Lovely crunchy gluten-free cookies lightly sweetened with maple syrup.
Yesterday I was all set to make some Anzac Cookies, a recipe that I’ve wanted to share with you for a while, but ended up with these yummy Almond, Buckwheat and Cardamom Cookies instead.
When I started making my Anzacs I realized I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed, not very organized of me, so I’ve created a brand new recipe by chance. And I’m so happy that I did. Anzacs will just have to wait until next time.
This recipe is gluten-free using a mix of buckwheat, ground almonds and desiccated coconut sweetened very lightly with maple syrup. I’ve added some cardamom, it’s one of my favorite spices and because of the simplicity of this cookie, it works really well in the mix. This time I have gone more traditional and used butter in this recipe, but you could replace it with some coconut oil if you wish. Also use quite fine desiccated coconut to have a very biscuity texture.
My son and my husband both loved these, they have such a nice crunch and a very biscuit texture. Also pretty quick and simple to make, definitely a recipe to try out.
Almond, Buckwheat and Cardamom Cookies
Lovely crunchy gluten-free cookies lightly sweetened with maple syrup.
Ingredients
- 1 cup buckwheat flour (140 grams)
- 1 cup ground almonds (100 grams)
- 1 cup desiccated coconut (100 grams)
- 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
- pinch of bicarbonate of soda
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 cups organic butter (125 grams)
- 3 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C), 325 °F fan (160 °C fan)
- Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper.
- In a large bowl whisk together buckwheat flour, ground almonds, coconut, cardamom, soda and salt and set aside.
- In a small pot melt butter, maple syrup and vanilla and pour over the dry mix.
- Mix everything well together and leave to stand for 10 min.
- Either with a hand or a scoop form small balls with a mixture and place onto lined baking sheet.
- Flatten gently with back of a fork or palm of your hand. I always use my hand as I like them nicely round and quite flat.
- Depending on the size you should have about 24 cookies.
- Bake for about 15 minutes or until light golden brown.
- Enjoy!
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
24Serving Size:
2Amount Per Serving:Calories: 108Total Fat: 8gSaturated Fat: 4gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 3gCholesterol: 11mgSodium: 76mgCarbohydrates: 9gFiber: 1gSugar: 3gProtein: 2g
these are beautiful and exotic, and I love that they are naturally gluten free.
Thank you Dani!
oh! me oh my just took these divine cookies from oven ….waited patiently to cool
down shared one with my partner , we are back for more , nirvana for taste buds
thank you💕
These cookies are absolutely delicious, light, crunchy, not too sweet and seriously moorish!
Thank you! So pleased you love the recipe! x
These were delicious. Thank you for inventing them. My two little boys loved them. They are set to become a fixture in my biscuit tin.
Thank you Eugenie! I am so happy that you and your little boys have enjoyed them!
could i use coconut oil instead of the butter? I want to make these and i don;t have any butter right now
Hi Esther,
you can use coconut oil, although I haven’t tried it yet in this recipe. Just add enough melted coconut oil to have moist dough to shape into cookies. I would say 1/4 to 1/3 cup should be enough. x
What is desiccated coconut?
Hi, it’s dried shredded coconut, in the UK it’s normally called desiccated coconut. You could also use flaked coconut and blend it to get more fine consistency.
Hope this helps. Hana
thank you i was wondering too!
Hello :) would it be OK to leave the maple syrup out? I’m on a candida free diet :( thank you!
Hi Rebecca, what I find is that the sweetener and fat together create the crispy texture of a biscuit. But these have such a little maple syrup it might work without it. You could try doing half the amount and see how it goes. Alternatively check my Buckwheat and Rosemary Crackers. Hope this helps:) Hana
could I use coconut oil instead of butter?
Hi Raluca, you can use coconut oil, although I haven’t tried it yet in this recipe. Just add enough melted coconut oil to have moist dough to shape into cookies. I would say 1/4 to 1/3 cup should be enough.
Could I replace the maple syrup with molasses (unrefined sugar)? Thanks in advance.
