The Best Mesquite Cookies By Far | Mesquite Bean Flour Recipe (2024)

Learn how to bake these Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Mesquite Cookies. They are chewy but soft, packed full of flavor, hardy, and delicious!

Nathan and I spend some seasons going on bike rides every morning. Currently it’s too hot unless we have a goal in mind.

Lately we’ve been biking around, looking for ripe mesquite beans to pick.

You can read all about Honey Mesquite Trees, where to find them, how to pick the beans and how to make the jelly HERE.

Watch the video here!

Honey mesquite beans are what we have in our area and are supposed to have the best tasting beans and they make delicious jelly! Check out my jelly recipe HERE.

Only pick beans off of the tree and never off of the ground. I go into detail about why that is in my mesquite jelly post.

Pick plump beans that have lost their green color, snap when you break them, and don’t have any black spots.

It’s totally fine to have brown/burgundy/red/pink stripes in the coloring. You just don’t want black blemishes that could be mold.

How to Prepare the Beans for Mesquite Cookies

Break off the stems and any parts of the beans with little holes. My mesquite jelly post explains what those are.

Dry your bean pods so that they rattle when shaken and don’t bend at all.

You can dry them in a hot, dry car for a few days, in a dehydrator, or in the oven on the lowest setting.

You just need them to be as dry as possible before grinding or it will gum up the machine.

Grinding the Beans – What a Pain

To use the beans for baked goods you can grind the dry bean pods and make mesquite flour.

My mom had a wheat grinder when I was a kid and I remember dumping a whole 5 gallon bucket of wheat grain on the floor so I could swim it.

The fact that it’s super fun to play in is the extent of my wheat knowledge. I’ve never actually ground anything before so this was a real learning process for me.

Nathan’s parents very kindly gave us their old wheat grinder and I did the smallest amount of research I possibly could do and set about using it with an unreasonable amount of confidence.

I cleaned the machine out by running oatmeal through it and got it everywhere because I didn’t anticipate the force and speed of which the oatmeal exits the grinder.

I found the grain sacks to catch the shooting flour and then I made some more mistakes by badly tying a bag to the opening so it was blocked and then trying to grind mesquite beans that weren’t dry all the way.

This naturally led to the machine completely seizing up. Nathan helped me take it apart, which was a pain because some of the ancient bolts would not budge so he had to grind a line across to fit a flat head screw driver.

When we got it apart we could see the sugar in the beans had heated up and turned rock hard, forming a thick layer against the stone. I had to patiently wipe and chip it off.

I made sure my beans and the grinder were bone dry before I tried again.

Milling the Mesquite Beans Successfully!

I used a piece of elastic to secure the bag and made sure the opening was clear of any fabric folds so it would back up into the stones.

Then I poured in small batches of beans and checked on them frequently.

I also moved the dial to a “less fine” setting to try and prevent it binding to the grinder again.

I noticed my grinder had trouble grinding the shells around the seeds inside the pods. They would just end up rattling around the top after everything else had been ground.

So, every time I checked the grinder, I dumped out whatever was still in the top, sorted the seed shells out and threw the unground bean pieces back into the top.

After grinding the beans, the mesquite flour was pretty coarse.

So, I also sifted the mesquite flour to keep the woodier parts out of the flour. In the end I had flour with the texture of fine corn meal.

It took a while (grinding takes FOREVER) but finally I had enough to make some Brown Butter Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies.

My first experiments with mesquite flour were real failures because I tried to use only mesquite flour but it just doesn’t work completely on its own.

You can replace 1/4 of the flour in your recipes with mesquite flour. So if your recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, you would do 3/4 cup of regular flour and 1/4 cup of mesquite flour.

Cookies made with mesquite flour mixed in are decadent, sweet, hardy, and delicious! With an extra honey mesquite flavor that’s noticeable and delightful but not overpowering.

How to Make Mesquite Cookies

To make the cookies, start by grinding 1 1/2 cups of old fashioned oatmeal- not instant oatmeal.

Set that aside and brown 1 cup of butter in a pan by melting it over med-high heat while continually stirring until deep golden brown.

It foams up a lot so you’ll need to stir it to see the change in color.

It doesn’t look like anything is happening and then it changes really quickly so be ready to pull it off the stove.

Immediately pour that into a large bowl and add 1 cup of granulated sugar, 1 cup of brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.

Once those are mixed in, it should be cool enough to mix in 2 eggs.

In a separate bowl, combine the ground oatmeal, 1 cup mesquite flour, 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1 tsp salt. (cut the salt to 1/2 tsp if you aren’t adding the chocolate chips)

Add the dry to the wet ingredients and mix. You’ll probably have to get in there with your hands.

Mix in 12 ounces of semi sweet chocolate chips.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and use a 1 1/2 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion the dough.

Roll the dough balls in your hands to smooth the surface.

Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and don’t flatten them.

Bake for 8 minutes and then let cool.

They’ll look like they’re under baked but they’re not.

They’ll have only the tiniest bit of brown on the top and the middle looks pretty gooey. But, if you lift them up, you’ll see they’re nice and brown on the bottom and they’ll set up perfectly as they cool!

Enjoy!

Tips for Making Mesquite Cookies

-Use a spice grinder or a blender to grind the oatmeal. Putting the oatmeal in the actual wheat grinder is overkill because the oatmeal is so soft and it takes way too long. Grind it as fine as you can. It’ll still add nice texture, you just don’t want it to be chunky.

-I mixed everything by hand (not in a stand mixer) because I wanted the cookies to be dense, not fluffy.

-For the best cookies, bake the dough immediately and Do NOT put the dough in the fridge for later. It dries out and throws off the flavor and texture and the cookies won’t bake correctly. Or course it’s still cookie dough and will tasty no matter what. It’s just better baked fresh when butter hasn’t had time to seize up from being in the fridge.

-If you’re looking for a secret ingredient for that next cookie exchange come Christmas time, this could be it!

Things You Might Need

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Mesquite Bean Flour – I haven’t tried this brand of mesquite flour but ordering online is a good option if you don’t have any mesquite tree where you live. I do plan on ordering some so I’ll update this post when I do and give it a review.

Cookie Scoop – 1 1/2 tablespoon scooper

Cookie Sheet

Spice Grinder – This link is for a spice grinder that looks very similar to ours. We got a cheap spice grinder from walmart and immediately lost the locking piece that lets you turn it on. So now we have to stick a fork prong into the little hole anytime we want to use it. It’s not annoying enough to buy a new one.

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