Cococado Brownie Bites

My son LOVES his CLIF Kids brownie granola bars.  Being that they're not grain free, my goal is to replace them, so I gave this recipe a try, which is modified from What Runs Lori.

It did not disappoint.  I enjoyed them and my son wolfed them down.  I didn't even get a chance to take a picture.  Being that they're healthy, I let him have as much as he wanted.  I'll get pics with the next batch.

Makesabout 12 small cookies. Paleo;gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free.

• 1/4 cup coconut flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp honey
• 1 avocado (pitted and mashed)
• 1/2 tbsp olive oil or coconut oil, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup chocolate nibs or Enjoy Life mini chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a medium sized bowl, mix everything together.
The batter should resemble regular brownie batter- not too wet, and not too dry, either- slightly sticky.
If needed, add in more vanilla extract and/or olive oil or melted coconut oil.
Use spoon to shape batter into small cookie shapes on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake on middle rack for 8-10 minutes.

GF Honey and Oat Bread (gluten/egg/dairy/yeast free)

I've been searching for yeast free bread recipes, as my son is allergic, without a lot of success.  I did read that lemon juice and baking soda can help a little, so I tweaked this recipe from a fellow blogger.  This is the 3rd bread recipe I've tried and like it the best so far....though it really didn't do any rising.  It's very moist and dense though, so I love it.

Honey and Oat Gluten Free Bread

1 cups brown rice flour

1 1/4 cups oat flour

2/3 cup potato starch

1/3 cup arrowroot flour (or tapioca starch)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 tsp baking soda (in place of 2 tsp yeast)

1 tsp lemon juice

1 1/4 tsp chia seed in 1 1/4 boiling water (replacing 1 1/4 teaspoons xanthan gum)

3/4 cup warm coconut milk (replacing cow milk)

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup coconut spread (replacing soft butter)

3 Tbsp flax meal with 9 Tbsp water (in place of 3 eggs)

Mix the chia seed with the boiling water, let stand for 5 minutes.

Mix the flax and boiling water.  Let sit.

Place the flours, starch, salt in a mixing bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer.   

Warm the butter and honey in a glass bowl or cup until the butter is melted. Whisk or stir it together and set aside.

Whisk the baking soda and lemon juice in a bowl and also set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Using an electric mixer, gradually beat the chia seed and warm milk into the dry ingredients. The mixture will be crumbly at first, but once all the milk is added, it’ll come together.
Add the melted butter and honey to the mixing bowl and beat until thoroughly blended.

Add the flax meal,  and lemon juice/baking soda mixture.  Beat the mixture at high speed for 3 minutes. This adds air to the thick batter, which helps take the place of the missing gluten as far as structure is concerned.

At the end of 3 minutes, the batter will look like thick,heavy butter cream icing: smooth and silky. The dough will also be very sticky,and feel a bit gritty if you rub some between your fingers. 

Scrape batter into a lightly greased 81/2” x 4 1/2” loaf pan. Use your wet fingers, or a wet spatula or bowl scraper, to smooth the top, eliminating any “wrinkles.” The smoother your loaf is before you put it into the oven, the smoother it’ll be once it’s baked.

Bake the bread for 25 minutes, until golden brown. Remove it from the oven, and turn it out of the pan onto a rack. Lightly brush with melted butter to help keep the crust soft.
Slice when completely cool. Enjoy!

Sunbutter chocolate chip cookies (Gluten/Dairy/Nut/Egg free)

Due to recently finding out that my son has an almond allergy, I have to stop baking with almond flour and almond butter.  He also has an egg allergy.  So, I'm having to tweak one of my previous recipes.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup sun flour butter 
• 1 banana (mashed)
• 1/3 cup honey (can sub real maple syrup)
• 1/2 ripe avocado (or 1 egg)
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 Tbsp Coconut flour
• 1/2 cup dairy free chocolate chips (such as Enjoy Life brand)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Oil baking sheets or line with parchment paper.
3. Stir together first 9 ingredients. Mix well. Make sure honey is fully incorporated.
4. Add chocolate chips and mix until well combined.
5. Scoop tsp sized balls onto baking sheet. 

6. Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.  The top of the cookies will be very soft.  Let them sit and cool a few minutes to set before moving them to a cooling rack.

Banana Almond Butter Cookies

This was my first attempt at cooking with almond butter.  I found a recipe that I had the ingredients for and went for it.  I reduced the amount of almond butter, added a banana and some coconut flour.  The cookies came out looking and tasting really good!

Adapted from Amee's Savory Dish

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup almond butter 
• 1 banana (mashed)
• 1/3 cup honey (can sub real maple syrup)
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. salt (*only add the salt if you are using unsalted almond butter)
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 Tbsp Coconut flour
• 1/2 cup dairy free chocolate chips (such as Enjoy Life brand)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Oil baking sheets or line with parchment paper.
3. Stir together first 9 ingredients. Mix well. Make sure honey is fully incorporated.
4. Add chocolate chips and mix until well combined.
5. Scoop tsp sized balls onto baking sheet.  The cookies may spread, depending on the thickness of the nut butter, so leave space between.

