The crunchiest and healthiest lemon cookies with only 4 ingredients

Ready in a short time, these lemon cookies will become the most delicious and healthy choice for your morning coffee or afternoon snack. They do not contain eggs or butter, and the flour is replaced with oat flakes.

These lemon cookies become very crunchy, with a balanced sweet and sour taste that goes well with juice, coffee, or any other drink at the office or home. At the same time, they are an easy and healthy dessert for any time of the day.

Ingredients for 13 cookies:

3/4 cup. (68 g.) oat flakes
6 tsp. (96 g) cashew butter or unsweetened peanut butter
3 1/2 tsp. (52 ml) brown sugar or agave syrup
1 tsp. (15 ml) lemon juice + 1 full tsp. lemon zest

Procedure

Preheat the oven to 177°C. Line a large baking tray with parchment paper. Add the rolled oats to the food processor. Grind them until they are very small and fine and start to have the texture of flour.

If you are not sure if they are fine enough, it is better to grind them a little more. The smaller they are, the crispier the cookies will be.

Add the oats, peanut butter and sugar (or syrup) to a large bowl. Mix with a spatula until the ingredients are fully incorporated and the dough becomes thick, like cookie dough.

Stir in the lemon juice and zest until fully incorporated. Taste, and if necessary, add 1/2 to 1 tsp. of extra sugar (or syrup) if you feel that the dough is not sweet enough. With a dough spoon (1 tablespoon), scoop the dough and place it in the prepared pan, leaving some space between the dough balls.

Use your palm or the back of a metal spoon to flatten the dough balls into round discs.

You want the cookies to be quite thin (about half a centimetre). The thinner they are, the crispier they will be. The cookies do not spread much during baking, so you shape them as you want them to be in the final result.

You usually flatten them with your palms and then smooth the edges with the back of a spoon to make them round. If the dough is too sticky, you can wet the spoon before using it to flatten and form the cookies.

If you want, sprinkle a little extra lemon zest on top of each cookie.

Bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes or until they look set and the edges start turning light brown. Let the cookies cool completely in the pan before removing them.

Tips

• Cashew butter is ideal because it allows the lemon flavour to emerge properly. Alternatively, you can use peanut butter, but the cookies will have a slightly nutty taste in this case. Whatever nut butter you choose, make sure it's a natural product with no added oils or sugar, or the cookie dough won't have the right texture.
• When they come out of the oven, they will be soft. This should not worry you, the cookies become crispy when they cool.
• Cookies that will not be consumed immediately can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days or in the freezer for longer.

Evi Tsiropoulou is a columnist for Cantina. Translated by Paul Antonopoulos. 

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