FREE COOKIES?!

Oh, my bad. I meant free as in allergen-free. Sorry to get your hopes up!!!

These banana date oatmeal cookies are 1) sugar-free, 2) dairy-free, 3) egg-free, 4) nut-free, 5) gluten-free, 6) soy-free and oh, 7) vegan. It doesn’t sound appetizing to you, does it? My sister would probably comment on me being “hipster” again but hey, they’re actually not bad at all! Plus, it’s got all these amazing superfoods mixed in which makes it even BETTER for you.

Are you ready for the recipe yet!?!

Cookies for an occasion.

This past weekend was my friend Devon’s birthday and, of course, being the baker that I am, was designated “dessert girl”. I never get a say at these things. Since I was in charge of dessert, I decided to bake something up to use up a few of my organic lemons that have been looking lonely in my fridge and that could easily be shared by everyone at the party. I made some simple lemon crinkle cookies for the occasion which was a hit!

But let’s be honest, when has my cooking or baked goods ever NOT been a hit?!?!

Crumby cookies.

I’ve found a new use for leftover cake: cake crumb cookies. Now, these are not to be confused with dehydrated cake crumbs that have been folded into cookie dough, this is straight up leftover pieces of day old cake that I had made into cookies. The result was actually pretty satisfactory.

Reunited with tahini.

AHHHHHHHHH I FINALLY HAVE TAHINI IN MY CUPBOARD AGAIN. I seriously went through tahini withdrawal for a good 3 months. So what do I do with it? Make David Lebovitz’ tahini and almond cookies, of course.

Cookies fit for a king (or queen).

Imperial cookies or the empire biscuit. Yep. I made that.

Alcoholic nutella cookies.

Yes, please.

Bailey’s and nutella no-bake cookies. Need I say more?

Halva or fah sang peng?

I’m really having trouble naming my latest creation. You see, I intended to make an almond butter bar but ended up with something else…something BETTER. I really couldn’t put my finger on it, didn’t even really know how to describe it but it seriously reminded me of halva.

Halva is a popular dessert paired with tea and coffee in the Middle East. It is a dense mixture of simple syrup, flour and/or tahini, and butter. It’s halva-nly (no?). With this recipe, I included ghee, whole wheat flour, graham cracker crust, icing sugar and almond butter so not so traditional.

So I went on my merry way and took this to work and it was a total hit. I kept on calling it halva until the executive sous chef tried one and told me it reminded me of this Chinese peanut cookie that was typically served around Chinese New Year. Of course, I have never had the luxury of having this cookie due to my lovely allergies but thanks to a quick Google search, found it online: fah sang peng. The ingredients I used were eerily similar and, in my opinion, more fitting, so I think I’ll have to call this experimental baked good whole wheat almond butter fah sang peng. Thanks James!!!

Baking with ghee.

So I know that deep-frying with ghee turned out to be a little bit of a failure but since I have so much of this golden goodness in my house, I thought “Hey, let’s start baking with it!”. And I am glad to report back that there has been success in the baking side of things with ghee.

Today I made ghee sandwich cookies.

On the hunt for the best chocolate chip cookies.

Oh, and I forgot to mention…”healthy”? Right, like I’m going to find that.

Although I don’t make cookies as often as I used to (I used to be on a cookie diet when I was 10 – just ask my mom – I used to make cookie dough and just eat it out of the bowl, yup), I am always constantly on the hunt for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. I’ve looked at The New York Times recipe, Tollhouse, AllRecipes, Bloomingdale’s but they are always super packed with refined sugars, nuts, oatmeal, crap I don’t really care about. And since I more “conscious” about what I am putting into my body it’s become a bit challenging to find what fits my needs. But when it comes to cookies, I am even having trouble ditching the all purpose flour and refined sugars. It’s even makes me cringe a little that I used whole wheat flour in this recipe. Sigh, I think I really did my best though with my whole wheat chocolate chip and flax cookies.