Chocolate Banana Health Bombs!

I know, I know. Not the best recipe title, but I couldn't think of any other way to describe them.

Sunday was the one year anniversary of Matt's dad going to Heaven and he wanted cookies for dinner. Of course I said, "sure thing!".

I made Matt and the kids a batch of my Gluten-dairy-free-chocolate-chip-cookies (with an added 1/4 cup of protein powder) and then had to figure out something that I could eat that was like a cookie.

Here it is... a grain/gluten-free, dairy-free, naturally sweetened cookie.

In a medium bowl blend together:
1 banana
2 organic eggs
3 Tablespoons Organic Flaxseed, freshly ground
3 Tablespoons Organic Maple Syrup

Once they are thoroughly blended, stir in:
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups Almond Flour
1/4 cup Raw Cacao Powder
1/4 cup Tapioca Flour
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut.

Batter mixed up and ready to bake

Drop by spoonful onto Parchment Paper lined baking sheet.

Bake 10 minutes at 375F

Then gently move to cooling rack to cool.

They are delicious, have a good texture and 3 grams of protein per cookie!!! 

My batch was 20 cookies.

Primo Paleo Chcolate Chip Cookies

Since finding out I had a cane sugar allergy several months ago, I have missed chocolate chip cookies. And well, chocolate in general. But especially my fav cookies, Gluten and Dairy-free Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I spent hours online looking for a chocolate chip recipe that fit all my allergy requirements and finally decided just to "wing it" and make my own.

Ingredients:
2 organic eggs
1 Tablespoon unsulphured blackstrap molasses
1/2 cup organic coconut oil
1 Tablespoon almond (or coconut) milk
2 Tablespoons organic maple syrup
1/2 cup organic coconut palm sugar
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/3 cup tapioca starch
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 and 3/4 cup almond flour
2 oz of unsweetened bakers chocolate squares

Use a hand mixer and cream together the first 6 ingredients. Add remaining dry ingredients, excluding the chocolate, and blend until you have a firm dough. Chop up the chocolate squares to the size that you would like them. Stir them in.

Pick up a small amount of dough and roll it into a 1 inch sized ball using your hands. Flatten ball with your hands so that you have a nice, round, circle and place it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cookies will not expand in diameter while baking so they can be placed fairly close to each other but not touching.

Bake for 10-12 minutes at 375F or until they are a light golden brown on top. Remove from baking sheet and allow to cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!

Yields 2 dozen cookies

Amazing Paleo Strawberry Chocolate Ice cream Sandwiches

While I was at my mom's last week I got a craving for chocolate and ice cream. Here is the strawberry lemon paleo "ice cream" that we made and the chocolate cookies to put it on.

Chocolate Cookies

I made these before, as chocolate chip cookies but my newly found allergy to cane sugar left me with no viable chocolate chip options. So plain chocolate it was!

In a bowl Mix:
1 cup almond butter (raw, unsweetened)
1 organic egg
1/4 cup raw organic honey
1/2 tsp Baking Powder, Aluminum Free
12 tsp sea salt
2 Tablespoons Raw Cacao Powder .

Spoon onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper and flatten with the back of a spoon.
Bake them at 350F for 10 minutes and then carefully remove them and place on a cooling rack. Recipe yields about 11 cookies.

Once they have cooled to close to room temperature, place them in the freezer while you get the ice cream started.

Strawberry Lemon Paleo Ice Cream

1 pint organic strawberries
1 can full fat Organic Coconut Milk, unsweetened
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 Tablespoon organic raw honey
1/2 tsp sea salt


In a large bowl place the strawberries, rinsed with stems removed. Using a masher (I used my metal potato masher), mash them up to a mostly liquid consistency. Gently stir in the other ingredients until completely blended together.

Pour into your ice cream maker (I use a counter-top Cuisinart one, the kind where the bowl goes in your freezer until you are ready to use it). It takes about 20-30 minutes to get the ice cream to set-up to a good consistency.

Once the ice cream is ready, spoon it onto one of the cookies and then place another on top. Put the cookies immediately back into the freezer. Let them set for about 1 hour in the freezer (or you can eat them right away and have them be just as delicious but significantly messier) before serving.  Any leftover ice cream can be eaten right away or stored in an air tight container in the freezer. To re-thaw, let it set at room temp for about 10 minutes for best texture.

These ice cream sandwiches were a HUGE hit with my family and met all of our dietary requirements: gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, peanut-free, sugar-free, oat-free, etc.  I hope that you enjoy them as much as we did!

Christmas Cookies

Today I made up a batch of sugar cookies (my fav cookie of all time!). To me, it isn't Christmas until we've made sugar cookies.

Here is the recipe:

Sugar Cookie Recipe:

1 1/2 cups organic powdered sugar

1 cup organic Earth Balance vegan butter

1 teaspoon organic vanilla

1 large organic egg

2 1/2 cups rice flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

In a large bowl beat powdered sugar, Earth Balance, vanilla and egg with electric mixer on medium until well blended. Stir in the remaining dry ingredients. Cover tightly (I used saran wrap) and refrigerate at least two hours. 

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Line your cooking tray with parchment paper. 

Divide dough in half. Roll one half out to 1/4 inch thick on parchment paper. (place a sheet of saran wrap over top of dough before rolling out to prevent it from sticking to the rolling pin) Use cookie cutters to cut into desired shapes. Gather scraps into a ball, roll and cut again. Repeat with remaining scraps and second half of dough.  Place cookies on parchment paper on cooking tray. 

Bake for 7-9 minutes or until edges are just turning golden brown. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire cooling rack. 

