Chocolate Chip Cookies - changing the recipe!

Hi, everybody!

Today I want to tell you something which could be very useful to you and can make your work in the kitchen much easier: don't be afraid to change my recipes. Or any recipes. 

If you don't have an ingredient or you don't have it in the amount that it is prescribed in the recipe, fell free and use your imagination to replace it with another suitable one, or to reduce the amount of one ingredient and increase the amount of another. Play with the ingredients and try to be creative. Preparing food could be a funny activity, especially if you avoid boring and repeating recipes.  

For example, today I wanted to prepare Chocolate Chip Cookies, one of my old recipes and very loved by my kids. But I realized that I don't have enough walnuts, my recipe requires 500 grams (17.6 oz). So, I used only what i had, like half of the amount (250 grams = 8.8 oz).

Now, the question is how to fill the missing quantity. So, I added 100 grams more gluten free flour, and 30 grams Raw Almonds Flakes. And I reduces the butter quantity a little bit (from 200 to 170 grams), because I dont need the same moisture. 

Now the recipe looks like this:

- walnuts - grinded (soaked before; see here how) 250 grams (8.8 oz)
- all purpose gluten free flour 350 grams (12.3 oz)
- cane sugar 200 grams (7 oz)
- raw almonds flakes 30 grams (1 oz)
- ghee butter 170 grams - melted (6 oz)
- 2 free range eggs
- dark chocolate chips 100 grams (3.5 oz)

The way you prepare the recipe and cook the cookies is the same as for Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is the recipe that I have done the most times in my life. Sometimes even every week, for months :). My kids just adore this cookies with chocolate chips. Plus, these kind of cookies are very suitable like school snack. 

Ingredients:

- walnuts - grinded (soaked before; see here how) 500 grams (17.6 oz)
- all purpose gluten free flour 250 grams (8.8 oz)
- cane sugar 200 grams (7 oz)
- ghee butter 200 grams - melted (7 oz)
- 4 organic pasture eggs
- dark chocolate chips 100 grams (3.5 oz)

Mix all the ingredients together in a blender. Keep for at least one hour in the fridge. Shape by hand flat biscuits (any size you wish) and cook them in a preheated oven at 170 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Let them cool before eating.

Coconut Cookies Recipe

I should call this recipe "Easy Cookies Recipe", because this is definitely the most easy recipe in the world. And I should make another blog category called "Easy recipes", starting with it. But I just don't want to have a "bushy" blog, so I will try to keep things simple. 

Ingredients:

- coconut flakes dehydrated 200 grams (7 oz)
- unrefined cane sugar Demerara Bullington's 150 grams (5.3 oz)
- gluten free flour 2 tablespoons all purpose
- 4 organic free range eggs
- butter 70 grams (2.5 oz) (next time I want to try with coconut oil; then it will be also a dairy free recipe)

All you have to do is to mix all the ingredients in a bowl, even with a folk, you don't need a blender. Fewer thinks to wash, much better! If you have time, keep the dough in refrigerator for 15 minutes, and then shape by hands the cookies and lay them down on a parchment baking paper in a tray.

Cook the coconut cookies in the preheated oven, at maximum 160 degrees Celsius, for no more that 20 minutes. The eggs there are the only ingredient that should be done. Pay attention not to burn this coconut cookies, because the coconut flakes get roasted very easy. By the way, this is a gluten free recipe.

Healthy Cupcakes

My cupcakes are ideal for a school snack. Try to find another idea to pack them, because the way I did it in a plastic bag, it's not a very good one, because it can be cracked very easy. If you put it just like this in the school bag, and the kids throw it up into the ear and catch it, like my kid usually do with the school bag, the cupcakes will become only crumbs. And your kid will eat someone else 's snack, or worst, he will eat some junk food from the school buffet. 

The ingredients for the recipe:

- one cup and half of all purpose gluten free flour
- half cup of xylitol (or another healthy sweetener)
- one cup of melted butter
- 3 eggs
- one teaspoon aluminium free baking powder
- one teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder unsweetened

Just mix all the ingredients (except cocoa powder) in a blender. Take 1/3 of the mixture and add the cocoa powder.

