Me & My Cookie Scoop: Gluten-Free Almond Butter Cookies

I don’t like peanut butter. I’m off gluten. I love cookies.

It’s a hot, Sunday afternoon, and I am lolling around, overheated and sleepy.

What is a girl to do?

Well, one of the best – really the best gluten-free chocolate chip cookies can be found at My Gluten Free Kitchen – peanut butter cookies at My Gluten Free Kitchen so I went there in search of some kind of nut butter cookies, but finding only peanut butter, used the recipe as a basis for my own. The major differences are different gluten-free flour and use of almond butter and slivered almonds instead of peanut butter and peanut butter baking chips. (Ugh! You just don’t know how much I dislike peanut butter!!) But, these are pretty good, if I do not-so-modestly say so myself.

Gluten-Free Almond Butter Cookies

1.5 c. Bob’s Red Mill 1-for-1 Gluten-Free Flour
1/2 t. baking powder
3/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1/2 c. softened, unsalted butter
1 c. almond butter (unsalted from Trader Joe’s)
3/4 c. white sugar
1/2 c. dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 T. cream / half-and-half
1 t. vanilla extract
1 c. slivered almonds

Preheat oven to 350F. Beat together butter, almond butter, and sugars till creamy. Beat in egg and vanilla until fluffy. Add the flour, soda, salt, powder, and beat until well blended. Stir in slivered almonds

Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes. Gluten-free baking – at least cookies – seem to do better with chilled dough. Use a cookie scoop or a couple of teaspoons to make your cookies.

If you like, roll your cookies in granulated sugar before baking.

Bake for 8-10 minutes. Be sure to make test cookies! Let cool a few minutes on cookie sheet, then remove to wire rack to cool.

When done – devour!!

Honey-Sweetened Cheesecake Recipe

Once more, dietary changes are forcing cooking and baking changes. Some results are rather dreadful. Others have proven to be quite good! So it was with this cheesecake. No sugar, no gluten. The biggest problem was finding the dry curd cottage cheese. also known as hoop cheese or farmer’s cheese. I found the cheese at the local Whole Foods, and neither my husband nor I had ever tasted it – but we did, and liked it. It is a rather dry cheese, not sweet or salty, with a bit of a curd, but very fine, like ricotta. The original recipe is from this blog, but I changed it so that I made one 8″ cheesecake, instead of 4 individual ones. The only thing beside pan size that I changed was the baking time.

Honey Cheesecake

Preheat oven to 300 F, and by the time you have your crust ready, you can pop the crust in to bake.

Crust
1 1/2 c. almond flour
1 t cinnamon
3 T melted butter
1 t honey

Mix flour and cinnamon together. Melt butter, mix in honey. Stir together to form a soft dough. I used a fork to really work the ingredients together. Place the crust mixture into an 8″ spring form pan, lined on the bottom with parchment paper, and sides buttered. Working from the center out, press the dough onto the pan. Build a shallow edge along the rim of the pan. Bake for 15 minutes at 300 F. Remove and let cool completely.

When you are ready to make the filling, preheat oven to 350 F.

Filling
1 lb. farmer’s cheese
1/2 c. SCD homemade yogurt
3 eggs
1/3 c. honey
2 t vanilla extract
1 t lemon zest

In a blender or with a hand mixer, combine cheese and yogurt. Cream for about 5 minutes – texture will change and become more creamy as you work. Add the rest of the ingredients, and beat until very smooth. Batter will be very thin. Pour carefully into cooled crust. Bake at 350 F for 45-50 minutes. Check to see that the center of the cheese cake is set. When set (the cake no longer jiggles when shaken lightly), turn off oven and open door. Let cheese cake cool about an hour, and then move to refrigerator. Serve with fresh berries.

Comments
I had no idea what to expect from this recipe, but those who tasted it (served at a dinner party) really liked the flavor and lightness of the cheesecake. It wasn’t very sweet, which can happen with many honey-based recipes. The lemon zest complemented the fresh fruit – we used blueberries and raspberries. Without the fruit, the cheesecake might be a bit unremarkable if you are used to big, thick slices of New York cheesecake.

This, for us, is a definite winner!

Me and My Cookie Scoop

I love cookies, but of late, dietary issues have forced me to stop eating certain foods after a lifetime of eating them. Well, that is the way life is. Luckily, there is the internet, there is imagination, and there is my love for cookies. If I were to single out two favorite sweets, cookies and homemade fruit pie are the winners. So, today, I decided I would look for cookies that didn’t use flour or starches, and I came across this recipe for thumbprint cookies by Danielle Walker. They are designed to be paleo or specific carbohydrate diet (SCD). They are a great start, but as I didn’t have coconut flour, I changed them a bit. Here is my take on the recipe.

Thumbprint Cookies

1 egg
6 T. soft butter
1/3 c. honey
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1 egg
2 c. blanched almond flour (mine is from Trader Joe’s)
1/2 c. almond meal
1/2 c. unsweetened flaked coconut
1 tsp. cinnamon
Fruit preserves without sugar (I used some fruit spread sweetened with grape juice and natural pectin from Trader Joe’s)

Preheat oven to 350F. Beat together butter, honey, and egg, for about a minute at medium speed. Beat in at low speed the remaining ingredients until the mix together well.

I suggest you make one test cookie! This will help you adjust time and add ingredients if you need to.

Using a 2 T. cookie scoop, make balls, and place on parchment covered cookie sheet. Press your finger into the cookie to make a deep well. Fill well with just enough fruit spread to fill the indentation – don’t let it run over the sides or overfill. Bake for 15 minutes until lightly brown. Let cool completely on wire rack to allow the fruit spread to cool to a non-liquid state. Yield: 17 – 18 cookies (I ate some of the dough!).

I think next time around I will add a bit of salt . . . I seldom cook with salt, but these cookies need just a tad.

Damned good cookies if you ask me!