Xander was LOVING his! We had to sneak a couple before dinner!

So delicious! 

They are gluten free, dairy free and organic. It is nice to be able to have a treat and not feel like I am poisoning my kids! 

Organic Gluten & Dairy Free Chocolate Chip Cookies!!

Got a bad craving for some chocolate chips cookies so I whipped some up tonight! Here is the recipe:

Blend together:
1 cup Organic Coconut Oil
1 1/2 cups Organic Cane Sugar
1 T Organic Unsulphured Molasses
1 t Organic Vanilla Extract
Once it is creamed together, add in 2 organic eggs

Add
2 1/2 cups Organic Brown Rice Flour
1 t Baking Soda
1 1/2 t Xanthan Gum
1 t  Sea Salt
  Blend with hand beaters until thoroughly mixed (mixture will be very crumbly)

Stir in 1, 9 ounce package of Organic Semi-Sweet Cacao Chips (non dairy, woo hoo!) by hand

Make into cookie shapes on a baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 9-10 minutes (or until golden brown).

Cookies and Cousins

Today we celebrated Christmas with Matt's siblings and all their kids. Gabriella was very excited to see all her "friends and cousins"!

On Saturday evening I baked two batches of cookies, shortbread cookies and gingerbread. The shortbread cookies were from a mix (Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Shortbread Cookie Mix). They were TERRIBLE! They held up good but tasted horrible. This is the third time I have made them and I have yet to get them to turn out good. I will never buy them again!

The gingerbread ones however, were amazing!! I used the recipe that my friend Danielle made. You can get it here at Passions Collide. They are gluten free and egg free.

This morning we woke up and it was snowing again! Woo hoo!! Gabriella picked out some snow clothes (one of her gloves was an oven mitt because she couldn't find the other one) and headed out to the back deck. Such a cutie pie!!

I whipped up a batch of sugar cookies and soon it was time to party!

We exchanged family gifts (so much fun!!) and then tried to snag a picture of all the kiddos together. 

Blaizen looks like he is trying to give Joshua a kiss....

And a silly picture!!

Time for cookie decorating!! The kids all went around the island in our kitchen and had a blast with frosting, sprinkles and all kinds of decorations. 

More decorating. 

Gabriella giving her "little dude" a kiss

(she kept calling the gingerbread men "little dudes")

Some of Gabriella's cookies. She had a lot of fun helping me put frosting on and then putting all the candy and sprinkles on by herself. 

Lily decorating her gingerbread man

Jessie getting in on the fun!

It was a fun day. So nice to get all the family together and watch the kids enjoying each other. They get along pretty good for the most part. And it only took me 30 minutes to clean up my kitchen after all the frosting and sprinkles! Below is my Gluten Free and Dairy Free sugar cookie recipe. Feel free to use and re-post, but please reference this blog. 

Sugar Cookie Recipe:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 cup Earth Balance vegan butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 large egg

2 1/2 cups rice flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

In a large bowl beat powdered sugar, Earth Balance, vanilla and egg with electric mixer on medium until well blended. Stir in the remaining dry ingredients. Cover tightly (I used saran wrap) and refrigerate at least two hours. 

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray (I used Olive Oil). 

Divide dough in half. Roll one half out to 1/4 inch thick on parchment paper. (place a sheet of saran wrap over top of dough before rolling out to prevent it from sticking to the rolling pin) Use cookie cutters to cut into desired shapes. Gather scraps into a ball, roll and cut again. Repeat with remaining scraps and second half of dough.  Place cookies on greased cookie sheet. 

Bake for 7-9 minutes or until edges are just turning golden brown. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire cooling rack. 

*my double batch made two cookie sheets worth of cookies. 

Funniest Night So Far

I think tonight was our funniest night as a family so far. I say "so far" because with Matt and I as parents together, we are bound to have funnier nights than this.

Gabriella and I decided to make Matt some cookies tonight to celebrate his birthday early. I have the exact number of eggs that I need for his cake tomorrow so I browsed the cookbook looking for a recipe that had no eggs and that I could make gluten-free. We found a match with "Russian Tea Cakes". I was excited, they are one of my favorite cookies!!

We girls mixed them up and put them in the oven to bake. Every time I checked on them in the oven, Gabriella would yell, "Stay back! Cuidado!"

They were finally done and I pulled them out of the oven. Half of them crumbled when I took them off the cookie sheet and then they crumbled again when I dusted them with powdered sugar.

I got a little "handsy" with Matt. I've always wanted to put a powdered sugar hand-print on someone!

Gabriella was really upset and cried every time she took a bite of her cookie because it would crumble all over. Matt rubbed a handful of crumbs all over his face to try and calm her down. It didn't work with her but he and I both had some laughs!

We finally got her to eat some more and then she loved them!

When Matt rubbed them all over his face he made a giant mess on the floor and Gabriella wanted to help clean it up. As you can see in the background, Josie got some birthday cookies too.

I had put some paper towels under the wire cookie rack to catch all the crumbs to make it easier to clean up and thought that we could eat the crumbs with a spoon since all the cookies were crumbling. Matt put it on the floor and he and Gabriella started eating it. 

She wasn't too sure about it at first, but then she joined right in. 

"You eat it with you hands!"

(she refers to herself as "you")

Showing me that her face looked like Daddy's after they got done eating without their hands like puppies do. 

Little powdered sugar boy!

We all laughed so hard tonight! We had a gigantic mess on the floor and counter, my entire kitchen was covered in powdered sugar, our cookies were a total disaster, and we laughed harder than we have in a long time. I love how God and a goofy husband can turn a potentially stressful situation into a hilarious family memory!