Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m funny about my cookies.

I tend to like mine a bit heartier than your average Toll House. More like Ghirardelli meets Rocky Mountains…or something like that. The more you put into it, the better it gets.

So when I make cookies around here, let’s just say they are almost healthy enough to eat for breakfast. It’s just that they are too good to make that a guilt free experience.

Believe me, one lone cookie, left over from last night’s baking, sat staring at me while I had my breakfast of eggs and veggies this morning. I ate around it, I cleaned around it, I wished someone would just come along and grab it. Finally, in a desperate  attempt to rid the plate of temptation and wash the crumbs down the drain, I handed it to my brother. That did the trick.

He has no qualms with eating cookies for breakfast and I congratulated myself for my rock hard willpower. It was a win win if you ask me.

Chocolate Chip Cookies Rocky Mountain Style

1 c. butter (or 1 c. coconut oil plus 1/2 t. sea salt)

1 c. coconut sugar

1 T. vanilla

2 eggs

1 c. oats

1/4 c. ground flax seed (optional, substitute with 1/4 c. flour)

1 c. buckwheat flour (or whole wheat)

1 t. baking soda

2 c. chocolate chips

1 c. walnuts, chopped

1/2 c. coconut, unsweetened, shredded

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Cream together butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs.

Stir in oats, buckwheat, soda and flax seed.

Add chocolate chips, walnuts and coconut. Stir some more.

Spoon onto an un-greased baking sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. Transfer to cooling rack…

And guard with your life…or at least a metal spatula. Someone even had the audacity to remove cookies from the rack as I was taking pictures! See? Like I said, you need an intimidating weapon.

So I’m totally intrigued by buckwheat.

Photo taken by Mario Biondi (public domain)

Do you know that it’s not a cereal or grass as is wheat, but is actually related to sorrels and rhubarb?

It was originally cultivated in Asia, possibly as early as 6000 BC and is documented in Europe by the Balkans circa 4000 BC.

It has a beautiful flower, is gluten free, and quite tasty. :D

So, yes, these cookies are gluten free and can easily be dairy free as well. Simply use coconut oil in place of butter and check the ingredients of chocolate chips before you buy. A quick search led me to two brands of chocolate chips that are dairy and gluten free - Sunspire and Enjoy Life. Or, if you’re feeling super industrious you could make your own chocolate or carob chips/chunks!

Enjoy!

Penarious Challenge – Dairy and Gluten Free Creamy Potato Soup

The other day we had some of the most delicious tomato soup ever. Sally over at The Spontaneous Hausfrau said I’d want a mason jar of this bisque standing in the fridge, but I didn’t believe her until I tried it. And now…guess what? I really wish I had a jar of Chilled Tomato Bisque in my frig ALL the time! It is so good!

My point in bringing this tomato soup up is not just to rave about how delectable it is, although I could do that for a page or two if you like… This is the recipe that introduced me to my new favorite ingredient – cashew cream.

It’s super easy to make and if you are dairy or gluten free you pretty much NEED the recipe. I’ve been imagining 1, 236 things to make with it throughout this week, so when a friend who is going dairy and gluten free mentioned missing potato soup I knew just what I wanted to try next.

I finally gathered all the ingredients and whipped this soup up in under two hours total – and that included taking pictures along the way!

I’d give this a 5 star rating for 5 reasons -

#1 Mom liked it.

#2 Dad like it.

#3 My sisters like it.

#4 My brothers liked it.

#5 If you can get my put-dairy-in-everything family to like it, it’s got to be good!

So, of course, to start off, you have to make the cashew cream (recipe is in the link above), or have some stashed away in your frig as I did. Yes, it takes some pre-planning, but it’s totally worth it and you can make a big batch to freeze for later.

Here are the basics – Cashew cream, chicken broth, potatoes, garlic, onion and…

Parsley! We have so much parsley in our garden it’s crazy! We now pick it for bouquets around the house. :D

Speaking of bouquets…

These Dahlias are from Mom’s garden, as are the Day Lilies…

I love fresh cut flowers!

