But what is peanut butter, really? It’s peanuts, ground up, with a little extra oil. Grind up those peanuts just a little less, and you have a nut flour instead of a nut butter. So it should be no surprise that what is essentially an almond-butter cookie comes out delicious and moist, just like its peanutty counterpart. The advantages of working with almond flour instead of just buying a jar of almond butter are that it’s cheaper, you can use the almond flour for drier baked goods like pie crusts, and the final product has an authentic “crumb” feel to it while still being moist and chewy.

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When you’re baking with almond flour, there’s simply no better source than The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. This one’s got everything from the basics all the way up to the ridiculously-named clafoutis. Most recipes are dairy-free, and the ones that aren’t are very easy to substitute with coconut milk or almond milk. Anyway, this cookie recipe came from that cookbook, in case you hadn’t guessed. Start with 2 1/2 cups of almond flour…

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Then mix in 1/2 teaspoon of pure baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

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I use this powdered vanilla, but the Adam’s Extract liquid vanilla also says gluten-free right on the label. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] Of course if you’re using liquid, you’ll want to add it to your wet ingredients instead of your dry. Either way, it’s 1 Tablespoon.

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For your wet ingredients, blend together 1/2 cup of grapeseed oil (or another kind of oil, but grapeseed is very healthy…)

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And 1/2 cup of either agave nectar or honey, your choice. I’ve made it both ways. The agave is more expensive, but the honey has a more distinctive flavor that you may or may not want in your final cookies.

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Add your wet ingredients to your dry, and mix together very well.

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Don’t forget to fold in your chocolate chips. Enjoy Life is one brand of GFCF chocolate chips, or you can do what I did here and just chop up a dairy-free organic chocolate bar I happened to get at my local health food store. (They were giving them away as part of a promotion, which is actually what inspired me to make this batch of cookies in the first place.)

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You’re not going to be able to roll this batter into balls with your hands; just glop it onto the cookie sheet with a spoon. The recipe claims you can get 30 cookies out of this batch, but at the size I make them it’s usually more like 12, so adjust your spoonful size as necessary.

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They should melt out flat in the oven, but I usually feel the need to primp them into more of a cookie shape anyway.

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Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown. The recipe calls for 7-10 minutes, but my somewhat gigantic cookies take more like 12-15. Make sure you let them cool completely before removing them from the baking sheet, because they’re extremely soft straight out of the oven. Now if you’ll excuse me, I can’t look at this picture anymore, I have to go make another batch.

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Happy Eating!

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1/2 cup agave nectar or honey
1 TBS Adam’s Extract vanilla
1/2 cup Enjoy Life chocolate chips

You can get sweet rice (also sometimes called “sticky rice”) at Asian markets, but to be honest, I’ve never been able to taste the difference, myself. You could make this with any short-grain rice and it would work just fine.

Put one cup of it in your rice cooker, along with 1 and 3/4 cups of water. If you are using sweet rice, they say you should let it soak at room temperature for at least 20 minutes. I usually do, but only because I’m busy getting other stuff ready at the time.

This can of coconut milk was more separated than most. Yuck.

I had to actually dump the whole thing into a separate bowl to get it reincorporated without making a giant mess. But eventually it started looking like coconut milk again.

Now, pour 1/2 cup (or 1/4 of the can) of coconut milk into the rice pot, and set the remainder aside for a minute. Add 1 Tablespoon of brown sugar…

And 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Give everything a good stir, and begin cooking the rice.

Meanwhile, pour the rest of the coconut milk into a small saucepan on the stove.

Add 1/4 cup of sugar. I prefer brown sugar, but it does give the final sauce a slight beige color, so if you think your kids would prefer something frosty white, just use cane sugar instead. Useful tip: if your brown sugar has become hard as a rock in the container, microwave it for 10 seconds at a time, and it will loosen right up.

Also add 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Liquid vanilla extract is one of those things that might have gluten in it, because it’s distilled with alcohol and the manufacturer might use a grain alcohol. So you can hunt down a safe brand, or use this powdered vanilla that says gluten-free right on the bottle. Either way, it’s still one teaspoon.

