Undercover Recipes: Gluten and Dairy Free Sugar Cookies

This is our second holiday season spent respecting dairy and gluten dietary restrictions, and we've just now created a sugar cookie that stands up to ones comprised of butter and wheat flour.

I personally wasn't up for the task no matter how deprived I felt of cookies last holiday season (I'm not a baker; I burn toast often and with astonishing consistency), but my computer-genuis-by-day, chef-extraordinare-by-night husband, John, took it on with gusto and vigor.

And that's way better anyway because truth be told he's way pickier about desserts than the rest of the family who simply expects it to be, well, edible, and he will make and remake until perfected nearly every.single.time. {It's about that time that I have to say with bullhorn force to myself: back away from the cookies!}

Anyway, enjoy and indulge a bit on this astonishingly chewy and delectable sugar cookie.

And good heavens -- please remember that it's a *sugar* cookie, which means that while it's free of wheat and dairy it is certainly not free of calories in the form of pure sugar! PSA over.

Ingredients:
1 cup of room temperature coconut oil
3/4 whole sugar
3/4 brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups of brown rice flour
3/4 cup of arrowroot powder
1.5 teaspoons of xanthan gum* (or 1.5 teaspoons of potato starch)
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2 teaspoons of hot water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Sundrop chocolate candies optional -- not dairy free!
{You could also replace the arrowroot and xanthan gum with 1/4 cup of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Baking Flour and add an extra egg as a recipe variation.}

Directions:
Preheat over to 350 degrees.
Cream together coconut oil and sugars until smooth.
Beat in the eggs one at a time along with the vanilla extract.
In a separate dish, dissolve the baking soda into the hot water; add it to the existing creamed mixture along with the salt.
In a separate bowl, mix the brown rice flour, arrowroot powder and xanthan gum {or Bob's Red Mill flour} gently with a fork; add the flour mixture to the creamed batter.
Using a spoon, place small balls of dough {about a teaspoon full} on a greased cookie sheet leaving about two inches between each cookie.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, keeping a close eye on the cookies. Leave them in closer to 12 minutes if you like crunchier cookies.
After baking, remove cookies from the baking sheet, allowing them to cool atop of wax paper or a cookie rack.
Decorate or scarf after cooling -- your choice.

*One of my awesome readers asked me what I mean by real food ingredients, and she challenged me to look deeper into xanthan gum, which is a thickener made from fermenting bacteria. I'm not totally sure how much I like it after doing more digging, so I've included recipe variations! Always a challenge this baking and healthy living stuff!

Undercover Recipes: Baked Cinnamon Apples with Creamy Honey Cashew Butter

Every now and then I whip up something in the kitchen that no one in my house full of pickies can seemingly get enough of their fill.

This is one of those recipes. And I kind of don't mind. With no refined sugar, no grains and no packaged ingredients while boasting healthy fat and the hearty goodness of in-season fruit, as far as I'm concerned, the kids and hubby can eat as many helpings as they please of this Baked Cinnamon Apples with Creamy Honey Cashew Butter dish.



What began with having a surplus of apples and not nearly enough room in the dehydrator to preserve them all led to a brilliant find: not only are baked apples good when bathed in cinnamon, vanilla and butter.

They are all the more fabulous when they take a dip with homemade honey cashew butter.

Admittedly, this recipe takes a little work, but if you love the cashew butters, as everyone in my house does, we make it in bulk once every week or two and keep the fridge shelves lined with it for such soiree dessert nights.

Honey Cashew Butter 
{this recipe has been adapted from The Rawtarian}


Two cups of soaked and sprouted cashews
1/2 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut
1/4 cup of raisins
1/2 teaspoon of pink Himalayan salt or sea salt
1 teaspoon of fresh honey
a couple grates of lemon peel
3/4 cup of water

Toss everything into your blender or Vitamix in the order listed above and blend until smooth and creamy. Consistency should be less dense than peanut or almond butter but not watery either. Refrigerate and use in any way you'd use any other nut butter.

Baked Cinnamon Vanilla Apples



Five peeled and diced medium to large apples in an oven-safe pan with lid
Two Tablespoons of butter {use coconut oil to make this dairy free!}
3/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
dash of cardamon
three splashes of vanilla
1/4 cup of water

Preheat the over to 350 degrees. Peel and dice the apples and toss them into an oven-safe pan. Cut two tablespoons of butter into several chunks and intersperse the butter among the apple pieces. In a separate dish, mix dry spices together with a fork. Slowly sprinkle the dry spice mix atop of the apples and butter, evenly distributing among all of the apple pieces. Add three splashes of vanilla to the apple mixture. Pour 1/4 cup of water into the bottom of the pan, taking care not to wash spices from the apples. Cover with a lid and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.



After the apples are finished baking, immediately place a few heaping spoonfuls of cashew butter atop and then mix it all up.

Enjoy! And? Prepare to dish out seconds.