Okay, sorry. No more detours, I promise.

Dairy Free Gluten Free Potato Soup

2 T. olive oil

1  onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

4-5 c. cubed potatoes

4 c. chicken broth

1/8 c. chopped fresh parsley

1/8 t. garlic powder

3/4 c. cashew cream

salt and pepper to taste

Saute onion in oil until golden.

Add potatoes and garlic and saute lightly. Pour in chicken broth and bring to boil.

Cover and cook 30 minutes on med-low, or until potatoes are soft. Add parsley…

…and garlic powder. Turn the heat down to low.

Mash with a potato masher, or if you don’t like chunky, go ahead and give it a whir in the blender. Stir in cashew cream and more broth if you like a thinner consistency. Salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with smoked salmon and a sprig of dill.

When ever I’m in the process of making a recipe my mind is going 100 miles a minute thinking of all the variations that would go with whatever I’m doing. If you’re like that too (I hope I’m not the only one!) then you probably don’t need the following variations…

Try your favorite herbs in place of, or along with, the parsley – rosemary, thyme, dill…

Stir in some turkey bacon.

Jazz it up with pickled jalapenos.

Or add the traditional chopped celery and carrots when you’re sauteing the onions.

Whether you leave it as is, or give it your own unique twist, I hope you enjoy the flavor of this creamy potato soup. Your family will NEVER guess there are cashews in it. And if they do? Well then…I’m impressed! :D

I leave you now with my favorite dahlia and a printable version of this recipe…

Dairy Free Gluten Free Potato Soup

2 T. olive oil

1  onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

4-5 c. cubed potatoes

4 c. chicken broth

1/8 c. chopped fresh parsley

1/8 t. garlic powder

3/4 c. cashew cream

salt and pepper to taste

Saute onion in oil until golden. Add potatoes and garlic and saute lightly. Pour in chicken broth and bring to boil. Cover and cook 30 minutes on med-low, or until potatoes are soft. Add parsley and garlic powder. Turn the heat down to low.

Mash with a potato masher, or if you don’t like chunky, go ahead and give it a whir in the blender. Stir in cashew cream and more broth if you like a thinner consistency. Salt and pepper to taste.

Garnish with smoked salmon and a sprig of dill or crumbled turkey bacon and parsley. Enjoy!

No Bake Mulberry Cheesecake

There’s an old English nursery song that I always think of when I see mulberries.

I guess it was this little ditty that gave me the false idea that mulberries grow on bushes. Nice little bushes that can be reached from the ground and even a child could go out and pick them.

I don’t think I even laid eyes on a real mulberry until I was well past nine years old. That changed when we moved out in the country and found several large TREES with blackberry-looking-things growing on them. We tried gathering these berries a few different ways, one of which was laying sheets under the tree and shaking the trunk with the tractor. It wasn’t very successful. We gave up after a year or two.

I hate it when the mulberries ripen, because it seems like such a waste not to gather them. The winds blow them down and they quickly get trampled by people and animals alike. This year, there were so many and they looked so good that I had to try again.

For the first picking I lugged Dad’s three-legged ladder over and pulled the branches over my head so I could reach the lowest ones. That yielded about 3 cups, some very stained fingers and a purple step ladder. The second time, I climbed into the tractor bucket and Anna lifted, lowered and moved me about to the best places. We got four cups from that. Not bad, really, but nothing compared to the amount of berries left on the tree high up in the branches.  Oh well! We couldn’t reach them anyway.

Now the question was, what to do with them?  I learned from previous experience that mulberries mold very quickly – within three days if chilled, so I had to use them fast.

I just have this thing with berries and cheesecake…Sorry, I know it’s not very original, but it’s just so good! This one happens to be gluten free (though I never even thought about that when I made it) and is sweetened with coconut sugar and raw honey. You could almost say it was a raw food cheesecake…if you used raw cream cheese and cream. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that on hand.

