Wheat Free Chewy Sunflower Seed Butter Cookies (or Peanut Butter)

First, a couple of notes about ingredients:

• I can find sunflower seed butters at Trader Joes and Heinens.
• If using peanut butter, use a natural one like Smuckers or something freshly ground.
• I am supposing that most other nut butters would work as well but we are tree-nut free so I can't know for certain.
• Oat flour is generally available in 2lb bags from Bob's Red Mill, but I have taken to ordering mine in 50lb bags once a year or so from a bulk foods market. I keep it in the deep freezer in one gallon bags. This drops the cost to less than 70 cents per pound and is more cost effective.
• You can also make your own oat flour by grinding whole oats in a blender. It works very well.
• These are also free of dairy and eggs and you won't believe it.

The ingredients:

1-1/2c. brown sugar
1/4 c. water
1/4 c. canola oil
1/2 c. sunflower seed butter or natural peanut butter
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 c. oat flour
1-1/2 c. whole oats (quick oats would be second choice)
1 Tbsp granulated sugar or Turbinado sugar for topping

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Begin by mixing the brown sugar, water, oil, sunflower seed butter and vanilla until smooth. Add the salt, baking soda, and oat flour and stir until any lumps are gone. There is no gluten here so don't worry about over stirring. Mix in the oats and let it sit for 3 or 4 minutes before dropping cookies by the tablespoon-full onto ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten by your favorite method (criss-crossed forks, meat mallet, bottom of a glass... and sprinkle with the white or turbinado sugar).

Bake for 12-13 minutes until lightly browned. Cool on the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to finish cooling. Store in an airtight container in the fridge (this is important with oat flour - trust me). Also yummy frozen and it'll slow you down eating them and make them last longer. Makes 3 dozen cookies.