4-ingredient almond pulp cookies

Hi there! :) How have you been?

Yes, I know I've been away for quite a while... but let's just pretend that my last post was a couple of weeks ago, shall we? After all, I'm sure life has been very exciting for you so you probably didn't miss me too much, right?

What?

Oh... I was hoping that you'd say you did miss me so so much....

Well, in any case, I  am going to try to buy back my time with you with this cookies recipe. I promise they are good. Scout honor.

So this whole time away I made movies, I made cakes and I made almond milk. Delicious plain and chocolate almond milk. There is nothing really special about my almond milk compared to yours, no. Just good old four cups water to one cup raw almonds. This means that I was accumulating almond pulp and I must say, I started to freak out a little bit. It was my guilty conscience telling me I was supposed to make delicious stuff with it really fast and my lazy brain whispering: "You don't have a dehydrator... Do you really want to mess around with this crumbly wet pile?"

Needless to say, the world wide web had many suggestions. My brain was right, drying almond pulp??? Oh hell no! As I realized that most of the recipes required extra ingredients that my wallet shook its head to and the amount of almond pulp used was not as much as the pile was growing, I decided that I'd just randomly mix things into my crumbly wet pile and made cookies.

O.M.G. SO. GOOD. My colleagues love them. I love them. The texture apparently reminded one colleague of camping bars (delicious ones obviously!) They are gluten-free and vegetarian friendly!!!

So without further boring you, I am sharing one of the two recipes I came up with as the other one needs to be tested again.

Almond pulp banana cookies:
(about 20-24 cookies)

-3 cups almond pulp (plain or chocolate)
-1 large banana
-1 egg
-1/2 cup sugar

Turn your oven to 350 F
Mix everything together well. Line your cookie sheets with parchment papers. Scoop 1 tablespoon  of mixture for each cookie, flatten them slightly with the back of a spoon or fork. Bake for 20 minutes or until there are golden specs on top. Cool cookies on racks, keep them in a tightly closed tupperware in the fridge for a few days (Mine never last more than 24 hours... LOL!!!!)

Good luck eating just one!!!! :P

THE best cinnamon chocolate chip cookies

Seriously...

There are tons of recipes out there for the best chocolate chip cookies and I don't claim to have tried them all, but the ones that I have, were always missing one thing or another. The one thing that they all had in common, was that they WOULD NOT FLATTEN! The pictures would show so, but not the result!!! *sigh*

Now, don't get me wrong, the taste was never an issue, but for me, the perfect chocolate chip cookie means a flat yummy buttery chocolatey cookie that is crunchy on the outside but chewy on the inside.

FLAT.

It's important that the cookies are flat. NOT by me flattening them before baking, no no! Flat, by melting and spreading all on their own.

Well, THESE cookies are. They spread and flattened all on their own like the big cool kids do. And they are GOO-OO-OO-OOD!!!!! *drool*

Make them, I PROMISE you, scout honor, that this is the last recipe that you'll ever need.

Chocolate cinnamon chip cookies (makes 46 three-inches cookies)
(from original recipe of The Silver Palate)

• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) softened butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips    
• 1/2 cup cinnamon chips (I used Hershey's) 

Heat oven to 350 degrees & line your cookie sheet with parchment papers or use a silpat if you have. Cream butter and both sugars together until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Sift dry ingredients together and stir in, mixing thoroughly. Add chocolate chips & cinnamon chips to batter and form cookies by using a small scoop. I used one of 1 & 1/2 inch diameter.

Make sure to space them out on the sheet. About 2-3 inches between them. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown. Let cool on sheet before transferring them onto rack to cool completely.  

Share them or not, I won't tell ;) Enjoy!!! 

 

A society of gingerbread people

I have been sitting here for 20 minutes trying to figure out how am I going to write the intro to this blog, and all I can come up with, is how long I've been sitting here thinking about it....

So when this happens, the best thing to do is to keep things short and sweet. Hhmmm... sweeeeet.... Actually, we'll keep things spice and sweet today.

I present you, my society of gingerbread people:

The traditional guy (and his Christmas tree) He's old-school, but he's just as flavorful as any other. He is simple, what you see is what you get.

The fashionable crowd. These chicks know how to dress it up! They don't go anywhere without the dazzle of the color sugar

The gym nuts... Ya... Them wacky outfits... But watch out, they've got bites these sillies

Then there is the shy guy who doesn't really talk much. He seems nice, but no one knows much about him. Apparently, he is really sweet!

And last but not least, the party dude, who is always happy to funk & dunk

I found the recipe here on Joy of Baking, one of my favorite recipe sites for a lot of things. The batch yield 15 big cookies, but it all depends on the size of your cutter and how thick you roll them, you might get more than I did :)

You can use this recipe for the icing (use 1/2 cup cold water instead of half cold water and half lemon juice) Or you can also use melted white chocolate for a different taste.

Enjoy! And bring on the holiday cookies!!!!!!

A sprinkle of love

Always finish cooking or baking with a sprinkle of love. So if the food doesn't turn out so well, at least the love is there...

And the love definitely shows through.

And love concurs all... well, unless "all" are crispy burnt meringue cookies, then love might have to make an exception and look the other way...

Love makes you do crazy things, like baking at midnight for example... *sigh*