Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles are my childhood favorite, but they have vexed me in the past. I've had many failed recipes - any posted previously just were not quite there. It was either a texture issue, or the flavors were a little muted or exaggerated. The snickerdoodle is the recipe I have altered or scrapped all together several times. I think perhaps my arch nemesis has fallen and I've finally achieved the trifecta - texture, taste, and appearance.

There is a fairly consistent phenomenon particular to gluten-free cookies that took me a while to adapt to. Gluten cookies are better off if you take them off the pan immediately. They hold their shape pretty well and a little aggressive spatula work may cause a couple cookies to be put in the imperfect pile (in my house that means they are eaten immediately - it's the best way to ensure no one sees those imperfect cookies, right?). If you don't get them off the pan immediately, you're scraping and soaking a pan. Gluten-free cookies will come out of the oven squishy and unstable. With this recipe, if you try to take them off the pan before they have had plenty of time to cool, you will end up with half the cookie still on the sheet and a big crumbly mess. If you let them sit for at least an hour or two, they will have that typical, hard snickerdoodle texture. These are best made the night before you plan to serve them.

Snickerdoodles
makes 12 large cookies
4 oz palm oil
1/3 cup sugar
4 oz brown rice syrup
1/2 c water
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
1 T ground Chia seed
3.8 oz tapioca flour
6.8 oz white rice flour
1.2 oz amaranth flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Sugar & cinnamon to coat

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the sugar, flours, vanilla, chia seed, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cream of tartar in a mixing bowl. Gently melt the palm oil either in the microwave or sauce pan. Combine the oil, brown rice syrup, and water with the dry ingredients. Once the ingredients are combined, take a ball of dough about the size of a golf ball and roll the dough in sugar and cinnamon. Press slightly onto the cookie sheet to form a round shape. Space the cookies at least an inch to two inches apart as they will raise and spread. Bake for 12 minutes.

Churro Cookies

Some of my better recipes are mistakes! When I was little, my favorite cookie was the Snickerdoodle. There's something about the slightly grainy texture on the outside, the shock of cinnamon, and the crunchy texture underneath. Yum, yum, yum.

I've been trying to sub out coconut oil for palm oil, and have been trying various natural cane sugar replacements. I've found that palm oil just works with cookies and sugar is really what gives cookies that crunch. These cookies definitely don't have that classic crunch, but the result was unexpectedly popular.

When my brothers and I were younger, we liked it when my mom would stop by a fast food place and let us order dessert. One of the taco chains had churros. We loved them! Greasy, crunchy, gooey, and gritty all at the same time. I think I remember they came out with a cream filled churro and it ended up being way too much - they are so greasy without the filling. I'm pretty grossed out by some of the things I used to really look forward to. If I had a crystal ball and could see the allergies I would develop, I probably would have scraped together the money to make it to Europe and make a food vacation out of it.

Back from my tangent....when my brothers were over last weekend, they devoured these cookies. They both really liked them and couldn't put their finger on what it was reminding them of. I took a big bite and sat there thinking as I was chewing and it finally dawned on me. Churros!

Churro Cookies
1 c White Rice Flour
2/3 c Teff Flour
1/4 c Arrowroot Powder
6 soaked Dates
3/4 c soak water
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar
1/2 c + 2 T melted Coconut Oil
1.5 oz (1 shot) of Agave
1 Vanilla Bean, scraped
1/2 tsp salt

Enough vegan cane sugar and plenty of cinnamon to coat each cookie generously.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine all of the dry ingredients. Add the coconut oil and agave. Put a handful of cane sugar (1/4 c) and 1 tsp of cinnamon on a small plate. Form dough into balls about the size of a golf ball, and roll around in the sugar and cinnamon mixture. The dough will be greasy. It's part of what makes them good. Flatten out the cookie on a cookie sheet with the flat of your hand. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Let cool and then move to a cooling rack to cool further.