Hi, yes, you can replace it with molasses. Although the flavour will be slightly different if you’re using blackstrap molasses as it’s stronger than maple syrup. If you’ll use molasses sugar, you might need to increase the butter amount. Hope it goes well:)
Hi there!
these look lovely!! I would love to try the recipe later, but unfortunately I don’t have all the ingredients.
I was thinking to substitute the cardamom with cinnamon, and what would you suggest for the coconut? I have some nuts i could blend.. bad idea?
Hi Lore,
you can definitely use cinnamon instead of cardamom. With the coconut I suppose you could add extra ground nuts, it will change the recipe quite a bit, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Just experiment a little so you get a soft dough to be able to make the cookies. x
Thanks Hana!
I will try and let you know :)
These are really good! I didn’t have butter so used coconut oil but I think I didn’t use the correct amount so they didn’t bind so well. It still worked somehow albeit a bit too crumbly!
Can definitely double up as granola over porridge or yogurt :)
And will try them again properly with butter!
Stumbled upon your website just by accident and loving it! Next to try is the coconut tahini bars :)
Hi Vishaka, thank you for your lovely comment! I have to make version of these cookies with coconut oil, so many people have been asking. I’ll get to it soon:) It’s wonderful to hear you’re enjoying my blog! x
Thanks for sharing. Going to try it today :-)
You’re so welcome! Hope you’ll enjoy the cookies :)
Hi Hana,
Thanks for this lovely recipe. I am new to gluten free cooking and this is actually my first recipe!! I have followed your directions and the mixture is very crumbly, not like a dough. When I squeeze it into a shape, it is very fragile and breaks very easily, do you have any ideas what I may have done wrong?!
Thanks,
Lisa
Hi Lisa, I’m really sorry about that. I actually have no idea why it’s too crumbly if you followed the recipe. What I would suggest is putting the mix into the fridge to see if it gets more pliable and easier to shape into balls. Press the mix tightly together into balls, place onto the baking sheet and then gently flatten the top. It’s a lot of trial and error sometimes cooking with new ingredients and they vary so much too:) Hope this helps.
Love the simplicity of this recipe and flavors used! Do you think I could use freshly grated coconut instead of the dried ones?
Thank you Radhika! I’ve used fairly fine desiccated coconut in this recipe. You could certainly try if you grate it quite fine, but one thing to keep in mind is that it will create more moisture. Maybe try with less amount and see how it goes. If it doesn’t stick together, cool it for a bit in the fridge before making the cookies. Hope this helps.
Hi There,
I live in the US and my oven uses Fahrenheit temperatures. Would you say these should be cooked at 350 F? I’m not as familiar with Celsius.
Hi Whitney, yes it would be 350 F. Hope you like them:)
I tried this recipe yesterday. They came out delicious in my opinion! But my husband didn’t find them sweet enough. Could I substitute honey for the maple syrup?
Thank you, I’m really happy they came out well! You can easily substitute honey for maple syrup or add a little extra and reduce the butter. I always tend to use the minimum sweeteners in my recipes, but you can always add extra if you like more sweetness:)
he biscuits were a failure I’m sorry to say. I”m sure I either done something wrong, or the ingredients I used are not the same because you’ve had so many glowing reports about the biscuits. The biscuits didn’t hold together and became crumbs when cold.
I live in Eastern Europe and the buckwheat flour is very dark. Given it’s the main ingredient by weight, there’s no way the biscuits could turn out the colour of you those in photos. I substituted honey for maple syrup because we keep our own bees. Perhaps the coconut was too dry; it’s not so commonly used here. Any thoughts?
Hi Peter, I’m very sorry they didn’t work out for you. It could have been the type of flour you’ve used. The buckwheat used in Eastern Europe is often a roasted buckwheat called Kasha and I think the flour might have been made from roasted buckwheat rather than a raw one considering you said the colour was very dark. The ingredients vary so much from country to country and sometimes you have to experiment with recipes to see what works. I do hope they work better the next time. H
Hana,
You’re correct I used roasted Buckwheat flour. Much better results – not perfect, yet! – but better with non-roasted.
