THE chocolate chip cookie

Stop the press. I finally found the gluten-free chocolate chip cookie. It's easy to make soy-free, too. I just made a double batch of dough, hoping that this one will yield enough for me to share with friends. Unfortunately, I can't seem to bake enough at a time that there are any available for photos, but luckily Angela of Oh She Glows provided us with the recipe, photos, and an explanation of different ingredients she tried. I usually prefer big, soft oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but these have an amazing chewy bite, even though they're thin, which provides an almost caramel texture. The flours are oat and almond: common, healthy and well-known (no questions like "What the heck is sorghum?"). The oats, ground in the blender, lend their flavor subtely, while the almonds create richness. Go mix up a batch!

Blackstrap gingersnaps

Dinner was spaghetti with tomato sauce that Shetha and I made (and she canned) a few weeks ago. So I had to do something a little more interesting with dessert-- which is easier, of course, once the baby has gone to bed. I was in the mood for something with spices. With a quick flip through "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar," I found a nice, short recipe for Blackstrap Gingersnaps. Yum!

To make these gluten free, I used 1/2 C sorghum flour, 1/2 C coconut flour, 1/2 C Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All-Purpose Baking Flour, and 1/4 C buckwheat flour (for the 1 3/4 C all purpose flour). I'm not sure how much nutmeg I used, but it was fresh grated and smelled amazing. Fresh really makes all the difference.

Since I like chewy gingersnaps, I didn't squash the balls of dough flat. They stayed soft, but didn't quite cook all the way through. I tried a second round flattened, lowered the heat and baked them for a couple additional minutes, but they got a little dark around the edges. Oh well, they still taste great!

Pumpkin muffin tops with pecans

Just when I thought I couldn't be any more free, I've had to eliminate soy, beans and legumes for the week. Egads! Although I enjoy the vegan and gluten-free challenge, soy was not something I wanted to do without.

My first day, Monday, was a bit painful. I mostly ate single foods, like cherries for a snack and boiled butterball potatoes (with olive oil, smoked sea salt and freshly ground pepper) for lunch. Not enough to fill my belly or satisfy my appetite. So of course I turned to baked goods.

The recipe calls these "pumpkin hermits," but I've never heard that term. As soon as I read the description and ingredients, I knew I had to make them-- and they're more like muffin tops than cookies.

Here are the substitutions you will need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour: 1 C of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour, plus 1/3 C each quinoa flour, coconut flour, and tapioca flour or potato starch, plus 1/4 tsp xanthan gum
  
  You could also use 2/3 C each of the single-source flours.
  
• 1/4 cup butter: 1/4 C soy-free Earth Balance
  
• 1 large egg: 1 Ener-G egg (follow package instructions and whisk til foamy)
  
  You could also try ground flax seed or mashed banana.
  

I left out the dried fruit and added about 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg. They turned out delicious and wonderfully spiced, great for breakfast, a snack or dessert!

Molasses cookies

Happy Vegan Month of Food! To start it off right: cookies! This was my favorite cookie recipe before the great event that removed wheat (and the rest of gluten-y items) from our lives. I haven't put much into finding new gluten-free cookie recipes because most of them are such a disappointing waste of ingredients.

 

But this recipe is amazing. It always produces chewy, spicy cookies-- almost a light gingerbread-- equally good warm out of the oven or cooled down the next day. And it makes the perfect amount of dough to bake all at once on a standard cookie sheet, so you don't have to refrigerate the leftovers and worry about getting around to baking the rest.

For the 1 cup and 2 tbsp flour, I used almost a cup of sorghum flour, topped off with Bob's Red Mill gluten free all-purpose baking mix, plus the two tablespoons of the latter. I also added 1/4 tsp of xanthan gum. And as is the case with any cinnamon-y spiced item, I always add a bit of fresh grated nutmeg. Don't bother with the powdered stuff.

Go forth and conquer the vegan, gluten-free molasses cookie!

Strawberry rhubarb crumble

One of the strawberries in the pint I just bought was fuzzy, so I knew it was time to act. I had some gorgeous deep red rhubarb from the farmers' market-- what could be simpler (or more delicious) than a crumble?

Take everything in this recipe as a guideline. You can use different berries (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries), different citrus juice (lime, orange, grapefruit), different amounts of spices and topping. Best of all, only only mixing bowl gets dirty and you get to use your hands-- no wooden spoons required!

