Today I’m sharing my new gluten-free Cashew Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. Holy yum!
UPDATE: On April 4, 2023, Gluten-Free Watchdog issued a new statement, Gluten-Free Watchdog Cannot Recommend Any Brand of Gluten-Free Oats. Read the full statement here. This statement was followed by details on recent testing results of gluten-free products that contain oats., which showed 30% of the labeled gluten-free oat products tested contained quantifiable gluten.
This statement was followed by details on recent testing results of gluten-free products that contain oats, which showed 30% of the labeled gluten-free oat products tested contained quantifiable gluten. I’m not eating any oats and I urge all of my readers who eat gluten free for medical reasons to also abstain.
Let’s talk about recipes for a moment. In my opinion, the best kind of recipe is one that is tried and true. To me that means, the recipe is easy to make and the results are always delicious. What brings a recipe up the next level in my opinion is when it’s really easy to change the recipe up just a bit and end up with a whole new and equally good—or better!—recipe.
These gluten-free Cashew Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies are a great example of changing up a “tried and true” recipe. They are the latest cookies that I have created using my Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies recipe as my starting point.
It’s hard to believe that cookie recipe has just three main ingredients —peanut butter (or nut butter or seed butter), brown sugar, and egg. It is a recipe that is easy enough for a young child to make and it can be reinvented again and again. Admittedly, it’s already been reinvented many times here on gfe and I’m pretty sure that I’m still not done with it!
With these gluten-free Cashew Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, I planned to simply use cashew butter—instead of peanut butter, cashew butter, or sunbutter. I really love cashew butter. It’s rich and creamy and has a lovely sweetness.
Sometimes I even prefer it over peanut butter or almond butter. I usually buy a small jar at our local healthy grocery store, but sometimes I make it myself.
Cashew butter is really quite easy to make. Some say that you have to add oil when making it, but I usually don’t. I just throw some raw cashews into my food processor and slowly process them until they turn into cashew butter.
I’ve even used roasted salted cashews instead of raw cashews and processed a small amount of them in my mini chopper. That actually worked just fine.
Note that I am always careful to do the processing in “spurts” whether I’m using my food processor or my mini chopper so as not to overheat my appliances.
Back to the Gluten-Free Cashew Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
When I started to make them I was about ¼ cup short of the amount of cashew butter I planned to use so I decided to add ¼ cup of my homemade granola as my “filler.” If you don’t have granola on hand, you can substitute certified gluten-free oats or certified gluten-free oat flour (always use purity protocol oats), hence, the more multipurpose recipe name.
You can even substitute shredded coconut (unsweetened or sweetened) for the granola in these Cashew Butter Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies. The results will be slightly different for each substitution, of course, but all variations will yield wonderful cookies.
Although I obviously only added a small amount of granola to the recipe, the granola factor was still noticeable in the best possible way, as these cookies were delicious.
These are softer cookies, but not too soft. The addition of the granola with the oats and the small bits of fruits and nuts adds some additional texture, flavor, and chewiness.
Mr. GFE and I really enjoyed these cookies. They also work as a filling, fairly healthy snack and as a terrific breakfast cookie, too.
The safety of oats is being talked about a lot these days in the gluten-free community because of General Mills’ use of mainstream oats in its “gluten-free” Cheerios products. Mainstream oats are highly contaminated with gluten from the field via being grown in a shared environment with gluten grains and via harvesting equipment, processing equipment, and shared facilities that are all contaminated with gluten.
Certified gluten-free “purity protocol oats” are absolutely required by the gluten-free community. Please always choose oats that are grown using the purity protocol and certified gluten free by a third-party certification agent.
Gluten-Free Watchdog has an up-to-date listing of companies that use purity protocol oats. Please also read my last post Stop Eating “Gluten-Free” Cheerios Plus 9 More Thoughts on This Appalling Situation to get a more in-depth understanding of the situation with oat products in the gluten-free community.
More on gfe That You May Find Helpful
~ 70+ Gluten-Free Oatmeal Cookies
~ Chocolate Almond Cherry Power Cookies (Paleo and Vegan)
~ Easy Gluten-Free Pumpkin Squares
~ Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
~ How To Recover After Being Glutened
Gluten-Free Cashew Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Reader review: "Yum, just made these and they are delicious! Nice and chewy with just a hint of nutty taste. And super easy too. I’ll definitely be making these again!"Gluten-Free Cashew Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
Instructions
judee@ Gluten Free A-Z Blog says
Shirley , thank you for your quality posts. This was very informative and helpful. I love flour less cookies and you are so right, they can lend themselves to so much variation. I enjoyed reading about
Deb’s Little House on the Prairie and their quality Gluten Free non GMO products. After the Cheerio disaster, we’ve learned we really need to go to greater lengths to the what “gluten free ” we are eating.
Shirley says
Hi Judee–You’re such a dear–thanks so much! I already had a lovely comment this morning on how a reader easily adapted one of my flourless cookie recipes to meet her needs. I so love that!
Yes, I’m so thankful to folks like Deb and her family at Gluten-Free Prairie who really get it and can feed us safely! Unfortunately, Quaker has now come out with “gluten-free” oats using a mechanical separation process. I hope all who are gluten free for medical reasons will stay away from those products as well. Gluten-Free Watchdog just shared a post on the subject here.
Shirley
Jan says
Is it possible to substitute Almond butter for the cashew butter?
Shirley says
Hi Jan–Oh, yes, you can substitute almond butter. The cookies will still be very good I’m sure, but will have a slightly different flavor. Hope you like them! 🙂
Shirley
Shirley says
Oh, and welcome to gfe! Happy to have you here! 🙂
Audrey @ Unconventional Baker says
Mm… those cookies sound yummy, Shirley! I love cashew butter so much, and love using it in recipes. And I loved reading the oats story — perhaps simply because I can relate. I’ve been able to include gf oats back into my diet recently and I’m in heaven exploring all the possibilities now 🙂 Funny how something that didn’t mean all that much to you before going gf can suddenly mean the world!
Ina Gawne says
Shirley these look fabulous! I will try them with Quinoa Flakes…should work nicely! 🙂
Alisa @ Go Dairy Free says
Yum! What a delicious twist on PB cookies Shirley! If I didn’t have loads of pumpkin cake to eat up, I’d be making these!
Erika says
Yum, just made these and they are delicious! Nice and chewy with just a hint of nutty taste. And super easy too. I’ll definitely be making these again. Thanks.
Shirley Braden says
Hi Erika–Welcome to gfe! Thanks so much for the wonderful review! 🙂 I had to click over to your blog, of course, and loved seeing your sheep, especially the lambs, of course. 😉
Shirley
Megan Downey says
Great flavor but way to much sugar for my taste! I try it with half of cup or less next batch….Also may add more oats and let them soak up the butter more. I also added 1/4 teaspoon of salt and cinnamon!
Shirley Braden says
Hi Megan–Sorry that I’m just now responding. I’m on vacation. 🙂 Welcome to gfe! Thanks for commenting and letting us know about your variation (and planned variation)!
Shirley