Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

When a friend is hurting, what can you do?

One of my nearest and dearest is really going through a rough time. Without going too much into detail, her teenage granddaughter has gotten herself mixed up with a bad crowd, and is now going through the painful process of learning that there are consequences for one's actions.

Watching it all happen has been difficult--for the girl's grandmother, and for me. It's strange to be on the other side of it all. I remember being that young, and thinking that adults couldn't possibly understand.

We do.

I want to help... somehow. I find myself feeling inadequately prepared, wanting to do something but not knowing what. So I listen. I offer to drive when we go somewhere. We have lunch together.

And I made some cookies.



I figured a few delicious cookies were in order. I made two different kinds of cookies from the same recipe: plain, with sliced almonds, and some made in mini-muffin tin and topped with a blob of seedless raspberry no-sugar-added-fruit-sweetened jelly: a pb&j cookie.


I made these sugar-free because of dietary needs--but can be made with regular sugar. They're are also gluten-free.

These are so good... I hope they offer my friend a few moments of enjoyment during this difficult time.


Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
makes about 2 dozen
from Kalyn's recipe

1 large egg
1 cup sugar or sweetener of choice (I used Whey Low Granular Type D)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used homemade vanilla extract)
1 cup natural peanut butter
1 tsp. water
1/3 cup chopped peanuts (optional)(I used sliced almonds... chocolate chips would be great here, too.)

Preheat oven to 350*F.

In a bowl, beat together the egg, sugar/sub, baking powder, and vanilla until creamy. Add peanut butter and water and beat together.

Stir in nuts if using.

For regular cookies:
Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Press with tines of a fork to make cross-hatch pattern. Bake 15 minutes, or until puffed and lightly browned. They will be soft to the touch.

Allow to cool on the sheet for about 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack. Cookies will firm up as they cool.

For PB&J cookies:
Fill greased mini-muffin tins about half-full with cookie dough. Press flat with fingers or back of a spoon. Bake about 10-15 minutes, or until puffed and lightly browned. Cool for 5 minutes in tin, then carefully remove to a cooling rack. Top with sugar-free jelly of choice.



This is my entry for SHF: Sweet Gifts, hosted by the talented Danielle of Habeas Brulee. See the roundup of many delicious sweet gifts here.

Caramel Chocolate Pistachio Bars

Caramel Chocolate Pistachio Bars

Here's another fabulous cookie I baked yesterday. These are so good--I can't recommend them enough. Sweet and salty at it's finest!

Don't let the amount of butter scare you--in fact, I reduced the butter from the original recipe and they still taste decadent.


Caramel Chocolate Pistachio Bars
adapted from this recipe

Crust
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup butter, melted
1 cup shelled pistachios

Filling
½ cup butter
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup sweetened condensed milk

Topping
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350*F.

Crust: Combine flour and brown sugar. Stir in melted butter until combined. Mixture should hold together when pressed in palm. Press onto bottom of ungreased 13x9x2-inch pan. Place pistachios evenly over unbaked crust.

Filling: Combine butter and brown sugar in a saucepan set over medium heat, stirring constantly, entil entire surface of mixture begins to boil. Boil, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in sweetened condensed milk.

Assembly: Pour filling mixture carefully and evenly over pistachios. You may need to spread with a silicone spatula to even out. Bake in upper half of oven for about 20 minutes, or until entire caramel layer is bubbly. DO NOT OVERBAKE. Remove from oven.

Topping: Sprinkle chips evenly over caramel layer; allow to melt and swirl over surface carefully.

Cool cookies in pan; cut into bars and serve. (I had to score the tops with a knife then use a fork to get through the thick crust. That worked perfectly!)

Sugar- and Gluten-Free Maple-Pistachio Sandies

I've gone too far.

I have this bag of rice flour just calling to be experimented with... so yesterday was my first try. And you can't win 'em all, can you?

The dough came together nicely, and tasted okay in dough form, though a little 'floury.' When cooked they're even MORE floury. They actually suck all the moisture from your mouth as you chew.

Not good.

Okay, they're not completely horrible, but they are just too... sandy. They explode into a million crumbs as soon as they go into your mouth. And I don't think stevia was the right sweetener for this cookie--there was definitely a slightly bitter taste going on there.