6. Bake 9-12 minutes or until lightly browned.  The top of the cookies will be very soft.  Let them sit and cool a few minutes to set before moving them to a cooling rack.

Banana Avocado Coconut Cookies (Gluten/Dairy/Nut/Egg free)

I have to be somewhat creative when it comes to cooking for an autistic child with a limited food palate.  I came upon a recipe by Ditch The Wheat which used bananas as the sweetening ingredient.  This was perfect.  I also added avocado, which is a sneaky ingredient.  They were a hit and gone within a couple days.  I'm currently making my 2nd batch.  No need to deny him when the ingredients are actually healthy.

Ingredients

• 1 fresh ripe large banana, (200 grams)
• 2 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil, (slightly warmed for easier mixing. Room temperature)
• 3 tbsp coconut flour, sifted 
• 1/2 avocado
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• ½ tsp baking powder (you can sub 1/2 tsp cream of tarter and 1/8 tsp baking soda)
• 1/8 tsp sea salt
• 1/8 -1/4 cup of chocolate chips
• 
  

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line a baking pan with parchment paper.
2. Using a mixing machine combine the banana and the egg. Slowly add the coconut oil (coconut oil must not be hot or it will cook the egg. You just need to the coconut oil slightly warmed enough to mix smoothly). Add the coconut flour, avocado, vanilla, baking powder and sea salt. Mix until smooth. Lastly add the chocolate chips.
3. Using a spoon, drop 1 inch balls of batter onto the baking tray leaving space between each cookie. Use the back of the spoon to smooth the cookies to a flat cookie shape. *The cookies will not naturally flatten, you must do this manually.
4. Bake for 20 minutes. 

Banana Cinnamon Muffins

Cinnamon Rolls are usually a big hit with my husband so I thought I'd try this recipe when I found it on Pinterest via Multiply Delicious (Her page has much better pictures).

Muffin Ingredients:
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
4 eggs
1/3 cup coconut milk (canned coconut milk)
1/2 cup ripe banana, mashed (about 1 banana)

Cinnamon Topping Ingredients
1 tablespoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons ripe banana, mashed
2 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
1 tablespoon honey

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
Grease/oil Muffin pan or use paper liners.
Whisk dry ingredients together.  Set aside.
In a small bowl add mashed banana, eggs, and coconut milk and mix with a hand mixer until well blended. 
Add wet ingredients into dry ingredients and with a hand mixer until well combined.
Add batter until prepared muffin cups.  Filling to about 1/4-1/2 filled.

Topping:
In a small bowl, combine cinnamon, mashed banana, melted coconut oil, and honey. 
Drizzle mixture over top of muffins and using a toothpick swirl the topping into the muffin batter.  Reserve some of the cinnamon topping.
In the last 5 minutes of baking you will add more cinnamon topping to the tops of the muffins. (I skipped this step)

Bake muffins for 20 – 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. 
Allow muffins to cool in pan 5 – 10 minutes then transfer to wire rack. 

This yielded 9 muffins from my pan.  The muffins came out moist and especially tasty with some butter melted on them.  In the future, I may look into adding more banana or applesauce to sweeten them up a bit. 

Vanilla Coconut Cookies

Since we have been having so much trouble getting my autistic son to eat anything but gluten/sugar filled foods, we had to stop him cold-turkey.  I learned that if we were giving into his cravings, he wouldn't eat anything else.  Stopping, so far, has been good.  He is gradually introducing different foods back into his diet.

Because we stopped, we also had to get his teachers to stop.  They regularly reward him with goldfish crackers, animal cookies, M&M's etc.  The only problem with this is that the teachers do like to have edible rewards when the child behaves appropriately, or does something good.  The teachers asked me to send in something my son could eat.

So, I went Pinterest surfing and found a bunch of great SCD cookie recipes. They're amazingly simple and quick....which got me to thinking "why didn't I look into this sooner!?!?!?"

I digress....

Having all of the ingredients, I pulled a Vanilla Coconut Cookie recipe from Ramble On.

4 eggs

1/2 cup honey (I used Huckleberry honey because I had it on hand)

1/2 cup solid coconut oil (I melted mine a little)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup coconut flour

1/4 tsp sea salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the eggs, honey, and coconut oil in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer on med speed until well combined.

Add the lemon juice and vanilla, lower the mixing speed to low. 

Combine the baking soda, coconut flour and sea salt in a small bowl and whisk together well. 

Add the dry ingredients slowly to your wet ingredients keeping the mixer on low.

Scoop your cookies (little more than a tbsp in capacity) on to your prepared baking sheet.  They will not spread, so what you put down is how they're going to cook and come out. (I made mine pretty small since they were going to be used as little treats at school).

Bake for 12-15 minutes 

I baked mine for 12 minutes, which is when the tips and bottoms started turning a darker brown.  They're very soft when you first get them out, so let them sit a few minutes to harden.

The texture of the cookie was VERY soft and fluffy...no crunch to it at all (I like that).

As far as taste goes, they're very mild, not really sweet....so I worried these were not going to work as a "treat" at school.  Thankfully, the teacher said they worked like a charm.  

I will be trying out additional recipes in the coming days/weeks so he doesn't get bored with the same old treat all the time.