Trail Mix Cookies

These buckwheat cookies are adapted from a couple of other recipes I’ve shared – these date sweetened oatmeal breakfast cookies and an oldie, hazelnut oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I wanted them to be a bit like chocolate chip cookies but something you could take on a hiking trip too.

The neat thing is here that the cookies aren’t really crumbly at all. Oat and buckwheat flour are great for gluten free baking, easily my favourites, and chia, nut or seed butter, and coconut oil hold everything together here really well.

I chose coconut sugar to do most of the sweetening here. It makes them a bit more dessert like rather than breakfast-y, but with all those seeds it works either way.

Scroll to the bottom of the post or click “skip to recipe” above to see the recipe card with full ingredient measurements and instructions.

Ingredients

It seems like a lot, but these are changeable to what you have on hand – stick to the flour types and chia, and just about anything else in the cookies can be altered to suit what’s in your pantry.

• Buckwheat flour
• Oat flour
• Coconut sugar
• Arrowroot flour (or tapioca or cornstarch)
• Cinnamon
• Baking soda
• Sea salt
• Mixed seeds or nuts
• Raisins or other dried fruit
• Dark chocolate
• Chia
• Nut or seed butter
• Coconut oil
• Non-dairy milk (oat, almond, etc.)
• Maple syrup

Method

If you don’t have the flours on hand, but you have buckwheat groats and rolled oats, you can make your own flour in a high-speed food processor. Just blend until a flour forms (it’s easiest to go by weights for this).

Add the buckwheat flour, oat flour, coconut sugar, arrowroot, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt to a large bowl. Whisk to combine, then stir in the seeds, raisins, chocolate, and chia.

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Melt the coconut oil. In another bowl, whisk together the nut butter, coconut oil, milk, and maple syrup. Make sure this mixture has cooled before adding it to the flour mix or the chocolate will melt.

Add the nut butter mixture into the larger bowl and use a wooden spoon to mix until well combined. Don’t worry about over-mixing, it’s not really a concern with gluten free recipes.

Preheat the oven and line two baking sheets. Take scoops of dough (about 2 tablespoons each) and roll them into balls. Place the balls onto the baking sheets, about 5cm (1.5 in.) apart from each other, and flatten them with your hands. They won’t spread much (not enough sugar) so that’s why you press them.

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes and cool briefly on the tray before removing and cooling fully on a rack. If you have a fan-forced oven, you can bake both trays at once. If you have only one baking sheet, you can bake one batch and then the second, no problem.

Tips and Notes

The cookies freeze quite well in an airtight container. They’re also pretty sturdy! Part of the reason they’re called trail mix cookies is because they work well to bring on a hike and don’t fall apart so easily.

The cookie mixture will seem too wet when you first stir it up, so you let it sit for a few minutes to let the chia do its magic. That’s why the recipe is a bit different than usual and you mix up the dough before heating up the oven. It rests and firms up while the oven heats.

About Buckwheat

Buckwheat, I think, can take a bit of getting used to. As a flour, it’s very neutral and slightly nutty, but the seeds have a texture that can be a bit strange as you chew. If you’re not sure if you like buckwheat seeds then I’d use something else in the mixed seed bit. I haven’t tried these cookies with 100% either oat or buckwheat flour, just the mix. And if you’re not sure, despite the misleading name, buckwheat is totally gluten free!

If you have to buy more buckwheat flour than this recipe calls for, it also makes great gluten free banana pancakes, and several readers have had success using buckwheat to make my tahini banana bread gluten free too. As far as gluten free flours go it’s a solid all-purpose one to have around and has a good flavour.

Substitutions

Flexibility is key here. There are mixed seeds, and other sweeter add-ins (like dried fruits) and those can all be switched up to suit your preferences. I chose sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, and buckwheat for my seeds, with dark chocolate and raisins as the sweeter parts. The nut/seed butter is easy to change up too – sunflower, peanut, almond, and so on, can all be used.

You can use any seeds or nuts you like instead, barring chia or flax. As long as it’s not a seed that sucks up a pile of moisture you’re good. If you have grain free granola kicking around you could toss a cup of that in instead of the seeds too. Other dried fruit can go in place of raisins, and of course you don’t have to add chocolate (but I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t).

I don’t really recommend changing the flours used. There can be some variation in how much liquid is absorbed between types of oat flour and buckwheat flour, so if you feel that the dough seems dry, go ahead and add an extra splash of milk. This might be the case if your nut butter is on the dry side as well.

More Gluten Free Cookies

Vegan Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies
Almond Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Ultimate Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies
Turmeric Breakfast Cookies

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This post was originally published in November 2018. It has been updated with new photos and improvements to the text and recipe as of August 2020.