COOKIES!!! :)

As promised, a real recipe!

I bought a few pounds of Better Batter Gluten-Free Flour a few months ago and finally gave it a whirl. I find the whole GF flour thing overwhelming with all the ingredients needed to make up a substitute, so I cheated and bought a well-reviewed mix. I made a bunch of cookies and brought them with me up to Timberman for a post-race treat. They were a little crumbly, as expected. But still delicious. Even more delicious with ice cream (yes, I did bring the cookies into a restaurant and made myself a sundae). I used my favorite peanut butter kiss cookie recipe and substituted the flour with Better Batter, cup for cup.

2 2/3 cups flour (I used Better Batter GF Flour!!)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
2/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Additional sugar
5 dozen kisses, unwrapped (I didn't have chocolate kisses handy, so I skipped that part and threw a cup or so of chocolate chips in the batter instead)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking soda. Add butter and peanut butter and mix until smooth. Add sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until smooth. I added in chocolate chips at this point.

Make balls out of level tablespoons of dough - add flour if needed. Roll in sugar. Didn't roll in sugar this time, not needed for the type of cookie I was making.

Bake 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet for 8 minutes.

Remove from oven and add 1 kiss to the center of each cookie. Return to the oven and bake for 2 more minutes. Skipped this step this time, just left in the oven for the extra 2 minutes.

SCD Peanut Butter Cake

Dan's birthday was a few days ago. I am committed to baking SCD style, so I searched for something that Dan would like. I found this recipe for peanut butter cake.

I actually mis-read the instructions and added 1/2 tsp of almond flour instead of almond flavor. It didn't seem to make any difference- in fact I only just noticed my mistake as I am writing this!

After a few bites Dan proclaimed that he likes the SCD desserts better than any other desserts I've made. This is huge, people! Dan is usually skeptical of the "healthy" food I like. So to hear that he likes this stuff so much is a good sign!!

Here we go...

All natural peanut butter. Just peanuts and salt!

Mmmmm... honey and PB in the blender

Throw in some banana
Add the other ingredients and blend. My blender did not cooperate. This batter was just too thick. Next time I think I'll put the egg in first or consider using a food processor instead. I was so stressed by my almost-smoking blender that I forgot to take any more photos until it came out of the oven.
It was moist, chewy, full of flavor. Delicious!!

Especially delicious with vanilla ice cream. No, the ice cream was not SCD approved. But it was a birthday celebration after all, gotta have ice cream :)

Fun Peanut Butter Cookies

I was seriously craving cookies a few weeks ago. Luckily, I was going to be on my way to my mom and stepdad's house the next day to drop off tax stuff (my stepdad is a CPA and is nice enough to do our taxes every year!!). A batch of thank-you cookies was in order... of course I snagged a few for Dan and I to enjoy before I boxed them up. I browsed through a bunch of blogs looking for something yummy and gooey but couldn't find much that matched the ingredients that I had on-hand. I was in the mood for peanut butter deliciousness (as always), so I decided just to make my usual Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies, but skip the kiss on top since I didn't have any Hershey's kisses. But I DID have chocolate chips, and a few Reese's peanut butter cups!!! I chopped up the PB cups and tossed in a bunch of the chips as well. Yummmm! They were delectable. I love this peanut butter cookie recipe, it is to die for! Betcha can't have just one!

Basic Peanut Butter Cookie batter

Throw in some chopped up Reese's PB cupsDon't forget the chocolate chips!

Ready to go in the oven
Oops... ate one already
These seriously hit the spot


Here is the original PB Kiss Cookie recipe, with my modifications for this batch in parenthesis:

Ingredients
2 2/3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
2/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Additional sugar
5 dozen kisses, unwrapped (instead of this, I used about 6 roughly chopped reese's peanut butter cups and a cup of chocolate chips and threw them in the batter)

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking soda. Add butter and peanut butter and mix until smooth. Add sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until smooth. (I threw the PB cups and choco chips in at this point.)

Make balls out of level tablespoons of dough - add flour if needed. Roll in sugar. (I skipped the rolling in sugar)

Bake 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet for 8 minutes. (I start checking at 5-6 minutes, I like them really gooey!)

Remove from oven and add 1 kiss to the center of each cookie. Return to the oven and bake for 2 more minutes. (I skipped this step since I didn't top with kisses. In fact, even when I do put kisses on these cookies I never put them back in the oven. They get plenty soft just from the heat of the cookies)