Hi Peter, I’m so glad to hear that!
We love these biscuits! It does take quite a bit of effort to shape them evenly flat so they don’t crumble away at the edges, but after reading the comments I’ll try chilling the dough next time.
Thanks Hana for such a simple, delicious and nourishing recipe!
Oh my gosh, these biscuits are so, so delicious! I could eat all the 24 cookies on my own :) Thank you so much for this lovely recipe. Turned out perfect!
Thank you so much Margot for this lovely comment! I’m so happy they turned out perfect!
Love the ingredients & sweetness was perfect. I did make a couple changes. Added 1t of almond extract, 1 egg, some almond pulp from almond milk I made & used almond flour. I made my cookies larger so that I had 11 cookies. They were tasty but dry. What can I do to remedy the dryness? Thank you for a wonderful recipe.
Hi Olga, you’re so welcome, I’m really pleased you like the recipe! You could try adding few tablespoons of almond butter to the recipe to see if that would help. Sometimes it’s the sugar that helps with moisture and these cookies only have little bit of maple syrup in, so it’s a bit of a compromise:)
Forgot to add in my previous comment that I used coconut oil instead of butter.
Hi Hana, thank you for a great recipe! I’m also on the Candida diet and will try substituting maple syrup with Stevia. Hope that works.
Hi Mikiko, yes, I’m not entirely sure how that will work, but please do let me know. A little bit of nut butter might help with the binding too.
I am looking forward to baking them today. I love experimenting rather than following what the recipes say. Let’s see what comes out of it. But most of all thank you for being such an inspiration!
You’re so welcome Evelina! It’s my pleasure! Hope the cookies turned out well :)
I made these cookies exactly as the recipe laid out. They baked perfectly and are delicious – but I need to know how you managed to get buckwheat flour cookies to be golden? Mine are GREY. Tasty, but very weird to look at.
Hi Erica, I’m so happy the recipe worked well for you. I think it will be the type of buckwheat flour that you’ve used, I’ve noticed that some brands are much darker than others.
can i made it without the almond flour? i have an allergy from nuts :\
Hi Anwaar, if you can tolerate sunflower seeds, then ground sunflower seeds would be great replacement. Otherwise the recipe would change quite a bit.
Hi Hana, Can i try this with half buckwheat and half millet flour ? What do you suggest ?
Hi Sudha, yes, definitely. You can use just millet flour too if you prefer.
Thank you! Thank you! We love this recipe. I followed it exactly, except I substituted coconut oil for the butter. The dough was easy to mold into shape and the cookies were crunchy and delicious and looked just like your picture. I have never used cardamom in baking. Who knew? Between allergies and diabetes in our family, these gluten free, dairy free (using coconut oil), sugar free, and egg free cookies are not only tasty, they are wonderfully nutritious. Hats off to you Hana. Well done!
Thank you so much Deanna for your kind words, it makes me so happy you enjoying my recipe so much. I love cardamom and put it into my quinoa porridge almost every day! Much Love Hana
Hi, I weighed out the dry ingredients based on the measurements you provided, but sadly the dough was far too dry and crumbly to shape into anything. I eventually had to add an egg to hold it together. The ratio of dry to wet ingredients seemed off. Any idea on where I may have gone wrong?
Hi Rashieda, I’m sorry these didn’t work for you. The different brand’s ingredients vary so much, sometimes you just have to adjust the quantity slightly, don’t worry, it’s normal. Just add more wet or dry ingredients until you have a dough. You can also add 1-3 tsp water if needed. Somebody once used roasted buckwheat flour which didn’t work in this recipe. Hope it goes better next time :)
What kind of butter to use?
Hi Shiffali, any butter should work in this recipe. You could also use coconut oil.
An absolute winner, tasty, not too sweet, crunchy and easy to make.
Glad to have stumbled across your website and hope to make more yummy healthy treats!
:-)
Sharry
I’m so happy you love these! Thank you so much for coming back and leaving me such great comment :) Hope you enjoy some of the other recipes as much! Hxx
Hi
Once these cookies have been baked can they be frozen so they last longer?