Strawberry rhubarb crumble

vegan, gluten-free

Ingredients

• 1 pint strawberries, hulled and chopped into largish bite-size pieces, about 1/2"
• a similar amount of rhubarb, about six long, thinner stalks cut into slightly smaller pieces
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups oats
• 1/4 cup margarine (I use Earth Balance)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg, fresh grated is best
• a tiny pinch of salt

Directions

• Pre-heat oven to 375 F.
• Combine filling-- strawberries through cornstarch-- in an 8 or 9" cake pan. Nonstick is nice.
• In a medium mixing bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients for the topping with your hands to smush the margarine into the oats. It doesn't need to be perfectly mixed.
• Use your hands to crumble pea-sized bits of topping over the filling in the pan, evenly distributing it on the surface.
• Bake for half an hour, or until topping is lightly browned and the juice in the filling has thickened.

Peanut butter cups

I love chocolate. And there's nothing like a sweet ending to even an already-satisfying meal. The other night I made sundaes using the leftover cookie dough from the oatmeal cream pies-- a scoop of vanilla soy ice cream covered with small chunks of dough, drizzled with chocolate syrup. It was a treat after an exhausting day at work and a great way to use leftovers.

The real reason for this post, however, is these ridiculous peanut butter cups I made last night. My friend Ann loves peanut butter, but we're running out of cookies to make and share that feature this esteemed ingredient (check out her vegan cookie project blog). After researching peanut butter cup recipes, I took the simplicity of this VegWeb recipe, the added sophistication of Have Cake Will Travel's recipe, and the healthy twist of Alicia Silverstone's recipe using graham crackers. While the latter sounds delicious, I have yet to find wheat-free graham crackers. Maybe I'll try this recipe after I make my own. I had just read about the incredible amount of calcium and iron in blackstrap molasses, and its mellow sweetness sounded perfect to smooth out the peanut butter filling.

You will need cupcake liners. I love my reusable silicone baking cups, but I only have eight after a work potluck wherein four got thrown away-- warn your friends that they're not trash! You can use regular disposable liners or mini ones, either way it's nice to have the crinkled edge and a container to hold it in so that your hands don't get too messy while eating.

Homemade peanut butter cups

vegan, gluten-free

Ingredients

• 1 cup of dairy- and gluten- free chocolate chips
  
  I like E. Guittard 61% cacao semisweet wafers-- they melt beautifully.


• 1/2 cup of peanut butter
  
  I'm partial to smooth, organic pb with only two ingredients-- peanuts and salt!


• 1/4 cup powdered sugar


• 2 tbsp blackstrap molasses


• 1 tsp vanilla extract


• 1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Directions

• Melt chocolate in a glass bowl by microwaving for 30 seconds, stirring thoroughly, and repeating. Should take about 2 minutes total microwave time.


• With a large dinnerware spoon, scoop a heaping spoonful of melted chocolate into a liner and smooth it around, up the sides of the container. After each one is done, go back and make sure that the bottom of the cups are completely covered in chocolate. Most of mine had bare spots from the tip of the spoon touching down. This doesn't have to be perfect by a long shot, though.


• Place be-chocolated liners on a plate in the fridge to cool while mashing remaining ingredients together in a bowl.


• Once peanut butter filling is a smooth paste, drop 1 tsp at a time into liners to try to get an equal amount in each.


• Once all of the filling is used up, press flat in each liner with fingers.


• Melt the remaining chocolate again if you have to, and use the spoon to place an equal amount on the top of each liner.


• Shake each liner so that melted chocolate smoothly covers all of the filling.


• Put back in fridge to cool about half an hour. I made mine late at night, so they had overnight to solidify. Otherwise I couldn't have waited!

Oatmeal cream pies

When I saw these amazing oatmeal cream pies on Sugar-Skull.com I knew I had to make them. Tonight. Well, it actually turned out to be the next night, after a running-out-of-cat-food emergency.

At any rate, I followed the recipe as best I could, subbing 1 cup of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour plus 1/2 cup barley flour for the 1 1/2 cups of "regular" flour; EnerG egg replacer instead of the flax eggs; added about 1/4 tsp of freshly grated nutmeg along with the cinnamon; and used the vanilla but not the cream cheese in the filling.

Mine spread out something awful and melded together at the edges, but they taste delicious and were quicker to make than other sandwich cookies I've tried.

I will likely make these again, using less margarine over all and subbing some of it out with applesauce, refrigerating the scooped cookie dough before baking (an not flattening the balls of dough), and making way less cream filling-- I have more than half of it left after all of the cookies are gone.