While the sauce is warming, prepare your mango. I’m using a bag of frozen mango pieces, but you could certainly cut up a fresh mango or two if you want. But did you know that at certain times of the year, frozen fruits and vegetables can actually have more nutrients than fresh? That’s because when you’re buying something like mangos out of season, they’re most likely traveling to your store from a place where they are in season, like South America. The farmers know that the produce is going to take 2-3 weeks to get to its destination, so they pick the fruit early, letting it ripen on the trip over so it’s just right by the time it gets to you. But ripening on a truck is not the same as ripening on the vine; it’s not getting any additional nutrients as it develops, it’s really just dying slowly. If the fruit is destined to be frozen, however, the farmers leave it on the vine until it’s perfectly ripe, then pick it and freeze it immediately. Some nutrients are lost in the freezing process, but not as many as are lost by picking the food so many weeks early. Moral of the story: buying frozen fruits and veggies isn’t unhealthy, and might even be healthier than fresh depending on the food and the time of year. (Canned, however, is never going to be the best option.)

Okay, enough with the nutrition lesson. Let’s get back to our dessert that’s loaded with carbs and sugar, shall we? Whisk your sauce gently with a fork to make sure all the sugar is dissolved. You want the sauce to be warm, but try to avoid boiling it, otherwise all that sugar will start to carmelize.

Because we don’t want the coconut milk to reduce by boiling, we’ll need to thicken it just a bit with 2 teaspoons of corn starch (or potato starch, or arrowroot) dissolved into 1 Tablespoon of water. Once the corn starch is totally dissolved in the water, then it’s safe to add it to the pot without fear of lumps. Make sure to keep stirring as it thickens.

Round about this time, your rice should be done cooking. Gently fold in your mango pieces. (If you started with frozen, you will want them to be thawed before you do this.)

Serve with frosting — er, I mean, coconut sauce drizzled on top. Seriously, this stuff is sweet enough to put you into diabetic shock. But that doesn’t stop me from putting on way more than a drizzle, if you know what I mean. It’s just so delicious! You could also make this with bananas, or even pineapple, if your kids aren’t into mangos.

Happy Eating!

Mango Sweet Rice

1 cup sweet (or short-grain) rice
1 3/4 cups water
1 can coconut milk
1 TBS brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt

1-2 mangos
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cornstarch

Start with two butternut squashes, about 3 pounds total. If your children see you cooking them, tell them that they’re just “funny-shaped pumpkins.” Kids are dumb, especially if they think they’ll get pie out of the deal. The top stem is the hardest to cut through, so I always start along the side, then rotate it up on its end to get the most leverage.

Scoop out all the seeds and gunk.

Lay two halves on a plate, and cover them in saran wrap. Make sure to get around the bottom too, or else the skin will leave this waxy residue on the plate that is nearly impossible to get off. Cook it in the microwave on high for about 8-9 minutes. You can’t do all four at once, unless you have a gargantuan microwave, and even then, the cooking time would be off. So just get the second one ready and waiting.

Meanwhile, add 1/3 cup sugar to a large mixing bowl, and 1/4 cup almond milk.

Crack in two eggs, and try to ignore the creepy face that’s staring back at you now.

This is my newest discovery at my grocery store: powdered vanilla extract. The key here is that extracts are usually suspended in alcohol, and often these are grain alcohols; i.e. gluten. I don’t know how they magically make it into a powder, but the taste is exactly the same, and you use the same amount of it as you would regular liquid vanilla. I’d already hunted down a liquid extract that was gluten-free, but you know what? This one says it right on the label, and I like to support companies that do that. So I’ve switched. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your ingredient lists.]

So on top of the egg mixture, that’s 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp salt. I don’t know what was up with my camera focus in this shot, but it’s apparently the only one I got of this step, so you’ll have to live with the disappointment.

When your microwave beeps at you, take a look at the squashes. See the brighter yellow circle in the middle there? That’s not cooked all the way through. This one needs another minute or two, at least.

Once they’re an even, dark orange color, scoop out the insides and add them to your mixing bowl. This should take no real arm strength if they’re cooked properly, but they will be extremely hot, so you’ll probably want to use an oven mitt.

Mix everything together thoroughly, making sure it’s nice and smooth. Then scrape it into a 9×9 baking dish sprayed with canola oil.

Now, prepare the crumb topping. That’s 1 Tablespoon of melted Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original), 1/2 cup (firmly packed) brown sugar, and 2 Tablespoons of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour blend.

Mix well…

And sprinkle evenly on top.

