Peanut Cookies - Gluten Free and Slightly Miraculous!

So here's a cookie in the "Free" series I mentioned in my Banana Bread post a few weeks ago.  They're gluten free because they contain no flour...at all...not even GF flour.  I know...how is that possible?  Not only is it possible, I think I prefer them to their 'normal' cousins!  Generally I don't buy biscuits (cookies) because they tend to contain all sorts of ingredients that I just don't recognise.  My rule of thumb is that if the ingredient isn't in my pantry it's probably best avoided...I know, it's a slightly Luddite approach but I really can't spend all day on Google investigating trade names and chemical formulae!

My nearly-5-year-old absolutely LOVES baking so it's an activity we can do together which benefits everyone...win-win-win-win people!  Oh, I nearly forgot to mention: they take 28 minutes to make plus 30 minutes of fridge time.  That's about the limit of a 5 year old's attention span so these get made fairly often round here.  The original recipe can be found here though I have tinkered with it a bit - I just can't help myself!  Now, when you read the ingredients list you might think I've left something out...that this combination can't possibly work.  I really haven't and it really does.  Please trust me!

Ingredients:
1 cup crunchy or super crunchy peanut butter at room temperature
1/2 cup caster or superfine sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips (morsels)

1. Place everything in the bowl of a free standing mixer and switch on for about 2 minutes until everything is mixed well.  I have one of those paddle attachments which scrapes the edges of the bowl but if you don't, scrape down after about a minute then continue.  This mixture is soft enough to mix with a wooden spoon too, I just love using my mixer!
2. Place the mixture (in the mixing bowl) in the fridge for about 30 minutes until it is firm.
3. Preheat the oven to 150 C or 325 F and line 2 baking sheets with greaseproof or parchment paper. 
4. Once the dough is firm, take a small ice cream scoop - one of those with a squeezy handle that releases the contents of the scoop - and pack it with dough by scooping the mixture then dragging it up the inside of the bowl.  The excess should fall back into the bowl and you can release the shaped dough directly onto a lined baking sheet. Space them about 5cm or 2" apart.  They won't spread much as there is no flour or leavening agent.  If you don't have a small enough scoop, just pinch off pieces of the dough and roll them between your hands but you need to work quickly so the warmth of your hands doesn't soften the dough too much.
5. Apparently, the traditional pattern on a peanut cookie is cross hatch made with a fork.  I just happened to have a little masher (it's been redundant since I stopped making baby food!) in the utensil pot beside me so I used that. Please feel free to use a fork or any other kitchen implement that calls you.

Bake for 20 minutes then leave to cool on the tray for at least 5 minutes.  This is really important as the cookies are a bit fragile when they are first baked.  Finally transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.  They crisp up considerably during the cooling process so if you try a warm one (as I did) please don't worry that it's a bit soft.

This recipe make about 18-20 cookies depending on the size of your scoop...and how much of the dough is pilfered by little fingers before it even reaches the oven!

Enjoy with a cuppa, or a glass of cold milk. It's a mouthful of YUM!!

"Free" Banana and Walnut Bread:

Hello...I'm back!  It's been ages since my last post and I do apologise, we've had all sorts of family things going on here and my little blog had to take a back seat for a bit.  But that doesn't mean I haven't been baking, oh by jimminy no...I just haven't been writing it all up.  Now, one of the things I've been experimenting with is what I call "free cooking", by which I mean sugar free, gluten free, fat free, dairy free etc. etc.  Partly to address allergy requirements, partly to address lifestyle choices, but mostly because when it comes to fat and sugar: less is more (providing the finished article is still completely yum!).  Now, hands up if you knew that you can substitute apple sauce for butter or oil...nope me neither.  But you'd be amazed what you can find out when you start looking. Please don't panic there will still be butter and sugar a-plenty in the weeks and months to come...but there will also be "free" recipes sprinkled amongst them.

And so to the banana bread: now, there are times when the bananas in my fruit bowl look like they have just lost the will to live.  Sometimes I throw them in the freezer for future use in a smoothy (yay, how thrifty of me) but now and again I just send those suckers to the great fruit bowl in the sky (boo, wasteful).  But no more...here comes a recipe that actually NEEDS them to be squishy...even to the point of soupy.  And I'm dedicating it to my Dad, who never met a manky banana he wouldn't eat!  I found this recipe on the web and you can link to the orginal version here.  I added some walnuts because it needed the texture but you could leave those out if "nut free" is a requirement.

Ingredients:
2 cups wholemeal/wholewheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt or 1/4 tsp table salt
1/2 cup of good sharp apple sauce (or stewed bramleys, you need that saucy texture)
3/4 cup runny honey
2 eggs
3 bananas...the mankier the better
2/3 cup chopped walnuts**

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 F / 170 C. Either grease and flour a 9x5 loaf tin, or line it with a paper liner.
2. In a large bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. I like to use a whisk because it adds air to the mixture.
3. If it's a cold day place your jar of honey in a bowl of hot water for a couple of minutes just to make it a bit runnier.
4. In a large jug (or bowl) mash the bananas with the back of a fork then mix together with the apple sauce, honey, and eggs. 
5. Pour all the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and stir well, but don't over mix it or the bread will be tough.  Stir in the chopped walnuts.
6. Pour the batter into your prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 60 minutes or until it passes the clean skewer test. 
7. Allow the bread to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes then turn it out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

** You really don't need to be painfully accurate on this particular measurement.  I just found that 1/2 cup wasn't enough and a full cup was really too much so I compromised.  Please, add the quantity that makes you happy!

Now, much as it pained me, I managed to make this loaf last 4 days (unwrapped) in an airtight tin with no loss of texture or flavour.  And it was in and out of that tin over the course of the 4 days I can tell you!  But in case you were wondering, the bread part of it freezes beautifully well - though the nuts had a bit of an odd texture when they thawed.  If I were to make this for the freezer I would probably add the same volume of raisins and leave the nuts out.  Also, from the photo you'll see that I sliced it and spread it with butter like a tea bread.  I turns out that this was completely delicious...and completely uncesessary.  Seriously, this can be TOTALLY fat free if you want it to be.

Now go and check your fruit bowl...!