RECIPE: Apricot Lucuma Cookie

Words: Fiona Herron

Photo: Chris Herron

Organic dried apricots are very different to conventionally dried apricots – they may take some getting used to. Because they don’t contain sulphur dioxide, they are darker in colour and don’t have the tangy sour flavour that conventionally dried apricots do. While they are different, they are delicious and help to reduce toxic load (by unnecessary ingestion of chemicals into your body). This is another small step to improving your overall health and longer-term quality of life particularly as the full effects of sulphur dioxide (used as a preservative in a lot of products on the market) are still not completely understood.

Anyway… dried apricots are known for their antioxidant properties, high fibre and substantial amounts of Vitamin A that remain intact during the drying process. I’ve matched the apricot with lucuma powder in this recipe. Lucuma is the dried/powdered fruit of the Pouteria lucuma tree native to South America and has a creamy texture and caramel flavour that works so well with the apricot. Apart from tasting amazing, lucuma adds a good boost of vitamins and minerals. 

This raw cookie has a beautiful clean flavour with a distinct hint of apricot pie and is a great addition  to your nutrition on long autumn bike rides.

Ingredients: Use organic where possible and always read ingredient labels.

• 60g raw cashew nuts
• 200g dried organic apricots (roughly chopped)
• 35g sultanas
• 5g Lucuma powder
• 60g protein powder of your choice. I’ve used a brown rice sprouted protein. 

Method:

1. Using a good food processor, blitz cashew nuts and lucuma powder until crumbly 
2. Add chopped apricots and sultanas and blitz again, the mixture should stick together when pressed
3. Add half of the protein powder and blitz until well combined
4. Add the other half of protein powder and blitz again – stopping to manually manipulate the mix with a firm spatula
5. Blend again until the mix is soft and sticks when pressed (trust me, it will happen!)
6. Using a table spoon measure out approx 36g and press into cookie mould or roll into a ball
7. The mix should give you 10 cookies – chill and store in the fridge

Nutrition per serve (36g):

Energy – 482kJ

Protein – 7.4g

Fat – 3.0g

Carbohydrate – 12.9g