Gluten Free, Vegan "Graham" Crackers - kid tested and approved

My little nephew unfortunately inherited a lot of my allergies. On the plus side, it's really easy to cook for him. If I can eat it, he can. I made an attempt at gingerbread cookies a while back and got my sweetener/oil proportions wrong and ended up with something that tasted like graham crackers. I remembered when I was little I loved graham crackers plain, so I decided to make a batch yesterday when my nephew was over visiting.

Gluten Free "Graham" Crackers8.5 oz Brown Rice Flour
2.2 oz Arrowroot Powder
2.8 oz Sorghum Flour
1 1/2 t baking powder*
3/4 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
2 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
3 oz palm oil
3 pitted dates & 3 dried apricot halves soaked
1/2 c soak water
4 oz Maple Syrup

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. In a high speed blender, put the dates, apricot, soak water, and maple syrup. Slowly combine the liquid into the dry ingredients until it's a workable consistency. Put a little sorghum flour on your rolling surface (or on the baking, and roll out the dough into a rectangular shape. The dough should be 1/6-1/8 of an inch thick. As the crackers dry, they become harder. These are actually better a couple days after they are baked.

Last time I made the recipe, I had anticipated a cookie flavor, so I cut the dough out into little snowman shapes. This time I used a pizza cutter and a fork to cut what resembled little graham crackers. I cooked them for much longer than I would a cookie to make sure they were crispy. Next time I am going to cut the recipe in two and roll the dough much thinner. Because of the baking soda and baking powder, the dough rises a bit. This is good because you want some airiness in there for texture, but if the dough is too thick, the texture isn't crunchy.


I held my breath a bit when Owen first tried the cracker. I just handed him a little bit and then he started signaling for more and humming and doing his yummy cookie dance.

It's the one-foot cookie shuffle!

I'm one of those strange people who has a camera tripod in their kitchen. Owen is fascinated with anything with buttons, so after a few trips in the kitchen to grab more crackers I could see the tripod start to move around ON ITS OWN??? Nope, there was a little short person attached to the legs trying to reach the buttons. Mom picked him up, and Owen took a series of pictures (mostly of his shirt).

It's time for my close up, Mr. Deville

Owen, Mom, and my brother are on their way over, so it's time to start baking again. I have plans for blackberry muffins and improved ginger cookies. I had a bit of really fantastic ginger cookie from the Flying Apron in Seattle today and it inspired me to make some revisions.

Molasses Gingersnaps

If you love ginger, these are the cookies for you. After seeing these cookies on The Daily Dietribe and these cookies on Andrea's easy vegan cooking, I was in the mood to make some spicy, gluten free, vegan cookies with a molasses finish. Teff is a very versatile flour that I have used heavily in the past few months. It has molasses undertones, so although there isn't very much molasses in this recipe, it does come through.

Molasses Gingersnaps
yield: 1 dozen good sized cookies
3 oz White Rice Flour
5 oz Teff Flour
1 oz Arrowroot Powder
1/2 cup vegan Sugar
3/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 Tb ground Chia Seeds
1 tsp powdered Ginger
1/2 tsp Allspice
2 oz finely minced Crystalized Ginger*
2.4 oz Sulfur Free Molasses
4.5 oz Sunflower Oil
2-4 Tb Turbinado Sugar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Combine all of the dry ingredients thoroughly, then add the minced crystalized ginger and stir so it is distributed evenly. Add the molasses and sunflower oil. This is a dryish batter (it won't be a big cohesive chunk of dough; it will clump together in separate large clumps). You will need to handle and press the cookies together a bit. It shouldn't be hard to get the cookies to take a cookie shape on the cookie sheet. Press a little bit of turbinado sugar onto the top of the cookies and then bake for 12 minutes.

*A lot of crystalized ginger is treated with Citric Acid or sulfur dioxide to keep a light yellow color. The problem with this is that Citric Acid is made from corn and sulfur dioxide is a preservative otherwise known as "E220" and the precurser to sulfuric acid. I was able to find some crystalized ginger that was a darker brown that only contained ginger and evaporated cane juice in the bulk section of my health food grocery store.

To see what treated ginger looks like, click here.

To see what untreated ginger looks like, click here.