That said, this dough would make an excellent SF/GF pie crust.

I made these for one of the sugar-free treats at my upcoming holiday open house... and I need to figure out how to resurrect them. Coat them in chocolate, perhaps? Any ideas?

And if anyone reading this is a gluten-free guru, can you tell me where I went wrong here?

Sugar- and Gluten-Free Maple-Pistachio Sandies

makes 3 dozen

2 cups rice flour

1 cup salted butter

3/4 teaspoon powdered stevia (or any sweetener to equal 3/4 cup sugar)

2 tablespoons sugar-free maple syrup

salted pistachios

Preheat oven to 350*F. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until blended. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Top with a pistachio and press down to flatten lightly. (These cookies do not spread, but puff up slightly while baking.)

Bake for 15 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

The idea was a buttery cookie with a nice salty-sweet balance. I just ate another one with a squeeze of SF maple syrup on it. That was a little better, but I still needed a bottle of water with it.

And here's a sleepy pic of Thundercat... isn't that just adorable?

Exotic Desserts from the Sultan's Garden

**Edited note: I won! I won! I really won! See the roundup here.**

Habeas Brulee recently posted about a new book titled The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M. Valente, which is the final book in a two-book series.

It's the continuing saga of a mysterious unnamed girl with tattooed eyelids living in the Sultan's garden who weaves tales to entertain the boy who is heir to the Sultanate. Rich with food and spice imagery, these stories are woven and intertwined, layer upon layer. Publisher's Weekly called it, “A fairy tale lover’s wildest dream come true.... Valente has created a thought-provoking storytelling tour de force.”

I am intrigued. Mesmerized, even.

When I think of fairy tales a la Arabian Nights, and of course cultures that would have a Sultan, I think of Egypt, Turkey, Syria and India, balmy weather, dates, nuts, honey, spices and boiled-milk treats.



And as I wait for the books to become available to me, I was inspired by the excerpts and reviews I read on the internet and came up with three desserts as part of Habeas Brulee's foodblogging event, From the Crease of My Right Eye.


Cardamom-Kissed Dates Stuffed with Hazelnuts

6 medjool dates, pitted
1/8 cup chopped hazelnuts
1 tablespoon honey (or agave nectar)
pinch ground cardamom

Combine the hazelnuts with the honey and cardamom. Stuff nut mixture into the pitted dates. It sounds easier than it is--I used my fingers, which worked very well, because the spiced honey clung to the outsides of the dates, too. Divine.


Fruit-Nut Squares
adapted from Walnut-Date Burfi found in The Complete Book of Indian Cooking by Suneeta Vaswani

Note: I had to deviate from the original recipe because my reduced-milk result turned out to be not strong enough to hold the fruit and nuts, even after chilling overnight... so I baked it down further to make these delicious squares.

Butter an 8-inch square pan.

In a heavy saucepan, bring 3 cups of whole or 2% milk to a low boil over medium to medium-low heat. Reduce heat as needed to maintain a gentle boil. Stir every 5-6 minutes. Boil gently until reduced by half (took me about 30-35 minutes). Remove from heat and set aside.

Coarsely chop 8 ounces pitted medjool dates; combine with 8 ounces sultana raisins and 1 cup chopped walnuts. Add to boiled milk and stir to combine. Pour into prepared pan and bake in a preheated 350*F oven for 30 minutes or until lightly browned and set.

Remove from oven and cool thoroughly. Cut into squares and serve. Addictive.


Frozen Treat in the Sultan's Garden

I made this in a custard ramekin, and it was rich--too much for one person. Could easily be dessert for two.

Fruit squares (see recipe above)
Vanilla Ice Cream (I used sugar-free)
Chopped salted pistachios
1 tablespoon honey (I used agave nectar)
Dash ground cloves

Fill a custard ramekin half-way with softened vanilla ice cream and top with fruit squares. You may have to cut them to fit just so. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 1 hour to harden.

To remove treat from ramekin, gently dip in shallow warm water to lightly melt ice cream. Invert onto a serving plate. Garnish top with chopped salted pistachios.

Combine honey with cloves and drizzle over dessert. Sinfully delicious.


