Choc Chip Cookies Made With Coconut Flour

I had a serious urge for some hearty wholegrain cookies the other day, and came up with these babies.

They were completely experimental but turned out alright!

Given my love for all things coconut, I decided it was high time I started playing with coconut flour.  According to one of my favourite health gurus, Dr Mercola, it's a great alternative to the standard wheat variety of flour, and comes with loads of health benefits, consisting of 14% coconut oil, and 58% dietary fiber (wheat bran has only 27%).  The remaining 28% consists of water, protein and carbs.

Coconut flour is also 100% gluten free, which is great news for those intolerant to gluten, however, because it doesn't contain any gluten, this also means that you can end up with a somewhat crumbly cookie (gluten = glue, which binds).  You could add an egg to bind the dough together, however I found that the date syrup I made did a fairly reasonable job.

Speaking of all things coconut, I also sweetened the cookies with coconut sugar. According to Natural News,  coconut sugar is low glycemic, and has many other nutritional qualities; it's high in potassium, magnesium, iron, boron, zinc and copper.

The cookies themselves turned out pretty dense, due to the coconut flour and the almond meal, and soft and cake-ish... but they're really tasty!

I used cacao nibs which didn't really melt very well, but I think they'd be amazing with dark or milk chocolate drops, or even a mashed banana or two!

Yum!

Ingredients

1 cup coconut flour

½ cup almond meal

1 cup oatmeal

1 cup coconut milk (or any milk of your choice)

3 tbs coconut sugar (or any unrefined sugar)

½ cup date syrup* (or honey)

½ cup cacao nibs

1 tsp baking powder

*Soak 12-15 dates in warm water and blend to form a thick syrup

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven at 180C

2. Combine all ingredients

3. Form into small cookie size balls and flatten

4. Bake for approximately 40 mins or until brown

As the day commenced in the morning at the local farmer's market, I thought I'd keep with the bluegrass, country theme, and baked these babies whilst rocking out to Old Crow Medicine Show's 2004 album - O.C.M.S.

(This was also shared on Monday Mania, Traditional Tuesdays, Healthy2day Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday Homemaking Link-Up, Full Plate Thursday and Simple Lives Thursday)

Country Life

As I was up at the crack of dawn this morning, I jumped in the car and headed down to the farmer's market.

I sometimes forget that I am living in the country, so it was a nice reminder

The market was bustling with people buying their weekly fresh goods, as well as coffee, crepes, jams and preserves...

...and if that wasn't country enough, there was a great little country duo, perched on a couple of haystacks, playing a selection o f bluegrass numbers to remind us exactly where we were.

I loaded up on the usual fare - tatsoi, kale, broccoli, freshly dug sweet potatoes, and  as it's the end winter, LOADS of citrus - blood oranges, mandarins, lemons and grapefruit.

YUM.







 ...and found some new friends, who were just as curious about me, as I was about them, on my way home...

EEE - AAW!

Space Invaders Exhibition

I found this on the National Gallery of Australia's website.

It's from an exhibition called Space Invaders which is currently touring around Australia.

The exhibition recently finished up at the University of Queensland and is now bound for the RMIT Gallery in Melbourne from 1st September to 5 November 2011 - Good news for me, as I will be in town in October.

I love the simplicity of this particular design, coupled with the powerful message.


Meek
Begging for Change 2004
Stencil

Teaspoon Hooks!

More inventive ways to recycle your cutlery from the Permaculture Ideas website

Recycled Cutlery for the Garden

How's this for a funky way to recycle your odd bits of cutlery?  

I found these fabulous teaspoons for the herb garden on the Permaculture Ideas website.

I'm all of a sudden excited about hitting up the local op-shops again in the hope of finding some old silver cutlery, to plant next to my kale and chocolate mint!  

All I need now is a mallet, an engraver and a steady hand. 

Vegan 'Quiche'

I accidentally found the following recipe whilst I was scrolling through my Twitter account last night.  It sounded so good, and teamed with a green salad, it seemed like the perfect meal for the spring evenings we’re coming into!  

I tweaked it a bit, the original recipe used cashew nuts, however I substituted them with the butter beans that my housemate had soaked and cooked the night before.  I also used coconut oil instead of olive oil, as this is the only oil we happen to have in the pantry at the moment, and I also added mushrooms. 

It had the texture and appearance of a quiche, and kind of almost tasted like it too!

Vegan ‘Quiche’

1 tbs coconut oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbs chives, chopped

2 tbs parsley, chopped

1 cup chopped spinach

4 or 5 mushrooms Sliced

½ cup cooked butter beans

375gm firm tofu

¼ cup nutritional (savoury) yeast

½ cup soy milk

1 tsp turmeric

¼ tsp paprika

2 tomatoes

1 sheet puff pastry

Salt & pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 190C
2. Heat the oil and sauté the onions and garlic.  Add spinach and mushrooms and lightly fry till spinach wilts
3. Meanwhile, process the beans, tofu, yeast, soy milk and turmeric.  Blend until the consistency is creamy – add more milk if required
4. Combine the onion mixture with the tofu mixture, add the chives and parsley, and season with salt and pepper
5. Lay the pastry in a pie plate or other dish, and pour in the mixture, ensuring it is spread evenly. Sprinkle with paprika, and garnish with sliced tomato
6. Bake in the oven for 30 mins, or until the mixture has set, and the pastry has browned 

Made whilst listening to Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - Hawk

Eaten whilst attempting to watch a dodgy copy of Treme


This was also shared on Monday Mania, Real Food Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, Friday Pot Luck, Pennywise Platter, Cooking Thursday and Food Renegade - check them out!