Category: Regular

The “Regular” category migrated here from Tumblr, where the “regular” post type just captured all posts which did not focus on the other “types” such as photo, audio or video.

Vegan, Gluten Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookie Recipe

How’s that for a title. Just dripping with SEO.

Anyway, last week I had cookies on the brain and spent some time sifting through internets looking for a recipe. I wanted peanut butter and chocolate, no eggs, no dairy, no gluten. Most recipes used dumb egg replacers, actual eggs or other undesirable too-exotic ingredients and things.

After much reading I tried this combo to a satisfyingly delicious result, fortunately it only made very few cookies because over the course of the week I ate all of them.

Notes on ingredients:

Flour: I used a store brand gluten free flour which is a combination of flours. I think seed based flours would hold up best rather than starchy ones in this recipe but hey, experiment away! I’d be curious to see what happened with rise flour for instance.

Peanut Butter: I love peanut butter with more salt than sugar, and my cookies turned out quite salty, because I added even more salt. This was delicious to me but be wary of this and consider adding no salt at all (if salt is listed before sugar in the ingredients of your peanut butter, you know it has more salt. If neither are listed, your peanut butter is healthier but probably less tasty!).

Oils and milk: coconut oil could be substituted for extra light olive or canola oil, and the milk could be swapped for anything or omitted completely, I just found it helped bind the ingredients.

Ingredients

  • ½ cup desiccated coconut
  • ½ cup gluten free flour
  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • 2 heaped tbsp peanut butter
  • 1 tsp vanilla essence
  • 2 tbsp coconut oil (slightly warmed but not melted)
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp almond milk
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • ½ cup dark (vegan) choc chips

Method

Preheat your oven to 170°C and grease or line an oven tray with baking paper.

Combine everything except the chocolate chips and mix well. When all the ingredients are evenly distributed, add the chocolate chips. I found the mixture didn’t stick together particularly awesomely.

Spoon balls of mixture out onto the tray and flatten, I made 9 medium sized cookies and they spread about 15-20% during baking.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the edges start to brown.

Vegan Chocolate Coconut Ice-cream

I love love love Nice Blocks, in particular, the chocolate/coconut flavour. I recreated it last night with this combination:

  • 1 240 mL tin coconut cream*
  • 2 heaped tbsp dutch process cocoa powder
  • 1.5 tsp vanilla essence
  • 2 lg tbsp honey

Whisk ingredients together in a freezer-safe container. You want to almost whip some air through it so it will freeze into nice fluffy ice cream. Put it in the freezer for about 3 hours.

If you have an ice cream maker, I’m jealous – use that.

The mixture will freeze more quickly in a wide shallow container – i.e, if the liquid is spread over a greater area.

*I used homebrand coconut cream, which is more like coconut milk than cream, it’s thinner. The more expensive brands of coconut cream tend to have a thicker creamier consistency but this doesn’t really matter.

Spiced roast veges

For Alex.

Tasty variation on the standard roast vege fare. Substitute whatever you have – pumpkin, sweet potato, potatoes, garlic, shallots, spices etc. This is what I used in a dish for girlfriends here for Friday night potluck… Would be nice with pumpkin/sunflower seeds too.

Ingredients

  • 2 large smooth golden kumara (sweet potato), peeled and cubed to roughly 1in pieces (this makes it faster to cook)
  • ¼ small golden pumpkin seeded, peeled and cubed
  • 1 tin chickpeas (drained)
  • 1 medium brown onion, peeled and wedged
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • ½ tsp curry powder
  • ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
  • ½ tsp paprica
  • ½ tsp turmeric
  • ½ tsp garam marsala
  • 1 tsp salt
  • Canola oil

Method

Preheat your oven to 180°C.

Combine the spices in a small bowl or cup.

Oil a large roasting dish, add the kumara, pumpkin, onion, and chickpeas, stir to coat lightly in oil.

Sprinkle ½ the spice mix over the veges, stir and then add the remaining spices. Stir to coat the vegetables in spices.

Bake in the oven, stirring every ten minutes and testing the kumara until it’s cooked – soft when tested with a skewer. I’d say at least 30-40 min.