I found this a very inspiring project. Thanks to Habeas Brulee for this foodblogging event, and vigorous applause to Catherynne M. Valente for creating what promises to be a beloved set of books. I can't wait to read them!

Oatmeal, Raisin and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have this box of oat bran flour hanging around that I've been looking for more uses for... not to mention my constant quest for sugar-free sweets!

A couple of weeks ago Mr.W and I were visiting our local Barnes & Noble where I can most often be found either in the cookbook section or in the attached coffee shop reading them. I happened to grab the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. My grandmother had a paper-back copy years ago when I was learning how to cook, and I read it cover-to-cover several times. But back then I wasn't really interested in anything that contained something called bran. G'ma never would buy unusual ingredients anyway. But I found that recipe and copied it down.

Since then I've been thinking about the recipe. Maybe it could be morphed with my memories of a yummy little oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chip cookie that my mother used to make... way back before she was diagnosed, when she would make cookies with us.

Thus a new cookie is born. Using Fannie Farmer's recipe as a mere guide, I developed these wheat- and sugar-free cookies that taste just like the real thing. I even gobbled up at least two cookies' worth of uncooked dough. Mmm... so good. And as always, this could also be made with real sugar--I'd go with light brown sugar, myself.

Again, apologies for the poor photo quality. Mr.W has our digi cam with him on his trip... so I'm stuck with my cell phone camera.


Oatmeal, Raisin and Chocolate Chip Cookies (Wheat Free)
yield: 2 dozen small cookies

1/4 cup butter or margarine, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar substitute (to equal the sweetness of sugar; I used granulated Whey Low, but you could also use Splenda)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup oat bran flour
1/2 cup regular-cooking oats
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (okay, I made a compromise here with the chips... but a girl's got to have chocolate sometimes!)
1/4 cup raisins (I actually used chopped prunes, because they're a similar texture and taste without the added sugar)

With a fork, thoroughly combine butter and sugar substitute. Mix in egg and vanilla. Add oat bran flour, oats, soda and salt and stir until just combined. Add chips and raisins and stir until just mixed in. You don't want to overwork the cookie dough.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. These cookies puff up a little but, but they DO NOT SPREAD, so no need to space them too far apart. You'll want to flatten your little cookie dough blobs a little bit with floured fingers.

(Now I made my cookies a little too big--rounded tablespoonfuls, actually--and it made about 1-1/2 dozen cookies, plus about 2T uncooked cookie dough right in my mouth. Yes, I am guilty of the sin of gluttony.)

Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and cool 3-5 minutes on cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.


You'll never miss the flour. And seriously, I can't even tell the difference between sugar and whey low. It's a little pricey, but oh-so-yummy. And no, I don't work for these people, or receive incentive of any kind for writing that.

Potential warning: because these contain lots of fiber, and especially if you use prunes instead of raisins, like I did... well. You can imagine what might happen if you eat too many.

Zucchini Heaven

As I muddle through use of my stockpile of veg from various friends' gardens and farmer's market forays, I'm finding new ways to use the same old same old.

For instance, the zucchini. Quite a large zucchini, in fact.

I decided I would separate this overgrown fruit into thirds and prep them for current and future use. One-third was peeled and cut up for a pan-fried vegetable sometime this week. One-third was peeled and finely grated (using the tiny holes on the grater) for use in baking. And one-third was grated using the large holes on the grater for things like fritters or omlettes, where you would want the obvious taste and texture. And into baggies the grated mass went, and into the freezer.

Except for one cup of fine-grated zucchini, used in these.

Kitchen Sink Cookies

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon coconut rum
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup regular-cooking oats
3/4 cup shredded sweetened coconut
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup shredded zucchini

Beat shortening, sugar, egg and coconut rum together until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and mix until smooth. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 8-10 minutes or until top just begins to brown. Remove from oven; cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool before serving.

Note: I found it best to bake these cookies in the upper third of my oven. They cooked a bit more slowly that way (actually took about 15 minutes each batch), but they were more evenly baked.


I brought these cookies to a friend's home and everyone absolutely loved them. The texture was very nice, the mix of ingredients made them very interesting. Kids and adults alike gobbled them up! I hope you'll try them, too.

Mrs.W