Stacey's Gluten Free Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

These are absolutely the chewiest cookies I ever made. Seriously good stuff. For our "free-from" month my main "bake" was to make a gluten free veggie lasagne, but I didn't like the way it turned out so I went ahead and knocked up these vegan and gluten free cookies instead. The recipe below started it's life over on this blog here, but as usually I messed with the quantities and stuff. Seriously - I think I have a problem where I'm not actually able to follow a recipe.

I think next time I make these, I may leave 50g of my oats whole to give the cookies a little more structure. I'll post pics/update to let you know how it goes!

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 8-10 minutes
Makes 18 cookies

Ingredients:
150g rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder

250g crunchy peanut butter

150g dark muscovado sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp water (if needed)

1. Preheat your oven to 180 and line a couple of baking sheets with grease proof paper
2. Pop you oats into a blender, and whizz to a fine powder. Don't worry if there are a couple of rough bit. Stir in the baking powder and put to one side.
3. Beat together the peanut butter, sugar and vanilla extract until well combined. Stir in the oat flour until a crumbly dough starts to form, then knead this gently with your hands until the mixture comes together. If you find the mixture is too crumbly, add a little water until you get smooth dough.
4. Roll the dough into balls and pop on the baking sheets, making sure to leave ample space between as the cookies will spread! 
5. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown and starting to get crisp on top. Don't worry if they are still gooey when you take them out of the oven, they will firm up slightly as they cool. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking tray for 5 minutes, until transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Enjoy!

February - The One I Love

For February we decided to have a little walk down memory lane by baking our favourite cake or bake from a previous meeting... and it was lovely! Sadly, not many of us could make it so it was a small meeting, but we still ended up running over our time and being kicked out by the wardens!

Joy baked Sally's Venezualan Pan de Jamon from our Around the World month, Mary-Anne baked my Princesse Torta from our Eurovision Bake Contest, I baked Lorna's Pecan Cake from our Fairytale Picnic, and Tom baked Sally's Chocolate Orange Spiced Cookies from our first Christmas together. Since Ollie hadn't been for a while, and Gemma is a new member, they decided to bake some of their personal favourite recipes - for Ollie this was a triple layer Red Velvet Cake, and Gemma made her infamous Chocolate Brownies. Needless to say, we all loved them!

Tom's Autumn Apple Cake

I copied this recipe down a long time ago, and I think I forgot to halve the apples along with the rest of the ingredients.  If you like apples a lot use the full amount (I did for my bake, and it works), but it turns out very apple-y!

It's gluten free, but probably also works fine with normal plain flour. But then obviously wouldn't be gluten-free.

Ingredients

1lb peeled, cored and sliced apples
1½ cups GF flour (or Polenta)
½ tbsp GF baking powder
Pinch salt
1¼ cups granulated sugar (I used brown)
½ cup oil
2 large eggs
1½ tsp Vanilla
Zest and juice of 1 small orange

Method

Put the everything except the apples in a bowl and mix it together well.
Line a 8" square tin and pour in half the batter.
Layer on half the apples.
Pour on remaining batter.
Layer on remaining apples.
Sprinkle some brown sugar and little pinch of cinnamon over the apples.
Bake for around 1½ hours at 180°C/GM4.