Pop in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, just enough to warm everything through and melt the sugar on top a little. And then tell your children that since they were so good today, they can have dessert on their plate right with their meal. Ha ha ha…

Happy Eating!

Butternut Crunch

2 butternut squash (about 2-3 lbs.)
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup almond milk
2 eggs
1 tsp Adam’s Best vanilla
1 tsp McCormick cinnamon
1/4 tsp McCormick nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 TBS Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original)
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 TBS Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose flour blend

Warning: this is not a recipe to be fooled around with. This frosting is possibly the richest, most decadent thing I’ve ever put into my mouth. It is, in fact, the first homemade item I learned to make that I had to admit was better than the store-bought counterpart. Seriously, that little can of frosting has nothing on this stuff.

The recipe is very basic, it’s just a question of making sure each ingredient you use is GFCF. [As always, my brands were verified GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without notice. Always double-check your ingredient lists.] Start with one stick of melted Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original), 1 tsp McCormick’s vanilla, and three Tablespoons of your preferred milk substitute. I used almond milk this time since I had some in the fridge and it’s a little richer than rice milk, but either is fine.

Dump in one entire box of Domino powdered sugar (also called confectioner’s sugar, or 10-x sugar.) Did you see that? An entire box of sugar on top of a whole stick of margarine. That, my friends, is why this stuff tastes so good, and why your hips may not thank you later.

Beat it with a hand mixer, and frosting magically appears. It’s so simple, it’s practically criminal. You can use this frosting on any kind of gluten-free cake or cupcake that you want.

Me, I sometimes put it on brownies.

I know, I know. Frosted brownies? That makes no sense! But it’s what I like, and I’m just keeping it real. Pretend it’s a chocolate cake, if that makes you feel better. I’m fond of a lot of Bob’s Red Mill products, and the brownie mix is no exception. Also, Bob happens to look just like one of my relatives, right down to the beret and yellow shirt and everything. It’s kind of spooky.

Just following the package directions here, first you want to melt a stick and a half of margarine in the microwave. Don’t start thinking about the total amount of fat that’s going into this dish. Instead, just remind yourself that margarine is way healthier than butter, and that makes it all okay, right?

Meanwhile, mix together one egg and 2 tsp vanilla.

Now, I deviate from the bag recipe and add 2 TBS of sugar. The final product just doesn’t taste very much like brownies to me without it. It’s more like… chocolate bread, I guess. Trust me, it needs the sugar.

Dump in the melted margarine and the entire bag of brownie mix, then add 3/4 cup water and mix well. It’s really hard to mix it by hand, because this batter is thick.

But on the other hand, if you choose to use a hand mixer, you are guaranteed to end up with a little chocolate tornado trying to climb the beaters, and you’ll have to stop the mixer every 5 seconds or so to scrape it back down. It’s your choice.

Now, this part is important. After you’ve scraped the whole mess into a greased 9×13 baking dish, you have to get it to settle properly into place. Normal batters do this part on their own, but normal batters also make my kid a raving lunatic, so we have to work with what we’ve got. Get your hand very wet in the sink, and gently push the batter down as if you were shaping playdough.

As soon as it starts to stick to your fingers, put them back under the faucet and get them really wet again. Just keep pushing and smoothing until you have a nice, flat, normal-looking pan of brownie batter.

The bag says bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees, but it always takes longer than that for me, especially if I use a glass baking dish. See my messy toothpick? This batch of brownies was ultimately in the oven for 45 minutes before the toothpick came out clean.

And now we can put the frosting on this lovely chocolate cake that I got from somewhere else. Nobody’s been putting frosting on any brownies around here, no sirree… But here’s another important tip: make absolutely sure that your brownies or cake or whatever has cooled completely before you apply the frosting. Since it doesn’t have a whole bunch of chemicals and gluten holding it together, this frosting will start to break down if it’s subjected to anything warmer than room temperature.

It’s a well-known scientific principle that rainbow sprinkles make everything more delicious. Not that this frosting needs any help.

Happy Eating!

Buttercream Frosting

1 box Domino powdered sugar
1 stick Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original)
3-4 TBS almond or rice milk
1 tsp McCormick vanilla

Bob’s Red Mill brownies

1 bag Bob’s Red Mill Brownie Mix
1 1/2 sticks Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original)
1 egg
2 tsp McCormick’s vanilla
2 TBS sugar