Chai Cacao Chia Cookies...it's a mouthful (literally)

Well I love chocolate, I love chai spice and I love chia seeds (they make their way into everything I consume: smoothies, cereal, cookies, you name it!).  I figured why not combine the above into one amazing cookie?  And that, my friends, was how the Chai Cacao Chia Cookies came to be.

Chai Cacao Chia Cookies

Yields 12 large cookies or 2 dozen small.

Ingredients:

1 cup gluten-free flour (for me, this meant 1/4 cup coconut flour, 1/4 cup quinoa flour, 1/4 cup almond flour and 1/4 cup brown rice flour.  There's no need to be this complex, almost any GF flour will do).
1 teaspoon baking powder (cornstarch free!)
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 cup cacao powder (or unsweetened cocoa powder)
3 tablespoons chia seeds

1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup agave syrup
1/2 cup applesauce
2 tablespoons melted coconut oil

Directions:

1.  Sift dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.
2.  Add in wet ingredients, adding in a little more filtered water as necessary.
3.  Refrigerate for 20 -30 minutes.
4.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees and divide batter into desired size of cookies, spacing them out on parchment-lined , or my fave, sil-pat lined cookie sheet.
5.  Bake 14-16 minutes, enjoy with a cup of chai tea for some extra spicy goodness.

**warning:  Husband pointed out the cookie dough looks like something that your dog could produce.  They taste much better than they look--so maybe it's not the cookie to wow out-of-town guests with.  Unless maybe you plan to distract with a generous glaze of rice chocolate and organic sprinkles...

These Sprinkelz are the only organic vegan gluten-free sprinkles I've ever seen--the colors are not super vibrant but hey, beats red #40 and yellow #5 or whatever chemical dyes are in all the pretty ones

By the way, husband says he likes them, while brother in-law says he wants just the chocolate off the top.  They aren't a very sweet cookie without the chocolate; I've only tricked my husband's tastebuds after years of making him fruit-sweetened treats.