A couple of weeks ago, I attended a weekend class in which the only snacks available were munchkins. After coming home hungry on Saturday (because I do not eat munchkins, not they would have satiated me anyway), I decided that I needed to make some wholesome snacks for myself and the other attendees for Sunday. I wanted it to be vegan (for reasons mentioned several times already), healthy, not too sweet but also tasty. When I went on Chocolate Covered Katie’s site, a recipe for Breakfast oatmeal cupcakes was right there on the front page! YAY! But, unfortunately, I didn’t have ripe bananas, only unripe ones. Fortunately, she had an alternative – applesauce – in the nutrition information section. YAY! I am sure I could have used pumpkin puree, but I didn’t have time to defrost it. I added some dried cranberries and raisins, and used almond milk instead of water.
So, I used applesauce and added a bit more syrup as she suggested. It still wasn’t that sweet, but it was good enough for a snack. All of the attendees tried it and enjoyed it. I kept the rest in the freezer as she suggested and it made for a great fast breakfast when I needed to leave quickly for work last Friday. Woo hoo!
And last week, I had a hankering (yes, I said hankering) for something sweet and semi-chocolatey, but not too sweet and not too chocolately. I also just wanted to bake something. Despite not wanting something too sweet or chocolatey,, I did consider making a flourless chocolate cake that I had at a friend’s house, but the process seemed a little too complicated than I was willing to do at the time. I looked at chocolate covered Katie’s website again and found Flourless chocolate chip cookies.
I was just telling a coworker the other day that chocolate chip cookies are one of (if not the) my favorite desserts for me. It’s some chocolate, but bot too much; just enough. These had a bit of an extra step in the grinding of the oats (which I guess would technically make it oat flour and thus not totally flourless, but…meh), but it was also a small enough recipe that I had enough cookies for me. and maybe to share, for the week. She does say that the extra sugar is optional, that her friends like them better with the sugar and that she, because of her non-sweet toothiness, usually omits it. Since I have a much lower sugar tolerance than I used to, I tried the recipe with the extra sugar, but one TBSP less than she states. It was too sweet. So, if/when I make these again, I will definitely use a lot less sugar or omit the extra sugar completely.
This is an above shot of the cookies. They actually rose while baking and looked very “cookie-esque”, but flattened while cooling. This is probably because of the lack of gluten. They also crumbled easily, another gluten-free consequence.
And I tried my hand at making a pizookie, which is like a giant cookie pie thing, also from chocolate covered Katie. I needed to use up my pumpkin puree before it spoiled and I was off from work and the house was dessert free (not that it’s mandatory to have desserts in the house). So, on New Year’s day, while I rewatched FernGully (which if you haven’t seen yet, is one of the movies Avatar stole its plot from), I made this chocolate-pumpkin pizookie.
It was moist and delicious, although sometimes a bit too sweet and thick for me (I could only handle a little bit at a time). My brother seemed to really enjoy it (even though it was vegan, lol), especially with some coconut cream.
Oh and for those wondering, oats are gluten-free, but because of cross contamination with wheat products, some people who are allergic to wheat cannot have oats/oatmeal unless it is certified gluten0free. The one I used it certified gluten-free and is from Trader Joe’s.
Done in the oven 