The crust -

1 c. almonds

1 c. unsweetened coconut

3 T. coconut oil or butter

3 T. coconut sugar

1/4 t. cinnamon (optional)

Blend almonds and coconut in processor until nuts are fine. Add sugar and coconut oil. If it doesn’t hold together when you pinch it, add a little more oil or butter. Pat into a 9 inch cheesecake pan.

The filling -

16 oz cream cheese

1/2 c. honey

1 T. vanilla

1/2 c. cream

Whip together on high until combined and the cream thickens. Spoon half of mixture onto crust. Layer 1 – 2 cups of mulberries over the top and repeat with remaining cream cheese mixture and berries. Chill and serve.

My Dad loves crust. So do I. Crust makes cheesecake what it is…in my opinion. :D

Cutting into it marbled the colors. Yum!

If you happen to have mulberries and happen to want to pick them and happen to make this cheesecake and happen to have leftovers, you MUST eat them the next day. Trust me on this. I saved mine for the day after the next day and the berries were already going bad. Sadness…

I’m glad I tried to be resourceful and pick the mulberries again this year, but you know what? I think it will be another decade or so before I feel bad about it again.

Flavors of Europe Tart

Just two years ago, my sister and I were over in Europe, somewhere between the Netherlands and Italy. You can read about our adventures over on our Sisters Four blog if you like.

Biking the lovely streets of Haarlem, Netherlands

I’ve been missing Europe a lot lately – the trains, the towns, the people, and, of course, the food.

There are several flavors that totally remind me of different places in Europe. Part of that is due to my ancestry, part to travels, and there’s probably a part in there that comes from what I’ve been told by cookbooks or people in general. Perhaps it’s faulty, but never the less, there.

I’ve been wanting to make something that was reminiscent of the amazing flavors we sampled on our trip, but when I saw the recipe for Brown Butter Tarts with Sour Cherries in the Midwest Living a couple months ago, I knew I had to incorporate cardamom whipped cream somehow as well.

Cardamom is native to India, but my viking relatives (I’m sure I was related to one of them!) introduced it to Scandinavia over 1,000 years ago. That’s why cardamom always makes me think of my Swedish grandmother’s delicious Cardamom cinnamon rolls and not Badam Burfi.

This fabulous photograph was taken by Moira over at Who Want’s Seconds? You’ll find some interesting facts about cardamom over there.

Almond is used everywhere and for good reason, it is AMAZINGNESS! The Swedes use mandalmassa (almond paste) in muffins and biscuits and other treats like the Swedish Mazarinmuffins. When we were in Haarlem, Paula, the hostess at our phenomenal B&B, served us a bread laden with liqueur soaked fruit and a whole log of almond paste wrapped inside. Oh my! That was a flavor worth savoring! I recreated the recipe for Kerststol in my Taste of Europe series here.

Okay, almond was a given. Maybe some orange. Cherries? I like that…

And so the Flavors of Europe Tart began to take shape.

I started with a crumb crust. Actually, I lied. I started with a pastry crust using almond paste, flour and butter. It was delicious, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. So we ate that and started over.

7 oz. almond paste

1/2 c. flour

1/4 c. butter

1/2 c. almonds, ground

Pulse in a food processor, until blended and press into a tart pan. Bake for 15 -20 minutes or until golden.

I wanted vanilla bean custard for the filling, so I went with my tried and true custard/pudding recipe that I use for just about anything I need pudding or custard for.

2/3 c. sugar

1/2 vanilla bean, scraped

1/4 c. cornstarch

1/4 t. salt

2 c. milk

4 lg. egg yolks

2 t. butter

1 t. vanilla

Whisk all ingredients together in a sauce pan while cold. Turn on the heat and whisk while it warms. As soon as it starts to thicken, remove from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla and pour into tart crust. Cover with plastic wrap to keep from forming a skin on top and chill in refrigerator.

