Raspberry, Apricot + Rooibos Cashew Butter Cookies

130g (1/2 cup) dried apricots
3/4 cup strongly brewed rooibos tea (optional)

150g (1 1/2cups) oats
100g (2/3 cup) buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla powder
290g (1 cup) cashew butter
130g (1 cup) frozen raspberries

I wish I had the memory for as many real life moments as I do for recipes. If I could, I would free up some of the brain space taken up by all the different food and flavour combinations I come across,  and devote more room to remembering the little moments I so enjoy, or the feeling of a special day. I’ve always thought that when they say food and memory are connected they meant more in the literal sense, like when you eat a particular food it reminds you of eating it in a time and place. The same way listening to some music can make you feel young again, or walking past someone on the street wearing the same perfume or cologne of someone you used to know can remind you of your grade 6 teacher or a first boyfriend.

Anyway, my brain has this uncanny knack for remembering food. Flick past a recipe once and I can remember it; not the exact measurements but the feeling of it, or for whom the recipe would work best (specific to anyone’s dietary requirements), or when would be the most lovely moment to eat it. Sometime, a year or two later, it will pop into my head as just the right thing to make. I can also remember your coffee order, if I ordered you one a year ago… if only I could put these powers to a better use!

I guess we are all different and amazing in our own ways, and, depending on our passions, have wonderful (sometimes weird) memories for different things. I can’t remember anything to do with history no matter how many times I’ve tried to learn (even though I know it’s really important), but I can put my hand exactly on which cookbook has that recipe you thought sounded good a year ago, which seems like it might just be the perfect recipe for right now. Funnily enough, once I’ve made the recipe I can’t always remember when or where we ate it… but where I saw it, I’ve got you covered! Brains are mysterious and wonderful things. A little less of the food stuff, and a little more of the other stuff wouldn’t go astray…

These cookies are inspired by a recipe I flicked past a year or two ago that obviously stuck in the back of my mind, by the ever inspiring Green Kitchen Stories. It’s from their cookbook Green Kitchen Travels, which is full of food dreams and wonderful family adventures. They made a blueberry cookie inspired by a vegan cookie they ate in New York, full of ingredients good enough to eat for breakfast. Last week it was cake for breakfast, this week it’s cookies?!

One thing I can never do is leave a recipe alone, so I’ve made my own take on their cookies, replacing the blueberries with raspberries and rooibos soaked apricots. The reason this recipe finally came into being was I was cleaning out the cupboard and found some dried apricots in a jar that had been there for *quite some time*. Aha! I’ve got just the recipe for those I thought! Those blueberry cookies I flicked past a year ago! It was time for them to be liberated, and finally eaten. 

You could easily skip the tea soaking step if your dried apricots are still lovely and plump, you know, they haven’t been lingering in the back of the cupboard for close to a year. If you do, replace the 1/2 cup of tea (which is the amount of liquid that was left over after the apricots had re-plumped themselves) with 1/2 cup of milk of your choice. 

Of course you can also substitute the cashew butter for any nut butter of your choice, I just have a deep, primal love for cashew butter - must be all those feel good, brain supporting properties of cashews…. if only eating some of these cookies could help with the other parts of my memory…

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/how-cashews-can-help-with-stress-and-anxiety/

These cookies are cakey - not your crunchy biscuit, they are more your big hug of a cookie that fills your belly with warmth for a few hours to come. There is no sweetness in them apart from the apricots and raspberries themselves; I find cashew butter and oats creamy and sweet enough for these themselves, although if you’re wanting something a little sweeter, then a drizzle of maple syrup and a little pinch of salt should do the trick.