Silos Cookies
This past spring, my family embarked on a 10,000 mile, cross country road trip. We live in North Carolina and we visited national parks and other amazing sites from here all the way to California and back.
We did a similar trip three years ago and it was so successful, we decided to do it again. One of the choices we made for that trip that turned out so well was mixing educational stops, fun adventures and visits to places we’ve loved from books, TV and movies.
We are huge Little House on the Prairie fans in this house and, even though this has nothing to do with this recipe, I just want to put in a plug for visiting some of the Little House sites. On our 2018 trip, we visited De Smet, South Dakota, the place of Pa’s homestead and the setting for The Long Winter. We actually camped on the homestead. For Little House fans, it was magical and I cannot recommend it enough. This time, we visited Laura and Almonzo’s home in Mansfield, Missouri. This location has two of their homes and the flagship museum with Pa’s fiddle and lots and lots of other amazing artifacts. This too, was magical and I cannot recommend it enough.
As we were sticking mostly to the southern half of the country on this trip, we had a whole new set of sites to see. One of our fun stops was Waco, Texas, home to Fixer Upper and The Silos. My daughter and I are huge fans of all that Chip and Joanna do and this was a super special stop for us. We took our time in all the shops, played games on the lawn, bought special drinks from the food trucks and ate every type of gluten free cookie offered at the bakery.
My favorite cookie was the peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip. I’m really not sure what it was called, but it had the most perfect texture and just a few chocolate chips. I saved the wrapper so I would have the list of ingredients and could take a crack at re-creating this cookie once the trip was over.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but these cookies turned out really, really well. So well in fact, that my son asked for them for his birthday. This is not a paleo recipe because it does contain some gluten free flour as well as oatmeal and real brown sugar. But they are, of course, gluten free. You could make them dairy free as well by using palm shortening instead of the butter. One other change I made to my version as compared to Joanna’s was to use almond butter since my son is allergic to peanuts.
These cookies are so good that I simply cannot make them very often because we cannot stop eating them. They’re perfect for special occasions or camping trips. I hope you love these as much as we do!
Silos Cookies
Ingredients
- 4 oz. softened grass-fed butter
- 4 oz. creamy or chunky almond butter Barney Butter is the absolute best for baking, in my opinion
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp. sea salt
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 cup gluten free flour blend
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 cup gluten free oats
- 1 3/4 cup ground gluten free oats – process or blend into a flour – process and then measure the 1 3/4 cups
- 1 cup chopped nuts – any kind you like I prefer pecans or walnuts in this recipe
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips milk chocolate is my preference in this recipe
- ~1 tsp. flaky salt optional, I used Maldon, will link below
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Cream together the butter, almond butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and combine.
- Add all of the remaining ingredients except the flake sea salt – that's for the top. Mix well to combine everything. Dough will be thick.
- Scoop cookies into desired size, spacking them out well on the baking sheet. They will spread a little in baking, but not a lot. Flatten them slightly.
- Sprinkle a little bit of the flake salt on top of each cookie.
- Bake for 11-13 minutes, until set and just the slightest bit brown around the edges. These cookies don't turn a real deep brown like some do.