Double Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know it may appear as though I've been a total slacker in the writing department, but I promise that just isn't so! I've been spending my evenings interviewing top athletes competing in the CrossFit Games Canada East Regionals and writing up their profiles (in return for actual monies!!). It's supercool to be involved and to have the chance to give some much deserved recognition to amazing athletes like the slo-mo muscleup queen Brit Holmberg. Regionals are in Toronto May 11-13 and I highly recommend checking it out, it's going to be quite a spectacle of incredible strength and stamina including 100 lb dumbell snatches with One Arm. In.Sane. I'll be the one in the MEDIA shirt standing at the finish line with a tub of icecream ;)

To make up for my absence of late, I offer you COOKIES! If you're wondering why there are only two on the plate instead of the 30 that I made, it's because I ate the rest (well, I shared the rest at a potluck, but probably ate more than my share) before realizing with two left that I should probably take a picture and consider ermeging from my blogging hibernation.

Double Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are a modification of Elana's chocolate chip cookies (notice that there were only 3 on the plate in her photo!). I subbed coconut oil for grapeseed oil in her recipe, which gives them a nice coconut flavour (you could do clarified butter instead), and I subbed honey for agave (next time I'm trying coconut sugar, I just forgot it existed this time).

Ingredients

• 2 ½ cups blanched almond flour
• ½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ cup coconut oil (melted)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• ½ cup honey (I use raw! But not as much as called for, roughly 1/3 cup)
• 1 cup chocolate chips (I used half enjoy life chocolate chips, and half chopped up dark chocolate bar)
  

1. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl
2. Stir together wet ingredients in a smaller bowl
3. Mix wet ingredients into dry
4. Form 1-inch balls and press onto a parchment paperlined baking sheet
5. Bake at 350° for 7-10 minutes
6. Cool and serve

ATTENTION: YOU ARE NOT DONE!

7. This is the most important part and turns the normal sogginess of almond flour cookies into proper cookie crispiness. Once the cookies are mostly cooled, stick them back in the oven for another 3 minutes or so. Watch them closely so they don't burn, and take them out when they start to get dark edges like in the picture. You may have a row of cookies that are already browned (if your oven is like mine, it'll be the back row). Leave these ones out.

If you're skeptical about the last part, consider the difference between toasted nuts and non-toasted. Exactly.

What the heck do you eat for breakfast?

Breakfast was the hardest meal for me when I started eating Paleo. As I mentioned in my very first post, I've had a bagel with peanut butter (or sometimes cream cheese) every morning of my entire life. Occasionally I'd branch out and have toast.

My new workday routine breakfast consists of 2 eggs (fried or scrambled in coconut oil), and a bowl of "cereal" (I think I got the idea from coach Jen). And some fish oil. If you need more vegetables in your life (who doesn't?), I've also started having a handful of spinach which I saute for a minute after the eggs are done. Sometimes I have salsa with scrambled eggs, and sometimes I add paprika or ground pepper. This whole routine takes no longer to prepare than my old breakfast, and I pack my lunch while my eggs are frying.

Pardon the cat.

On the weekend, I often make paleo pancakes or waffles. Both of these (receipes posted below) are big hits with non-paleo folk as well. I think the pancakes are better than the "regular kind" because I don't feel like I have to douse them in butter and syrup to enjoy them. The waffles are surprisingly spongey and every bit as delicious as the non-paleo kind. Bonus: they've got protein powder and 3 eggs apiece so they have 5 blocks of potein and will actually keep you full until lunch!

Paleo Protein Waffles

From "Giving Up Grains". This makes 2 waffles. I made the whole batch, ate 3/4 of one waffle, and heated up the rest in the toaster oven to supplement my breakfast for the rest of the week!

Ingredients
1/4 cup coconut flour
2 scoops of vanilla protein powder
6 eggs
2 tbs honey
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs natural organic apple sauce (do not leave this out or they will be very dry!)
4 tbs ghee, melted (I use coconut oil)

Heat up your waffle iron. If you don't have one, it's totally worth buying! Whisk everything together. I melted the coconut oil first, but make sure you wait for it to cool because the first time I did not and it started to cook my eggs when I poured it in! The batter is a bit lumpy and strange in consistency, but I promise this does not affect deliciousness. My iron has an automatic shut off when it's done, but it's about 5 minutes. As topping I heat up some frozen berries in a saucepan with a bit of honey.


