Gluten-Free Vegan Sandwich Cookies with Hazelnut-Cacao Filling
One of my favourite options for those days when I’m craving something sweet and comforting, but don’t want to compromise on the quality of the ingredients that I give to my body, is definitely making some kind of simple cookies with healthy and nutritious ingredients.
These gluten-free vegan sandwich cookies are always a great idea! Made without any cereal flour (instead, I used almond and coconut flour) and filled with homemade choco-hazelnut cream, they are such a delicious and fulfilling treat.
Ingredients for gluten-free vegan sandwich cookies
To make these tasty gluten-free vegan sandwich cookies, you will need:
- Almond flour – for the best result, I use defatted leftovers of almond oil pressing (the “real” almond flour), not ground almonds. Still, this recipe can work with very finely ground almonds as well.
- Coconut flour – same as with almond flour, I use the super fine, defatted coconut flour that is left over after pressing coconut oil. In this case I would not recommend using just ground dried coconut, because the cookies would end up being too crumbly and fall apart easily.
- Muscovado sugar – it can be replaced with coconut sugar or maple syrup, but I’ve found these cookies to turn out the best when I use muscovado sugar. Its consistency is just the best balance – it is not liquid, but not too dry either.
- Cold-pressed coconut oil.
- Chia seeds – they will act as a binding agent, which this recipe definitely needs since there is no gluten or any cereal flour involved.
- Water or plant milk – find out how to make your own plant milk in this easy almond and hemp seed milk recipe.
Making the cookies
These healthy sandwich cookies are actually really easy to make. After mixing ground chia seeds in water and letting them absorb the liquid and become like a gel, you will mix in the rest of the cookie dough ingredients and make the gluten-free dough.
The cookie dough is then rolled out to a desired thickness (I recommend four to five millimetres) and cut with cookie cutters or with a small glass jar. The cookies are then baked at 175 °C (~350 °F) for about twenty minutes or until they turn golden on the edges.
To make the cacao and hazelnut filling, just blend all of the ingredients in a food processor until you get a smooth paste. I like that this filling is not super soft, so it really holds the cookie sandwich together without being messy at all.
If you prefer a softer kind of cookie filling, you can replace the hazelnuts in the recipe with soft hazelnut butter (here is a really simple recipe for homemade hazelnut butter, in case you’d like to make your own).
If you opt for this hazelnut butter variation, it might be a good idea to leave out the plant milk from the filling recipe, depending on how soft the hazelnut butter is.
I like this easy hazelnut butter filling alternative when I am travelling and don’t have a food processor with me – everything is so easy to combine by whisking, or even mixing with a spoon.
More ingredient swaps
If you don’t have all the ingredients, there are some solutions and ways to modify this sandwich cookie recipe a bit. It might not be ideal, but you can still get delicious cookies if you swap:
- chia seeds with flax seeds;
- coconut oil with homemade nut butter;
- almond flour with hazelnut flour (okay, this one is actually a great swap – I just couldn’t get any hazelnut flour where I live, so I used almond instead);
- almond flour with finely ground almonds or hazelnuts;
- hazelnuts in the filling recipe with hazelnut butter (good option if you don’t have a food processor, or if you prefer a softer filling).
Gluten-Free Vegan Sandwich Cookies with Hazelnut-Cacao Filling
These gluten-free vegan sandwich cookies are a delicious and healthy treat made with almond and coconut flour and filled with homemade choco-hazelnut cream. They are a delightful and fulfilling sweet snack that is also really easy to make.
Ingredients
- 100 g almond flour*
- 160 g coconut flour*
- 80 g muscovado sugar
- 50 g coconut oil
- 20 g chia seeds
- 200 ml water or plant milk
- 1/2 tsp Ceylon cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp Himalayan salt
- 120 g hazelnuts**
- 60 g maple syrup
- 50 ml plant milk
- 40 g cacao powder
Instructions
- Grind the chia seeds and mix them in 200 ml of water or plant milk.
- Let them sit for 15 minutes to absorb water; stir occasionally.
- Mix almond flour, coconut flour, cinnamon and salt in a bowl.
- Pour soaked chia seeds and melted coconut oil into the bowl with dry ingredients and mix everything well.
- Roll out the batter to a desired thickness (4-5 mm would be ideal) and shape the cookies. You can use cookie cutters if you have them, or any round shape that you have in the kitchen.
- Bake the cookies for around 20 minutes at 175 °C (until they are lightly golden on the edges).
- Put (roasted) hazelnuts, rice milk and cacao powder into a blender or a food processor and process until smooth. When the cookies cool down a bit, spread the hazelnut filling and stick two cookies with it.
- Alternatively, if you are using hazelnut butter for the filling instead of hazelnuts, you can just whisk it with maple syrup and cacao to combine into a smooth paste.
Notes
* I used oil-pressing leftovers, not ground almonds and coconut
** Another way to make the cacao filling would be to use hazelnut butter instead of hazelnuts. In that case, you will need a bit more (150 - 200 g), and you can leave out the plant milk since hazelnut butter usually already has kind of a runny consistency.
