Oatmeal is a Girl's Best Friend

Move over diamonds! Marilyn, you can cease your crooning. Oatmeal is the new best friend of gluten free girls everywhere. Grinding it for cookie flour, or topping fresh berries for a crisp. The options seem almost endless! :)

Google (runner up for girl's best friend) on a lazy Sunday afternoon can bring many facets of delight. This particular Sunday afternoon brought ideas for new vistas in gluten free baking, particularly flourless cookies.

As with most everything I cook, I glanced at a couple different recipes and then proceeded to make the cookies the way I wanted to. :) This way I can name them whatever I want. In this case >drum roll<

Autumn's Most Excellent Oatmeal Raisin Pecan Cookies

1 1/2 C gluten free oatmeal
1/2 C unsalted butter
3/4 C brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 t baking soda
1/8 t salt
fistful of raisins
half a fistful of nuts
cinnamon to taste (1/2 t ish)

Use your blender to blend 1 C of the oatmeal into a flour. Combine ground oatmeal, whole oatmeal, soda, cinnamon and salt in one bowl. Cream butter, then add brown sugar and cream. Add flour and stir. Add raisins and nuts, stir just until combined. If the mixture is too wet stir in more ground oat flour. Roll into balls and bake in a 325 oven for 10-15 min or until golden brown around the edges. Let cool and enjoy! :)

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A couple of weeks ago I had some fresh berries in the fridge and I wanted to make some type of a berry crisp. This was before I dared try any butter so I used olive oil and I was surprised at how good it was! I normally don't enjoy baking with olive oil.

1/2 - 2/3 C oatmeal
1/3 C gluten free flour
1/3 C sugar
2-3 T olive oil
5 C berries (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries etc)
sugar and cinnamon to taste

Mix oatmeal, flour and sugar together. Pour in olive oil and mix with your hands until the mixture is crumbly. Mix berries with sugar and cinnamon. Put berries in bottom of a 9 inch pan and top with the oatmeal mixture. Bake at 350 until bubbly and golden brown. If you can have dairy this is good served with ice cream.