Smile!

Liked the way these palm trees were lit by the setting sun.

taken with an iPhone 4s and edited with Snapseed

Gluten Free Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve started taking notes while i’m baking which as made it easier to write up this gluten free vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies recipe. It’s kind of fun because I’ve been using the Evernote App on an iPad and I dictate the recipe notes while I go or immediately after. It works quite well. Never did I ever imagine that I would be coming up with Vegan-Gluten free cookie recipes.

My wife mentioned that we had some peanut butter and some Peanut Butter chocolate chip cookies would taste good… So I looked up a few recipes to find out how much peanut butter to add and this is what I came up with! As I didn’t find a Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookie recipe that contained no Grain flour, no dairy or eggs. I had to make a few educated guesses and I think these came out quite well. In fact I’m gonna make more soon!

Here’s the recipe:

3/4 cup almond flour
1 cup coconut flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon xantham gum
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Spectrum Organic vegetable shortening
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup of cane sugar
2 teaspoons Bourbon Vanilla
2TBS chia seed powder mixed with 6 TBS liquid-soy milk, almond, milk, hemp milk or water (I grind the raw chia seeds in a coffee grinder to make the powder)
Combine chia powder and milk in a small bowl and set aside while you add the other ingredients. Combine sugars and shortening in a bowl then add chia seeds and vanilla and mix together(I have found a Kitchen Aid mixer with a whip attachment works really well here). Add that mixture to the dry mixture and combine. Dough will be thick and seem like the dry ingredients won’t want to all combine at this point I added a TBS of soy milk just to soften it a bit, no need for extra liquid if you use a mixer, but you may if you mix by hand. The cookie dough is still stiff, but not dry, I was able to form small dough balls that didn’t fall apart when I squished them with my thumb. Place small balls of dough on a cookie sheet and smash the middle of them and place in a preheated oven to 350F and bake for 10 min.

Oh btw this is also Day 256 of my 366 photo a day project!
Also, I’d love to hear if you try these.

Added notes: a few people mentioned that they didn’t care for the hint of coconut flavor, so I decided to try and reduce the amount of coconut flour to 1/2 cup and increase the almond flour/meal to 1 and 1/4 cups… They turned out great as well, and I didn’t need to add any extra soy/almond milk at the end.

Had major storms race through the valley today…

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My neighbor has some neat desert flowers in her yard… I liked these today.

I set out to make a grain free/dairy free chocolate treat that my chocolate loving wife would love! And here it is! It turned out a bit like a brownie which may have been because of the extra soy milk. at first I thought it was going to gooey in the middle, but i let it cool and it turned out really moist like a great brownie. I’ll reduce the liquid next time and see if its too dry. I also think this would work in a 9X13 pan as a cake or brownies. When I try it again I’ll update this post.

1 cup almond meal
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup flax meal(I grind the flax seeds in a coffee grinder)
1 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 and a half mashed bananas
1 tbs ground chia seeds added to 3tbs of soy milk
2 tsp bourbon vanilla
1/3 cup coconut oil
4 tbs soy milk

Way happy to have caught the last few moments of light on the clouds

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Found these cool stumps on a walk in the Mountains

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Love the early morning desert sky

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