Almond chickpea cookies with chia seeds and dark choc buttons

My girlfriend Stella is going on a hectic trip around Asia, leaving today so when we met up on the weekend i just had to make her some going away treats to enjoy for her last weekend in Sydney.

She can't eat anything gluten so lately i have been saving lots of gluten free baking recipes in Evernote (i strongly recommend using Evernote its just a neat little program that lets you save pages or sections on the internet for viewing later on). This is one of the recipes i had in mind for her, these are gluten free and vegan (except i didnt use vegan chocolate)

I recently switched to almond butter instead of peanut butter but i didn't take a liking to it .. so I'm back to KRAFT's crunchy PB :) So i had exactly half a cup of almond chia seed spread enough for this recipe!

These are incredibly simple to make. In comparison to other flours, chickpea flour has a higher protein count, and also i just found out that when you mix equal parts with water - it becomes an egg replacer in vegan cooking!

I love the sprinkle of almond meal and sea salt on top before baking, this really gives it another dimension of yummy. But ofcourse you can keep them plain and simple and omit the chocolate chips as well.

Recipe from familyfreshcooking.com

Almond Chickpea Cookies

Makes about 14 cookies

NOTES:

If you do not have garbanzo flour you could also try using oat flour or corn flour. Here is how to make roasted or unroasted chickpea flour at home.

I used smooth natural salted almond butter. Crunchy would be tasty too. Be sure to stir in all the oil that has risen to the top of the jar so you can easily combine the nut butter into the batter.

Add some chocolate chips for a slightly more indulgent cookie.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup Garbanzo (Chickpea) Flour

1 cup Brown Rice Flour (i used rice flour)

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

3/4 teaspoon fine Sea Salt

1/2 cup Almond Butter (i used almond chia seed butter)

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

4 full droppers Plain Stevia Drops or an equivalent of 4 teaspoons sugar

3/4 cup light unsweetened Coconut Milk

OPTIONAL GARNISH

1/4 cup Almond Flour

a few pinches of fine Sea Salt

a sprinkle of Sucanat or Stevia Powder

METHOD

Preheat oven to 350˚F with the rack in the middle.

Prepare cookie sheet with Silpat or parchment paper.

In a medium bowl mix together dry ingredients.

In another bowl mix together wet ingredients.

Combine wet and dry ingredients to form a batter.

Taste the batter and add more sweetener if desired.

Make cookie shapes with about 1 1/2 tablespoons of batter per cookie.

Flatten with your hands and press almond meal into the tops.

Sprinkle on some salt.

Bake cookies for about 10-12 minutes or until the bottoms are golden brown.

Let the cookies cool for a few minutes and then transfer to cooling racks.

Enjoy!

Stella i hope you have an awesome trip around Asia, lots of eating sight seeing and back packing around, see you when you get back xx


And also, you might have heard of a new frozen yogurt joint in Strathfield (maybe not new, but it was new to me!) it's called MOOCHI and its a small shop with limited tables but always has a line but its totally worth the wait!

On the night that i went they had yogurt flavours plain, green tea, pomegranate, and ?, but we were told they change the flavours around and have also had mango at one point (yum!)

They have mini, small, medium and large sizes i think, the large one is pretty big i noticed a few people got them in take away. There are lots of different topping options (all 50 cents each topping) they had lots of fruits, marshmallows, chocolate chips, biscuits, cereal toppings, very very exciting but for indecisive people like me it can be a bit of a head ache haha.

(left cup) berry and pomegranate yogurt with strawberries

Shop 1, 7-9 Churchill Ave Strathfield NSW 2135 info@iheartmoochi.com.au

(front cup) green tea yogurt with strawberries and lychee

Inception cookies & a shout-out to Lucy&theRunaways

A couple of weekends ago Bigbear & I got together with Nat& Hughie for a baking session! I had found this recipe for oreo stuffed cookies and thought it would be fun to make one weekend :)

Natalie has an awesome fashion blog (go and check it out HERE) i am a regular reader and i just absolutely love her fashion sense its totally unique & out there, she makes the outfits look good (not the other way around! hehe).

We skype most days at work but it'll be her last week on skype this week (as she has resigned from her job) but im sure we will keep in contact still :)

Before we started baking we had to buy some ingredients from the shops so after our trip to woolies we had some brunch! Fries with sweet chilli and sourcream, yum :) I think we both equally love hot chips!

So now to the inception cookies! i thought inception cookies was a very clever name for these, (i loved the movie it was a total mindf*ck). These were heaps fun to make, & tasted delicious! Really sweet though, so you could probably reduce the sugar amounts to half of brown and half of white, as the chocolate chips in the cookie dough are already sweet enough.

I really want to try this recipe with the oreo mini's next time- i think they'd look so adorable!

Also because i hadn't used Hughie's oven before, i had to play around with the settings abit so the first two batches came out with abit of uncooked cookie dough (which still tastes delicious) but the last two batches came out just about right i just had to lower the temp abit as his oven was super powerful.

