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.

Aileen's Vegetarian Beanstack

Jack and the 'Beanstack'

I had made a beanstack for the July Cake and Bake meet, but unfortunately was unable to be there on the day.  I did bring my bake into work with me and managed to raise some money for Marie Curie Cancer Care in the process!

1 1/2 tsp olive oil
1 Spanish onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
1 red pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
1 yellow pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
1 green pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
3 carrots, peeled and diced
1 ¼ kg cooked kidney beans
5 large tortillas (make sure they're big enough for the dish you use!)
2 tbsp of Greek yogurt (I use way more than that, the more the better in my book)
50g grated Cheddar
Handful fresh coriander to serve
Salsa Verde to serve
31.5 cm round spring form tin, greased and lined

1.  Preheat oven to 200ºC
2.  Heat oil, sauté onions

3.  Add garlic and chillies and sauté for 1 more minute
4.  Add peppers, carrots and cover.  Leave on low heat for 10 minutes.
5.  When cooked place in large bowl.  Add beans and blend roughly, we don't want beans totally blended.
6.  Season a little more than normal as beans absorb flavour
7.  Place tortilla on base of tin, then 1/3 bean mix, then yogurt
8.  Repeat ending with yogurt
9.  Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes

10.  Remove, sprinkle with cheese and return to oven uncovered for a final 5-10 minutes

11.  Allow to cool before removing from tin (I may not have waited for it to cool, hence the partial collapse in the photo below, still super tasty though!)

Aileen's potato style bites

Potato style bites

Makes 60

55g butter, softened

110g cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla extract

480g icing sugar

185g flaked coconut

7g cinnamon (or as required)

1. In a medium bowl, beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Add the vanilla and icing sugar; beat until smooth.
2. Using your hands if necessary, mix in the coconut. Roll into balls or potato shapes, and roll in the cinnamon.
3. Place onto a cookie sheet and chill to set. If desired, roll potatoes in cinnamon again for darker colour.

Aileen's Irish potato and peanut butter roll

Irish potato and peanut butter roll

1 potato, peeled and chopped

910g icing sugar

65g peanut butter

1.      Place potato into a saucepan with enough water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook potato until very tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and allow to steam dry for a minute or two.

2.      Transfer potato to a large bowl and mash with a fork until smooth.

3.      Gradually stir icing sugar into mashed potato a little at a time until the mixture forms a stiff dough. The dough will be runny until all the powdered sugar is used.

4.      Place a large square of waxed paper onto a work surface. Roll or press dough into a 12-inch square rectangle on the waxed paper.

5.      Spread peanut butter over top of dough, covering it entirely.

6.      Pick up one edge of waxed paper and start rolling the dough to make a 12-inch-long log. Wrap log tightly with waxed paper.

7.      Refrigerate for 1 hour. Unwrap log and slice candy into cross-sectional pieces about 3/4-inch thick to serve.

Note:  A nice floury potato works best for this recipe, I didn’t have any in at the time and attempted the recipe with a less floury variety.  The result was a very soft dough which prevented me from slicing it nicely despite it having spent longer in the fridge.

  

Aileen's Apricot Tartlets

Apricot tartlets

Makes 10

Pastry

1 large egg

30g sugar

20g ground almond

130g flour

50g butter

2 pinches salt

Curd

300g fresh apricots, pitted

80g sugar

2 eggs

1 tbsp cornflour

1 tbsp lemon juice

Meringue

3 egg whites

180g sugar

60ml water

1 pinch of salt

Making the pastry

1. In a large bowl mix together the egg, the sugar, the ground almond and the salt.
2. Fold in the flour then add the butter. When properly blended, make into a ball and place in the fridge for 1 hour.
3. Preheat your oven at 190°C.
4. Dust some flour on your tabletop and roll out your dough until you obtain 3mm of thickness. Cut out dough circles so that they are slightly larger than your moulds. This way the dough will fall over the edge. Place the dough onto each mould and put in the freezer for 10 minutes.
5. Place some baking beans on the bottom of your moulds and put in the oven for 10 minutes at 190°C.
6. Get rid of the beans and cut off the extra dough at the top. Doing so will give you a perfectly shaped tart. Put back in the oven for some more minutes then put aside to cool down.
   
   

Making the curd

1.  Blend the apricots with the lemon juice and 2 tbsp of water until you obtain a purée.  Pop this mixture through a sieve to get rid of the fruit bits and fibres.
2. Heat up the apricot purée on medium heat. 
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, the sugar and the cornflour together.
4. Pour the heated apricot over the egg mix and return to the heat.
5. Keep mixing until you have a smooth texture.
6. Pop this mixture into each tartlet case, once they have cooled.

Making the meringue topping

1. Make syrup by heating up the sugar and water. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites with the salt. When the syrup reaches 118°C, pour it slowly over the egg meringue while mixing.  If you don’t have a thermometer like me, the soft ball test worked fine.
2. With a piping bag, cover the top of your tarts.  I tried a couple of different piping patterns to mix it up a bit.  Finally put under the grill to give it a golden finish.