The yolks I used are farm fresh and were so orange. That explains why the pudding is yellow. I knew you were wondering. :)

And guess what? The shell of the egg was green/blue! I LOVE that!

I decided to used dark sweet cherries for the topping and reduce them in their own juices. So easy! Just put 12 oz. of frozen cherries in a pan and let simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is a  syrupy consistency.

Cardamom Whipped Cream from Midwest Living

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup whipping cream

1 tablespoon powdered sugar (optional)

1/2 teaspoon finely shredded orange peel

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

Beat cream until it starts to thicken. Add sugar, orange peel, vanilla and cardamom. Beat until desired texture is reached.

Slice tart and serve with a dollop of cream.

So now, just to be totally random (and because I like it so much and I’m so excited about it :), I have to share my latest project with you.

I decided to paint my closet. I’ve done a lot of painting in the past working for my Dad or sisters or doing jobs of my own and I’m telling ya’, I really dislike painting closets. I mean, come on, it’s just a closet! Right?

Well, I don’t know what got into me.

I took a plain, decent closet…

And spiced it up a bit!

 I love it so much I’m doing to get rid of all my stuff, take the doors off my closet and enjoy it! :D Just kidding. But it was sad covering so much of it up.

Now it’s just a closet again…with an attitude.

Chia Pudding with Mango, Strawberries and Coconut

Today was perfectly beautiful. The breeze was cool, the sun was warm…everything is so green from all the rain we’ve been having. It was one of those days that make you wish you could stick it in a bottle and save it for a stifling August afternoon.

No, I’m not even going to think about August. August doesn’t exist – not here, not now, not for me.

Instead, I’m going to think about Chia Pudding.

I mentioned this in my last post and I wonder about your reactions…did it sound terrible? Or are you just waiting for the recipe?

I hope you want the recipe because that’s what I’m giving you this fine evening. It is so SO good. And after you taste it you will never believe that it has no dairy, no gluten and no processed sugars.

It is so easy… and fast…and it looks good too.

Gee, it sounds like I’m trying to talk you into something, but I know you already want the recipe so here it is.

Chia Pudding with Mango, Strawberries and Coconut

1 8oz. package pitted dates

1 – 13.5 oz. can coconut milk

13.5 oz.  water

2 t. vanilla

1/4 c. chia seeds

1 carton strawberries, de-stemmed, washed and diced

1 mango, peeled and diced

1/4 shredded unsweetened coconut

Combine dates, vanilla, coconut milk, water and chia seeds in a food processor or blender. Pulse until combined – it won’t be quite smooth, but you’ll want the dates well blended – pour into a bowl and chill.

EDIT: Some people have had trouble with the pudding coming out too watery. I recommend, 1 – chilling your coconut milk before using and draining the watery liquid (simply poke a hole in the solid cream and drain over the sink), or 2 – going easy on the water until you can gauge what the consistency will be. Keep in mind that the chia seeds absorb the liquid, so it thickens as it chills.

Variations -

Christy commented below and left some great ideas – “I used dried figs, goji berries, apricots and prunes for the fruit ( it gave the pudding a beautiful apricot color),I also added a few dashes of cardamom.”

To satisfy a chocolate craving, add 1/8- 1/4 c. cocoa powder.

For a “less mess/less dishes” variation, use maple syrup or honey in place of the dates and water and stir together with a spoon. 

Anyone else have tasty variations? I’ll post them here. :D

Toss together fruit and coconut. Serve atop the pudding and garnish with mint leaves if you like.

Oh! And isn’t this bowl so cool? My sister, Sage, made it. I have such talented sisters. I hope someday to have an entire kitchen furnished with Sage’s pottery and Tera’s glass.

Anyhow, do let me know what you think if you try this recipe out. I think you’ll like it.