cookie.  Sometimes, particularly on a rainy Sunday afternoon, it’s time to get the smaller members of the household into the kitchen standing on chairs to press chocolate chunks on the top of cookies.  It’s time to put on the oven light and stare as they cook, waiting impatiently for the morsels of caffeinated yumminess to cool enough to eat one or three.  Or more.  Probably more.

These particular cookies are crunchy around the outside and moist on the inside.  They’re best served fresh and slightly warm with a cup of hot Earl Grey tea or an almond milk latté (may as well caffeinate to the extreme if you’re going to eat chocolate).  To keep them, make sure they’re in an airtight container so they don’t dry out.  But there shouldn’t be too many of them left over.

Yield: 18 cookies

What you need:

• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup brown rice syrup
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, soft but not liquid (virgin or coconut manna if you don’t mind the coconut flavour and want to go closer to whole foods, butter-flavoured or deodorized for a more chocolate-purist cookie)
• 1/4 cup raw cacao powder (or cocoa powder)
• 1/4 cup rolled oats, ground to a powder in a blender, coffee grinder or food processor
• 1/2 cup whole spelt flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• several twists of freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• dairy-free 70% dark chocolate chunks for garnish (optional but pretty)

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F and line a pan or two with Silpat liners or parchment paper.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, brown rice syrup and coconut oil until smooth.
3. In a small mixing bowl, sift or whisk together the cacao powder, ground oats, spelt flour, soda, salt and pepper.
4. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet until the batter is smooth.  I prefer doing this in two additions, but it’s up to you.
5. Add the cup of rolled oats to the batter and mix to distribute throughout the chocolate batter.                                                                                                
6. Make cookies on the sheets using a tablespoon.  Leave them as mounds, they’ll spread as they cook.  Place the mounds 2” apart and lightly press a chocolate chunk into the top of each one.
7. Bake 10 minutes.  Rotating pans half way if using two pans in the oven simultaneously.
8. Cool on the pan 3-5 minutes, so they set a bit, before carefully transferring to a wire rack to finish setting and cooling.
9.  Eat some now and try and hide the rest for later.