The recipe I share with you today, the Chinese cookies, is really the result of getting creative with a leftover ingredient from another recipe. Last Friday I made my own sesame seed milk and if you’re already familiar with making nut and seed based milks yourself you know that you always end up with the pulp from those nuts and seeds.
Of course you can throw it away or use it as compost for your garden, but this pulp often makes a great base for cookies. Turning it into cookies will not only prevent you from wasting food, it will also be kind to your budget. The cup of soaked sesame seeds that I started out with to make last Friday’s milk, is now used to make a batch of cookies. And since nuts and seeds can sometimes be pretty pricey you enjoy the same cup of nuts or seeds twice. That’s a good deal if you ask me.
If you don’t have time to do something with the leftover pulp from your plant based milk immediately, no problem. Put the pulp in the fridge and it will keep well for at least several days. Maybe you can even freeze it, but I don’t have any personal experience with that myself yet.
For the milk I used one cup of unhulled sesame seeds that I soaked overnight. Because of the soaking I ended up with more pulp than the one cup I started with. So after making the milk I had exactly 1.5 cups of sesame seed pulp. I used all of that to make cookies. Since sesame seeds made me think of Asian dishes I decided to make cookies with an Asian touch. I added brown rice flour and Chinese Five Spices to spice them up a bit.
If you’re not familiar with Chinese Five Spices, it’s a mixture of five different spices often used in Chinese and Asian quisine. It consists of star anise powder, fennel powder, cinnamon powder, clove powder and Sichuan pepper. Although I bought it as a ready-to-use mixture, you can make it yourself by combining the five ingredients. That way you can play around with the volume of each spice to create the perfect blend for your personal taste.
The spicy taste of these cookies really goes well with the colder Autumn weather we have over here now. Just like pumpkin pie spices this is a mixture of spices that warms you up. In Chinese dishes it’s often used for seasoning fatty meats like duck and porc. Since I don’t eat duck or porc I’ll stick to my cookies. The combination with sesame seeds works well too.
One little thing though before giving you the recipe: since some of the fat and nutrients of the sesame seeds have already been used in the milk I’m not so sure whether the nutritional calculator is completely acurate in this recipe. It might just calculate the nutritional value of 1.5 cups of sesame seeds without considering that I started out with only 1 cup of sesame seeds that soaked up water and left some nutrients and fats behind in the vegan milk. Just so you know. Now over to the recipe!
Chinese Cookies Recipe
1.5 cups of sesame seed pulp
1 cup of brown rice flour
1/3 cup of sucanat
1/4 cup of coconut oil
2 teaspoons of Chinese five spices
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit/175 degrees Celsius.
Put all ingredients in a food processor and process until you end up with a well mixed dough.
Line a baking tray with baking paper and scoop 23 small balls of dough onto the tray. I used my measuring tablespoon for this.
Press the balls with your thumb in the middle and then bake for 20-23 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/175 degrees Celsius.