Recipe from Beckybakes.net

2 sticks (1 cup) softened butter

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon pure vanilla

3 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

10 oz bag chocolate chips

1 pkg. Oreo cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugars together with a mixer until well combined. Beat in eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, salt and baking soda.

Slowly add to wet ingredients along with chocolate chips until just combined.

Using a cookie scoop take one scoop of cookie dough and place on top of an Oreo Cookie.

Take another scoop of dough and place on bottom of Oreo cookie.

Seal edges together by pressing and cupping in hand until Oreo cookie is enclosed with dough.

Place onto a parchment or silpat lined baking sheet and bake cookies 9-13 minutes or until golden brown.

Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Makes about 2 dozen VERY LARGE cookies.

This is the original post on these cookies (with more detailed step by step photo's) is here.

http://picky-palate.com/2011/01/06/oreo-stuffed-chocolate-chip-cookies/

Happy Baking!

Melting Moments

I found this recipe here, and bookmarked it, and set a reminder on my phone to bake bake bakE! I figured i couldnt go wrong with these crumbly morsels, but i have had my fair share of wrecked cookie batches due to a) crap oven or b) unreliable recipes.

Melting moments:

250g butter, cubed
55 g (1/3 cup) icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla essence
260g (1 3/4 cups) plain flour
50g (1/3 cup) cornflour

filling
60g (3 tbs) butter, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla essence
pink food colouring
110g (2/3 cup) icing sugar, sifted

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper.

2. Use electric beaters to beat butter, icing sugar and vanilla essence in a medium bowl until pale and creamy.

3. Sift the flour and cornflour together into a bowl and add to the butter mixture. Beat on lowest possible speed until just combined and a soft dough forms.

4. Lightly flour your hands and roll teaspoonfuls of the mixture into small balls. Place on the prepared baking tray about 5cm apart (note – these expand in the oven!). Use a fork that has been dipped in flour to flatten each ball to about 3cm in diameter and 1cm thick (mine were a bit larger).

5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until cooked through. Cool on the baking tray. Transfer to a wire rack and repeat with the remaining mixture.

6. To make the filling, use electric beaters to beat the butter, vanilla essence in a small bowl until pale and creamy. Add the icing sugar and beat until combined, then add colouring until desired colour you want. Cover and place in fridge until required.

7. To assemble the biscuits, spread the base of a biscuit with filling and then join with another biscuit. Repeat with the remaining biscuits and filling.

Chocolate Pinwheels

I've been wondering whether or not i should post this recipe & photo up - as you can see they didn't turn out very well :(

The reasons why i decided to go with posting this up - is to maybe warn others about this type of recipe, mistakes i made, things i could of done better.

One thing i know that could be improved - is the rolling of the dough. Both layers should be separately refrigerated before rolling up (as this makes both layers more firm and less likely to collapse when you're rolling). And also refrigeration time extended to two hours or more (it depends on the day if its hot or cold but usually the colder the dough is the easier it is to roll and cut up.

Nevertheless, these biscuits were made for my workmate over the christmas break as his parents were visiting from India (and they had seen most of my baking goodies via webcamming on the internets) so i thought they might like to try some while they were here.

Chocolate Pinwheels

125 g butter

2/3 cup caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 egg

1 3/4 cups flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 place butter sugar and vanilla in a bowl and beat until creamy. add egg and beat until well combined.

2 divide mixture into two equal portions. sift 1 cup flour into one portion and mix to combine. sift together cocoa powder and remaining flour and mix into the other portion

3 roll out each portion between two sheets of grease proof paper to form a 20 x 30cm rectangle. Remove top sheet of paper from each and invet one onto the other. roll up from longer edge to form a long roll. wrap plastic in cling wrap and refridgerate for 1 hour

4 cut roll into 5mm slices, place on baking paper on trays and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. cool on wire racks

*these are ideal last minute biscuits as the dough can be made in advance and kept in the refrigerator until needed

White chocolate chip cookies

Found this recipe in the sunday mag of the sun-herald newspaper. Original recipe called for dar chocolate chips, but i had white in the pantry :)

I actually made them so big that i could only fit four on one baking tray (i made two batches, so eight cookies all up) they were massive! & they werent too crunchy, i actually prefer my cookies soft & chewy (subway styles!)

It was fun making these, i think i'll make some more this weekend hehe..

You will need:
180g unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups plain flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder, sifted
150g white chocolate chips (or roughly chopped from a bar)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Place butter, sugar & vanilla in a bowl & beat with an electric mixer until pale & creamy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well

Add the flour & baking powder and beat until a smooth dough forms.

Fold through the chocolate.

Roll two tablespoons of dough into balls, place on baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper & press to flatten.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until cookies are golden.

Cool on trays (do NOT try to remove, they can crumble!)