toffee-esque almond flour cookies

 

Tonight I made my sweet little boy some delicious cookies. Cookies that were so yummy, that my picky, anti-sweets, gluten eating, dairy loving, carnivore husband said were AMAZING. Yup. 

I recently purchased a book called The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam. It looks a little something like this: 

 

This book is FILLED with amazing information on the benefits of almond flour, and natural sugars. She is a wealth of knowledge. In the book, one of the recipes really caught my eye. It was called the TROPICAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. They sounded amazing, but I decided to tweak it tonight and try something a little different. 

Instead of shredded coconut and chopped cashews, I substituted my homemade Candied Nut Crumble.

Here is what I came up with: 

2 1/2 Cups almond FLOUR (Check out Lexie's Kitchen to find out how to make your own!)**I made my own in an old blender on pulse and then sifted it.**

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 Cup coconut oil, (melted over low heat) (you can also use palm shortening)

1/2 Cup RAW ORGANIC Agave Nectar

1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract (gluten free)

1 Cup Chocolat Chunks

1 Cup Candied Nut Crumble 

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. 

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking soda, and mix together until well blended. 

In a separate bowl, combine the coconut oil, agave nectar and vanilla and mix it until it is well mixed together. 

Combine ingredients and mix until a batter forms and you feel that it is well mixed together. Using a wooden spoon, mix in the chocolat chunks and candied nuts crumble until it is evenly dispersed. 

Using a cookie scoop, or a regular spoon, spoon the dough on to the cookie sheets leaving at least two inches between the cookies as they will spread. No need to flatten. 

Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes. Let cool on the sheets for 10-15 minutes before letting them cool completely on a paper bag. 

Eat and enjoy!  

REALLY REALLY ENJOY! 

Candied Nut Crumble

I am a big fan of candied nuts. I didn't used to be. My mother would eat candied nuts and I would gag. But as I grew to be an adult, I converted to a love of candied nuts. But what to do when you can't have butter or refined sugar? Say goodbye to carnival candied nuts in those little paper cones. But tonight, while making a new batch of cookies for my son, I decided to try being creative, and VOILA! Refined sugar free candied nuts were born right there in my kitchen!

This recipe is my own. I didn't borrow it from anyone. I didn't tweak someone else's hard work. From start to finish this is mine. I think this would make an EXCELLENT topping to an apple crisp or peach cobbler to make it gluten free and A-MAY-ZA-ZING! (I would just add the crumble topping to the cobbler during the last 10-15 minutes of baking to prevent the nuts from burning).

CANDIED NUT CRUMBLE

1 1/4 Cup whole or chopped nuts of choice (I used chopped cashews and macadamia nuts for this)
1/4 Cup Coconut Oil
1 Tbsp gluten free vanilla extract
1/2 - 1 Tbsp (or to taste) ground cinnamon
3 Tbsp palm sugar

In a medium pan, melt the coconut oil over low heat until melted. Add the chopped nuts and stir constantly. Make sure all the nuts are coated with oil. You will probably have excess oil. That is okay.

Next add the vanilla, and stir, stir, stir! Make sure you get vanilla mixed in with all the nuts. (You can add more vanilla if you like).

Next add the cinnamon, by dusting it over all the nuts, giving it an even coating, then stir again making sure that the cinnamon gets mixed in well.

Add the Palm sugar in 1 Tbsp at a time, to absorb the excess oil. You can stop adding sugar once you feel that all the oil is soaked up by the dry ingredients, or add all of the remaining palm sugar. (You can add more if you need to).

Stir until the nuts are a little more brown, and then scrape all contents on to a plate to let cool. You can put them in to the fridge to cool off faster, or just leave them out until they are cool enough to eat or put in to a plastic storage bag. Store in the fridge. (Try to use it within a week).

This is great to add to granola, or trail mix or just to eat by itself. As I said already it would be excellent in cobbler recipes too. I think it is pretty rich and sweet, so I don't need many to curb my cravings for sweet and crunchy!

Enjoy!

Chocolate and Avocados

What can you make with Chocolate and Avocados? A delicious Gluten free, dairy free, soy free, refined sugar free, peanut free, egg free, corn free Chocolate pudding of course!

My son loves pudding. LOVES it. Whenever we go to the store and he sees the snack packs, he says something along the lines of, "please please pleeeeeeeeease?" Because of his food sensitivities, the answer is always "no."

So, I looked online to see if I could find a good chocolate pudding recipe and try to adapt it to my lifestyle, and lo and behold, I found a recipe over on one of my FAVORITE BLOGS, Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen.  Ali is a WHIZ in the kitchen with her AMAZING RECIPES.  But I will tell you this, her recipe for Avocado Fudgesicles is what got me hooked on her blog.

So, I decided to add my own twist to her recipe, and this is what I came up with:

**For those uninterested in "grasshopper" pudding, substitute more vanilla in place of the Peppermint extract.**

GRASSHOPPER PUDDING

8 pitted dates
1/2 Cup water
3 medium Avocados (or one jumbo)
1 Cup Cashew Milk
1/4 Cup RAW ORGANIC Agave Nectar
5-7 TBSP Cocoa Powder
1 1/2 tsp Pure Gluten Free Vanilla extract
1/2 tsp Peppermint extract
Pinch of mineral rich Sea Salt

You will do best with a high powered blender such as a Vitamix, but you will probably do fine with a regular blender, you may just need to blend the ingredients longer.

Put dates in to the blender, and cover with the 1/2 cup of water. Let soak for 30-45 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend on high until you have a creamy, non lumpy mixture.

You can either pour in to individual sized bowls and serve as pudding, or pour in to Popsicle molds and make fudgesicles. If you freeze them, freeze them for AT LEAST 6 hours, as Ali says in her recipe.

Any way you do it, it's delicious!

ENJOY!