Many thanks
Shannon
Hi Shannon, I’ve never frozen these, but I’m pretty sure you can. I regularly freeze my recipes and never have had problem. They should keep well in freezer too.
As a new diabetic who loves to bake, these are perfect. Delicious, perfectly slightly sweet and a lovely texture. Thank you!
You’re so welcome Quentina! I’m so happy you’re enjoying the recipe :)
As I can’t have any oils, is there a subsitue?
Hi, you could try replacing it with banana which would help to stick the dough together. Also possibly aquafaba (chickpea brine) or some medjool dates.
I was pretty dissapointrd when I made these as they weren’t that sweet (even though I sprinkled coconut sugar on top of half of them) and my Gluten free receipent has quite a sweet tooth.
The kids loved them regardless and ate all of the ones without coconut sugar on them.
The next day however when all the flavours had merged they tasted so good that I’m just keeping them for myself lol (I love the mild touch of sweetness to them) and I’ll try another batch with sugar in the dough to see if they’re sweet enough for my receipent lol.
Thanks for a great recipe!
You’re so welcome Ayesha! I’m happy that you loved them after all! I always try to use the minimum sweetener in all of my recipes and I understand that they’re not sweet enough for everyone (my husband is a fine example) I think little sprinkle of coconut sugar must be yummy :) Thank you for your lovely comment.
Hi Hana, I would like to make these for a friend who can’t take coconut. Can I just leave it out or what can I substitute it with? How about flaxseeds or flaxmeal?
Hi Dora, you could try 70g (1/2 cup) brown rice flour. Add little more maple syrup and 1-3tsp water to help you bind it together. If you like to add little ground flaxseed it should work too. Hope it goes well :)
Love this recipe (and many of your others!)
I didn’t have desiccated coconut so just added a little extra ground almond, poppy seeds and wacked a bit of lemon zest in too
Flavours worked really well and the biscuit held together nicely!
Thanks for sharing x x
You’re so welcome Jen! I’m so happy you love the recipe! And I love your substitutions, poppy seeds and lemon zest is a wonderful combination. xxx
Hi Hana,
Would like to try these cookies but can I substitute maple syrup with golden syrup (I live in UK).
From the comments I have read, it seems you can vary the flavours which makes this a great recipe and a welcome change to chocolate which I cannot tolerate.
Do you have any other recipes, cakes or muffins using buckwheat flour. I have to avoid gluten and milk but butter and rice milk are OK for me.
Thank you so much for sharing this and I look forward to hearing from you
Best wishes,
Ann Nash.
Hi Ann, yes, I think golden syrup should work well in the recipe.
I use buckwheat flour in many of my recipes, I tend to mix it with brown rice and tapioca flour/arrowroot and ground nuts to create a moist gluten-free mix. Sometimes I use teff flour but you can happily substitute the teff with buckwheat flour if you prefer.
Apart from the oldest recipes on the blog all of my recipes are gluten-free and vegan. Please have a look in my recipe index if you fancy trying any, I have quite a few to choose from by now :)
Please let me know if you have any more questions. Best wishes, Hana
These are delicious – as someone who is recently gluten- and dairy-free, I was really missing biscuits. These hit the spot. I used vegan cultured butter and they came out beautifully. Stayed fresh and crispy in a cookie tin for two weeks. Have you ever tried a variation with oat flour?
I’m so happy to hear! Thank you for your lovely comment :) I haven’t yet tried them with oat flour but you can definitely substitute the buckwheat flour for a different gluten-free flour like oat, teff, brown rice or sorghum.
Hana, just made these, they are EXCELLENT. Thank you so much. I have IBS and do not get cookies I can eat in India where I live. Friends get me the ‘Free from’ Sainsbury cookies from the UK, which aren’t very healthy. These are healthy, IBS friendly, deelicious. Easy to get ingredients, easy to make even for a newbie like me. I used coconut oil, added just enough to make a crumbly, not gooey, mix. Then added two tsp water when forming the cookies. Perfect.Problem is, everyone at home is attacking them, IBS or not, bleddy hell.