Instructions

1. Grind the oat groats on their own before anything else joins them. Thrown into the processor with wet fruit they mill unevenly, and a half-cracked groat stays hard in a cookie that never sees an oven.
2. Look at the apricots before they go in. Sulphured ones stay soft and break down willingly; unsulphured ones are often leathery, and those want twenty minutes in warm water and a firm squeeze first.
3. Pulse the machine rather than running it. You want the apricot in visible flecks and the coconut still recognisable as shreds, because taken to a smooth paste this stops being an oatmeal cookie at all.
4. Grate the apple last and fold it through by hand. Its juice is what brings the dough together, and every minute it waits in a bowl it gives up more of that juice and browns.
5. Taste the dough and correct it at this point. Nothing downstream adds sweetness, and the lemon zest is the single thing keeping the whole bowl from reading as flat.
6. Press the mixture into rounds of even depth on solid sheets and flatten any domes. A mound keeps its middle furthest from the moving air and comes out doughy in the centre.
7. Dehydrate at 38 °C for 14 hours, turning the cookies over once the tops are firm enough to lift without stretching. The undersides sit in their own moisture until somebody moves them.
8. A finished cookie is dry to the touch, bends a little before it breaks, and leaves nothing on your fingers. Let one stand off the tray first, because they always feel firmer hot than they are.
9. Keep them in a tin on the bench for a week, or in the fridge for a month. The grated apple is fresh fruit and it is what sets that limit, not the oats.