Peanut Butter Bandwagon

I've been reading about Peanut Butter Finger's flourless peanut butter cookies all over the place as of late. I read about them so much, that I couldn't resist trying the recipe out for myself...I do love the peanut butters after all.

Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies Ever (a la Julie at Peanut Butter Fingers)

Ingredients:

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg

Mix the three ingredients together, dollop onto a cookie sheet, and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. How easy is that?

The cookies are sweet, greasy and peanut buttery. Highly addictive, so beware: prep and baking take about 12 minutes, so it's super easy to make these whenever you want...there is absolutely nothing to it. For me, the quick prep time makes these a dangerous treat--when I want them, I can basically have them in less than 15 minutes.

Because I've become a chocolate and peanut butter freak thanks to HEAB, I had to add some chocolate to this recipe. I just melted M's leftover Easter bunny, with his permission of course, using my ghetto double boiler method.

I put the melty chocolate into a Ziploc freezer bag and cut off the tip to create a cookie decorating tool.

Using my non-decorating skills, I drew chocolate worms.

And personalized a cookie for M and for me

I don't typically eat peanut butter, but for some reason I've been craving it the past two weeks. I usually stick to the almond butter or sunflower seed butter, but the thought of cheap, salty peanut butter has been irresistible for some reason.

I'm working through my cravings-- trying to figure out what nutrient or emotion my body is lacking that's making me crave nutty fats. I've attempted to add other sources of fat into my diet from coconut and avocado in order to quell the need for pb, and so far, it seems to be working. It could be worse: I could be craving chocolate cake...at least peanut butter has some nutritional value. Everything in moderation.

For more on why peanut butter is not-so-good for you, see Whole9's Peanut Manifesto

Lazy Paleo Cookies

I call the following endeavor "Lazy Paleo Cookies" for the following reasons:

1. I used a vegan recipe from Eat Me Delicious, but replaced some ingredients I didn't have with ingredients I did have, because I was too lazy to go grocery shopping.
2. The cookies are not really "paleo" cookies, because they have maple syrup and honey in them...which are better than regular, white sugar, but some paleo sticklers will say that any sweetener is no good.
   
3. The finished product was not actually a "cookie" per se...mostly because I was too lazy to grind my almond flour fine enough...
   

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup almond meal
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
  
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 Tbsp maple syrup
• 2 tbsp almond milk
• 1 tsp raw honey
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp coconut oil
  

I mixed all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and stirred to combine.

My coarsely ground almond flour

The rest of the ingredients went into another bowl. The recipe called for flax meal, but when I tried to grind my flax seeds, they just kind of spun around in the food processor...and I was lazy, so I just added some kinda-broken-flax seeds to the mix.

I combined the wet and dry ingredients and stirred until they were just barely mixed together...


Plopped about 1 Tbsp of "batter" onto an ungreased cookie sheet and cooked for 10 minutes at
350.


The result was more of a granola than a cookie. I have a feeling that the cookies crumbled because the almond flour was too coarse, and because there was no flax meal. The next time I attempt this recipe, I will make sure to be diligent with my almond flour, and maybe add an egg to keep everything together. Granola is fine. Granola is great! Something for M to put on his oatmeals in the morning.

Have you ever had a recipe turn out differently than you...err....expected?