Snickers Cookies (and cookie bars)

These cookies were born over a gmail chat with our dear friend Maud who is currently living in LA. I started talking about how I wanted to make a cookie that tasted like a snickers bar, and she immediately suggested rolos. Genius! I've been thinking about it ever since so I decided to try them tonight. I used pretty much my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe but added peanuts and rolos to try to replicate that ooey gooey salty sweet deliciousness that comes in a snickers bar. Oh, also, this is a large recipe. You could cut it in half or you can make it all and then save half the dough in the freezer. It's never a bad thing to have cookie dough around.

Ingredients:

2 sticks of butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla

2 cups rice flour mix

1/4 cup teff flour

1/4 cup quinoa flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp xanthan gum

3/4 tsp salt

chocolate chips

peanuts

rolos candy

Preheat the oven to 375. Cream the butter and sugar in your mixer or with a hand mixer. Add the eggs and beat, then add the vanilla. Beat until smooth. Technically you should do the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, but I find if you do it in a stand mixer you can just throw it all on top of the wet ingredients, give it a preliminary stir and then beat it in. It comes out evenly mixed. I usually use a combination of the rice flour mix along with teff and millet flour which are both whole grains. This time I was out of millet so I substituted in some quinoa flour that I was given over the holidays (yes people give me flour for Christmas). Either way it's nice to add in a whole grain so there is some semblance of health to counteract all the butter and sugar and chocolate. And man, this quinoa flour made these cookies extra fluffy and delicious. We're going to have to experiment a lot more with this quinoa stuff. I threw in probably about half a cup of chocolate chips. They're the one thing I don't believe in measuring. Just look in the dough and see if it looks about as chocolatey as you want your cookies to be. If not, add more! I also threw in a handful or two of peanuts. I left them whole, or really halved, however they came in the can. I might chop them up next time. I cut the rolos in half because I thought it would be too much to bite into all at once. Here is everything before it was fully mixed in. Mmmmmm.

To bake them I went two ways. First, I made a tray of small cookies to see how those would turn out.

Then I made a batch of big cookies that I know will just turn into cookie bars, or cookie pie as I like to call it. For some reason I go through the motions of making separate cookies even though I know that they will disappear in the baking. Maybe one day I'll just go all out and fill the entire tray. For now, it looks like this.

Oh, man. These cookies are SO GOOD. Salt, chocolate, peanuts, caramel. They're insane when they're warm, but somehow when they're cold they're even more reminiscent of a snickers bar. Except maybe even better.

Apple Cinnamon Mini Loaves with Streusel

I love winter break, because you don't go outside unless you absolutely have to, and that means lots of our favorite indoor activity: baking. Rosie got "The French Chef" DVDs for Christmas, and except for venturing out to Fairway (woot woot!) for elusive, delicious crystallized ginger (we'll put up the recipe that calls for that tomorrow!), we've been watching and baking all day.

This recipe is the wholesome companion to the banana peanut loaves we made yesterday, and like them, we used mini loaf pans as well as standard-size muffin-cupcake pans. There are a lot of ingredients, but the moistness really justifies the extra prep time.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins with Streusel Topping

Muffins

2 cups Brown Rice Flour mix

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tb baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp xanthan gum

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup peeled, chopped apple (about 1 medium-large apple)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup canola oil

2 large eggs

Streusel

1/2 cup Brown Rice Flour mix

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp xanthan gum

3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

(Combine flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and xanthan gum in a small bowl; stir to blend. Pour in butter and stir until all dry ingredients are moistened. Break into small pieces with spoon.)

Preheat to 375

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, and cinnamon in large mixing bowl, add apples and walnuts, stir until evenly mixed.

In small bowl, combine milk and oil; remove 1 tablespoon of combined liquid and discard it. Beat in eggs. Add liquids to apple mixture and stir until just blended.

Fill muffin pans 2/3 full, then top with streusel. Bake ~20 min, let cool on rack.

--taken from Gluten Free Baking Classics, Annalise G. Roberts

Banana Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Mini Loaves

Pretty much whenever we bake we use this flour mix as a base:

6 cups brown or white rice flour

2 cups potato starch

1 cup tapioca starch or flour

Mix them all together until they feel like one flour. You can make a smaller ratio but it's easier to make a big batch and always have some on hand.

Today we made these mini loaves. It's the first time we've used these tiny pans Julia found.

We converted the recipe from Magnolia's cookbook, made it gluten free and added peanut butter. We also used about half the bananas we were supposed to, because we ran out.

They came out deliciously nutty and chocolatey; the banana was subtle, but added a great moistness.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs, room temperature

1/2 cup mashed bananas

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup chopped peanuts

1/2 cups peanut butter

2 cups rice flour mix

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour loaf pans. Cream butter and sugar till fluffy. Add one egg at a time blending until smooth. Add mashed bananas and milk. Mix in sifted flour. Blend in peanut butter. Stir in peanuts and chocolate chips. The mini loaves baked for 15-20 minutes and cooled for another 20.

Julia's staying with me for a few days, so we're going to wake up early, work on our recipes and get them on here. Julia's new years resolution of gaining 20 pounds demands real effort!