Pour the white mixture in each empty cupcake paper cup. Immediately pour over the first mixture, a bit of the brown mixture.

Place the cupcakes in the preheated oven, at no more that 150 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.

Cherry Cake

This is another idea for school lunch box.

The ingredients:

- 5 eggs free range pastured

- butter, melted 200 grams (7 oz)

- gluten free four 300 grams (10.5 oz)

- xylitol (or organic cane sugar) 100 grams (3.5 oz)

- cherries 400 grams (14 oz) fresh or frozen

As you can imagine, you have to beat the white eggs separately and then add the xylitol/sugar in it. Separately also mix the melted butter with yolks. And then pour over the white eggs. At the end, add the flour.

Pour in the tray, and garnish with the cherries. Keep it in the oven at maximum 170 degrees Celsius, for 30 minutes.

School Lunch

Chicken schnitzel + fresh cucumber + water in bottle of glass, of course, to avoid the phtalates from plastic.

The schnitzel is made with gluten free flour.

Chocolate Chip Cake

This recipe is sugar free and gluten free.

Ingredients:

Coconut cream 250 grams (8.8 oz)

3-4 very well ripe bananas

Sesame flour 2 tablespoons

Gluten free flour 4 tablespoons

5 organic pasture eggs

Mascarpone cheese 250 grams (8.8 oz)

Unsweetened cocoa powder 1 tablespoon

Baking powder 1 teaspoon

Dark Chocolate Chips 250 grams (8.8 oz)

This chocolate chip cake can be also a suitable snack for school small break, in a nice plastic casserole.

Cashews

We are very excited! Today for Victor is the first day of school, he begins fourth grade. So, starting with today, the snacks and lunch box ideas will flow all over this blog :)

A simple idea for a healthy school snack: raw cashews with raisins. In a small plastic lunch box. For Victor, the cashew snack is for the small break. For the big one, he has a box lunch.

The total amount of cashew and raisins should be as much as the child could take in one full hand. No more that this quantity. Regarding nuts and seeds, this is the rule also for grown-ups.

For Victor, the total amount (cashew + raisin) is about 50 grams (1.7 oz).

This snack could be also a paleo snack. 

Gluten Free Sandwich

I used for this very healthy sandwich: 

- homemade bread from gluten free flour (I will write the recipe soon)

- 2 fish balls (you have the recipe for fish balls here, I wrote it last month)

- one lettuce leaf

- and some raw butter. 

Sweet Potato Muffins

First of all, I want to mention to you that this muffin recipe is suitable for babies starting with one year old. My point of view regarding cereals, formed after the opinion of Weston Price, the father of nutrition, is that this food category (even gluten free ones, even soaked ones) should not be introduced into the diet of a child, until after he reach the age of one year.

For bigger children, these muffins are perfect like a healthy snack for school lunch. So, the ingredients for this easy and healthy muffins recipe are below:

1 cup gluten free all purpose flour

1 cup walnuts (soaked before 4 hours)

1 medium sweet potato (or 300 grams pumpkin)

4 organic eggs
coconut oil 50 grams

As you can see in the picture below, the gluten free flour used by me is a self-raising one, so I don't need any baking powder. 

First step is to cut the sweet potato in half and place it in an oven at 160 degrees Celsius or lower, to bake until a folk easily enter in it. When is ready, place it somewhere in the kitchen to cool. Later, when is a little cooled, take away the peel and smash it with a folk.

Until the potato is baked and cooled, grind the soaked walnuts in a food processor and mix them with the other ingredients: gluten free flour, eggs and coconut oil. 

About the coconut oil... if you usually keep it in fridge, you have two options to melt it: you take it out the fridge one hour before prepare the recipe, or you put it (as I did) in a small glass bowl in the oven near the potato, for a few minutes. 

No matter how you choose to melt the coconut oil :) finally mix all the ingredients in a glass bowl and add in the mashed sweet potato. Your mixture should look like this:

Then put the quantity of 2 teaspoons in each muffin paper cups ( from Ikea of course) and place them in a tray like mine, or in the special muffin pan if you have one. I have one, but today when I wanted to used it, I realized that I forgot it at my mother last week. 

Bake the muffins for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. This is how the muffins look in the end!