Dear friends, welcome back! The Light and Tasty column resumes publication after the Christmas break, you missed us, didn’t you? 😃 I’m presenting my first Monday recipe of this new year: simple, delicate, fragrant, soft mandarin cookies. 🍊

It’s a new variant of those drop cookies that, as you well know, are a staple in my home. 😊 Today, after previous versions with apples, with plum jam, with fresh figs, and the anti-waste version with leftover orange and lemon peels, I decided to try them with one of the quintessential winter fruits, mandarins (or to be precise, I used a mix of mandarins and clementines).

They turned out very, very, very good, with a delicate flavor, fragrant, perfect for dunking. 😋

Like most of the previous versions, these soft mandarin cookies are eggless, made with just a few simple ingredients, and are prepared in minutes.

These are treats with a consistency halfway between cookies and donuts, so easy to make that you can even prepare them with children. And they can be tucked into their backpacks for school or a trip without fear of crumbling.

And then, let me tell you, they were greatly appreciated by a grown-up who doesn’t eat mandarins! 😅 Well, I couldn’t ask for better feedback! 😃

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Difficulty: Very easy
Cost: Economical
Preparation time: 10 Minutes
Portions: 15-25 cookies
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: Autumn, Winter

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup rice flour
3.5 oz mandarins (pulp only, peeled)
1/4 cup raw cane sugar
1/4 cup milk kefir (or yogurt)
2 tbsps corn oil
2 tsps baking powder

Tools

Bowl
Spatula
Chopper
Parchment Paper
Spoon or Teaspoon

Steps

Pour kefir (or yogurt), sugar, and oil into a bowl.
☝ You can also use plant-based yogurt, making the recipe vegan.
Mix with a spatula to dissolve the sugar.
Peel the mandarins, remove seeds, chop the segments roughly, and blend them briefly in a chopper, leaving the mixture chunky.
👉 Alternatively: squeeze the juice, then use a teaspoon to scoop out all remains and add them to the mix. In short: all the mandarin pulp should be used.
Pour the mandarin puree into the bowl.
Optional: add flavor by including the grated peel of a mandarin (I used a clementine, as the mandarin peels were shiny and I wasn’t sure they were untreated).
Mix.
Add the two flours and the baking powder.
Mix.
👉 You should get a dense but soft mixture, not liquid nor too compact. If necessary, adjust with small amounts of flour (rice or wheat, as preferred).
Spoon the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
☝ Tip: If you want crunchier cookies, use a teaspoon for smaller cookies, while using a tablespoon will yield larger cookies more akin to mini-donuts.
The number of cookies obtained naturally depends on their size (if large, 15).
Bake at 350°F for about 25 minutes.
And here’s the donut-like inside: 🤩
I remind you that these soft cookies keep their crunchy crust for several hours after baking, but the next day the residual moisture makes them soft and similar to small donuts.
Make them right away for a snack! Or for tomorrow morning’s breakfast, if you haven’t eaten them all! 🤩