Cookie Shenanigans!

Brown rice flour cookies!

Last week was a week of crazy baking.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to learn how to make wheat- and gluten-free cookies.  Since giving up wheat, I'd primarily restricted my baking to cakes & muffins, but I was starting to crave a good cookie.  So I went on a googling spree.  After finding a surprising number of good recipes, I made a short list, and on Monday last week I went shopping.  And Wednesday I started baking.  Well, by Friday, the cookies were all gone, so what was I to do to make more?  So many cookies...by Saturday I definitely had a headache from eating cookies in place of real food.  But, both recipes turned out pretty well, so I thought I'd pass them along.  (Both recipes contain almond butter, by the way, so anyone with nut allergies may want to pass up on this post - sorry!)  See below for spelt-flour super-energizing cookies, and my first stab at a (pretty much) gluten-free chocolate chip cookie (seen above)

WIP Cookies, but better!
My first strategy was to try and find spelt-flour based cookies.  (This was before I decided that I really needed to be cutting down on my spelt intake).  One of the first recipes I stumbled upon was a Dreena Burton recipe called Super-Charge Me! Cookies.  I've run across Dreena's blog before when I've been searching for gluten-free vegan recipes: her site was also the source of inspiration for my favourite gluten-free vegan cake.  She's also written several cookbooks (such as Eat, Drink and Be Vegan)  Her cookbook titles rang a bell for me when I saw them, but to be honest, I rarely buy cookbooks.  I have so many restrictions that I can only eat a fraction of recipes in a book anyway, and I'd rather save the money and search the internet than buy a book I can only half-use.  But, anyway, long story short, she's super popular and anyone interested in vegan cooking should check her out!

Anyway, the point of these cookies is to replace all the gigantic supermarket cookies that are full of processed chemicals and saturated fat and no real food value.  (Anyone in academia is super-familiar with those cookies, because they show up at every departmental seminar.  The Work in Progress (WIP) talks at my old department were especially famous for the giant cookies that came with).  Fun fact: before I gave up wheat, I could eat those crazy cookies, because there were so many chemicals, there were very few real food things for me to be allergic to.  (Just like how Oreos are vegan!)  This is one recipe that takes full advantage of the dual uses of flax meal in baking: as an egg replacer, and as a major health boost.  The recipe also uses whole-grain spelt flour and rolled oats as the starch base, so it's all whole grain, and is sweetened with maple syrup instead of processed sugar.  And it packs in the goodness of almond butter in place of most of the oil.

I made the recipe more or less as written, using the upper amount of every ingredient listed as a range.  I used a mix of sultana raisins, golden raisins, and craisins (all left over from mince tarts) for the dried fruit, and replaced half the chocolate chips with chopped walnuts.

Overall, the cookies were very tasty but not earth-shattering.  I would suggest either using the full amount of chocolate chips, or replacing them entirely with more raisins, nuts or seeds - with only 2 tbsp worth in the recipe, they kind of clashed with the more prominent dried fruit flavours.  That said, what the cookies might have lacked in revolutionary taste, they more or less made up for in healthiness - they were guilt-free enough I happily gobbled them for breakfast for the next couple of days.

One major downside to this recipe: cost.  I got about 20-22 cookies out of the batch (although the recipe only predicted 13, I guess I made them smaller), but I used up nearly half a bottle of maple syrup (which is around $6 worth).  Almond butter, too, is really expensive; I happen to always have some on hand because I'm allergic to peanut butter, but it's not cheap, especially if you were to buy it just for a recipe.  It's a good recipe for anyone who knows they're going to eat cookie and want to make sure they're eating the healthiest cookies possible (or for parents trying to sneak nutrition and energy into their kids' diet); but I know for me, if I wake up one day with a hankering for cookies, there are other recipes I'd be more inclined to try which will satisfy that craving without bankrupting me.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies! 
My ultimate goal was to find a gluten-free, not just wheat-free, cookie recipe.  While searching for such a recipe, I stumbled upon this contest: an egg-less food blog challenging other bloggers to develop recipes based on whole grain brown rice.  Based on the entries I found several vegan, rice-flour based recipes I am dying to try, but I decided to start with chocolate chip cookies.  And not just any chocolate chip cookies - almond chocolate coconut cookies!

Chocolate chip cookies were the first kind of cookies I learned to make, using my mom's best friend's recipe from Home Ec class.  As I grew up, we started healthifying the cookies, using unsweetened carob chips instead of chocolate chips, whole wheat flour, and sucanut instead of sugar.  (At some point I'll get around to posting about sugar alternatives and sensitivities).  When I became vegan, I started making banana chocolate chip cookies, the recipe for which I described here.  And now, I have managed once again to find a chocolate chip recipe that is still safe for me to eat (or overeat, as the case may be!)

Modifications to the recipe: I used Nuts To You almond butter, because I don't have the skill to make homemade.  I replaced the margarine with veggie shortening (much to my horror), because I've moved a lot recently and my margarine seems to have gotten lost; halfway into the recipe, I discovered my fridge held only shortening and margarine with whey powder.  And it was only a quarter cup, so I suppose I'll survive the saturated fats.  It worked fine, anyway.  I replaced both the white and brown sugar with Sucanut (using just shy of 2/3 cup total).  I omitted the almond extract because I didn't have any on hand (and don't really like it), and used non-mini chocolate chips and unsweetened coconut because they were what I had.  The dough looked pretty much like any chocolate chip dough (with the chocolate chips falling out and not incorporating well, which I find is pretty par for the course).  I baked them 12 minutes, let them sit for a few minutes to solidify, then transferred to a wire rack.  The recipe made just short of two dozen cookies (it would have made more, but by the second batch I got impatient and made bigger cookies so I could finish the dough with that sheet).

These cookies were SO GOOD.  I could not stop eating them.  Neither the almond or coconut flavours were very obvious (possibly because I omitted the almond extract), and they just tasted like a regular chocolate chip cookie.  The fact they were made with (whole-grain) rice flour wasn't the least bit evident.  Next time I would cut down on the sugar a bit, and I definitely will stick to unsweetened coconut - they don't need any more sweetening.  But I will absolutely be repeating this recipe.  And best of all, there's pretty much no gluten involved.  See what I wrote here about the possible risks of oats if you're baking for someone who's super-gluten reactive, but if you can eat oats I say go to town and have fun!  Highly recommended.  (And they past the non-allergic taste test - I always figure my specialty baking is a success when people without allergies who can compare to the "real thing" keep coming back for more)

Modification: I made these again for my new roommates after moving (because we had an empty cookie jar that needed filling!).  To some of them I added finely chopped candied ginger.  The end result was a little busy in terms of a lot of competing tastes, but also amazingly delicious - so if you're a candied ginger fan, I definitely recommend it!