Paleo "Cereal"

You can put all sorts of things in this but here's a list of what I often add.

A spoonfull of berries, frozen (and then thawed) in the winter, fresh in the summer
Sliced banana
1/2 scoop of protein powder
A handful of coconut (toasted in the toaster oven!)
Walnuts (also toasted)
chia seeds
flax seeds

Then I mix the whole thing up with either almond milk (unsweetened!) or coconut milk beverage. Both are much cheaper at costco than at any grocery store I've seen.


Paleo Pancakes

I'm not sure where I found this recipe originally, perhaps Mark's Daily Apple blog.

Ingredients (per person)
1 ripe (or frozen) banana
BIG scoop of almond butter
1 egg
Cinnamon to taste
(you can add almond flour to thicken the batter, and I've also added a bit of protein powder).

Thaw the banana, if it's frozen, and smash it up. Whisk everything together. Fry in ghee or coconut oil. I find they take much longer than ordinary pancakes, so don't put them on too high or the outside will burn before the inside is cooked enough. Serve with berries (or syrup, if you like that sort of thing), and some blueberry breakfast sausage (way better than they sound) from Beach Road Meats on Locke St.


Egg Muffins

If you need something quick for hurried mornings, I sometimes make up some egg muffins ahead of time on the weekend. There are a million versions on the interweb (like here), but in short, you wisk up your eggs, add whatever you want in terms of finely chopped veggies (peppers, onions, spinach, etc) and meat (precooked: ham, sausage, etc), and bake in muffin tins on about 350 for 20-30 minutes. They tend to deflate a little like a souffle, but they're tasty (think mini quiche!) and can be kept in the freezer, then heated up in the toaster oven or microwave once you get to work!

Banana Macaroon Pie

I've hated bananas for as long as I can remember. The texture really grosses me out (and also Mom says I had some sort of banana related incident as a child). But since bananas are a very convenient snack (they come in their own container!), and work so well in smoothies, I decided to give them another try. As I'm finding with many things that I've previously resisted due to unpleasant texture (like broccoli...it's fuzzy...) if you disguise it at first, you can make it edible (often with bacon), and eventually you even get used to it. Recently, I've embraced the banana, and it has become a part of my new favourite dessert:

Banana Sundae(ish)

Sliced banana (1/2 to 1 whole, hunger dependent), drizzled with almond butter and a bit of honey, and sprinkled with cocoa nibs.

The day after inventing this banana camouflage (and just one week into the 10 week paleo challenge), I was confronted with an invitation to a birthday dinner involving double chocolate cake. Keeping in mind my "plan to not cheat" motto I decided to make my own dessert to bring along. My manfriend suggested I make something to share, and proposed that I make my banana sundae into a pie to "make it look less healthy so that other people will try it". Google found me this recipe, which I modified (ditched the strawberries and replaced the crust with something chocolatey) to create the masterpiece below.

Banana Macaroon Pie

Crust
3/4 cup blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, toasted
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted over low heat
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling
2 ripe bananas

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs, beaten

2/3 c. coconut milk
honey and cocoa nibs for the top


The crust is modified from Elana's Gluten-free Almond Flour cookbook. Her crusts are all variations on a theme. I adjusted her coconut pie crust to make it chocolatey, although I think I would put a bit more coconut/almond flour and a bit less cocoa next time.
1. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl, whisk the wet in another bowl, and stir the wet into the dry.
2. Press into a 9 1/2" pie pan.
3.(?) I then baked it at 350 for 10 minutes (without the filling), but realized afterward that this was probably unnecessary; Alana's crust recipe was for a pie with chilled filling (and thus needed separate baking), and the original banana pie recipe did not pre-bake the crust. Thus, the top edges were a little crispy, so I'll try without pre-baking next time (there's nothing in it that really needs baking anyway).

4. Mix bananas, lemon juice, and vanilla extract either in a food processor or by hand (you’ll need to mash the bananas first if you mix by hand). Then gently mix in coconut milk and eggs.
3. Pour banana filling into pie crust.
4. Bake at 180 C for 35 minutes, or until set in center. Let pie cool.
5. Drizzle honey and sprinkle cocoa nibs on top (or stick with the strawberries and blueberries suggested in the original recipe).

Note: other people actually ate it, and took a second slice for later!