Orange Spice Cookies - Light, Vegan, & Gluten Free

VegFest was a couple weeks ago and I had the pleasure of helping Laurie Sadowski set up her demo and 200+ samples each for two gluten free baking demos. Today, I thought I'd look through her cookbook I picked up at Vegfest  "The Allergy Free Cook Bakes Cakes & Cookies".  I found a recipe for Orange Spice Cookies that looked nice and I had most of the ingredients.  As usual, I scanned the ingredients and decided what I was going to use for the ingredients I didn't have on hand.  It's Sunday and very cold. I went for a nice long walk today, but I'm not going to the grocery store. I'm sure I have what it takes to make these cookies with ingredients I already have in the kitchen. That's one of the purposes of this blog, to help myself and others get through some of these recipe hurdles.  I always suggest to my cooking students to use recipes as a template and change the components to suit their tastes or availability of ingredients.  Then I need to remember to write down what I did so I can to repeat the recipe again.  It's been very helpfull to have my recipes stored here.

This is Laurie's recipe as it's printed in her book, "Orange Spice Cookies".  It's a good recipe, free of most allergens, but I need to make some changes since I don't have the specific flours suggested and I want to avoid the oil.

1/4 cup unrefined cane sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil, softened
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
2 TB freshly squeezed orange juice (zest orange before squeezing)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups sorghum flour
1/4 cup quinoa flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/4 teaspoons fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 TB finely grated orange zest

One of the first ingredients I noticed I would have to substitute was unrefined cane sugar. I have some coconut sugar, but no cane sugar available. Then I noticed 1/2 cup coconut oil, softened.  Although this is a pretty healthy recipe, as is, I still want to avoid processed oils as much as possible, that includes coconut oil.  I decided I had a nice ripe avocado, but didn't want to overpower the flavor so I replaced half the suggested amount coconut oil with ripe mashed avocado and used fresh applesauce to make up the rest of the coconut oil. I have quite a bit of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Mix in the kitchen, so I used that instead of sorghum flour and tapioca flour. Bob's Red Mill's blend is a combination of sorghum flour, tapioca flour, potato, garbanzo bean, and fava bean. I probably could have substituted all the flour with the BRM blend, but I thought I'd like to use the quinoa flour as suggested in Laurie's recipe. It should add a richer flavor as well as a bit of protein. Quinoa flour pretty easy to make a small amount. Just wipe out your coffee grinder and grind some whole quinoa.

This is what happened to the same recipe in my kitchen:

1/4 cup coconut sugar
1/4 cup mashed ripe avocado (not too ripe)
1/4 cup applesauce (just core and apple and throw in the blender)
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
2 TB freshly squeezed orange juice
seeds from one half vanilla bean
1 1/2 cups Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour
1/4 cup quinoa flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon pink Himalaya sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest

Preheat the oven to 350º F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet.

Put the sugar, avocado, applesauce, maple syrup, orange juice, and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Using the paddle attachment, or a large bowl and hand mixer, beat on medium=high speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes.

Mix the flours, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, and spices in a medium bowl. I like to sift my flours and spices together in a sifter or mesh strainer. Add the orange zest and mix together.

With mixer on low speed, gradually add dry ingredients to the wet until combined and a soft dough forms.

Scoop out a rounded tablespoon of dough and place on lined baking sheet, leaving 2 inches between cookies.

I topped half of my cookies with a few pecan pieces then baked for 10 - 12 minutes.

These cookies are delightful!  Light and full of flavor.  They are the perfect light snack that might also be good served with a little jam.
 

Warm Winter Saturday

Nice quiet weekend at home on a rainy cold January weekend.  The holidays are behind us and I still have one more weekend in between now and my next cooking class.  Life is somewhat relaxing and there's a quiet feeling around here.  Taking some time to do a little winter cleaning.  Still working on the kitchen organization, the deck is in much need of a recyclable run.  There is no curb pickup where we live. We have to take our recyclables to the bins ourselves, we can save up quite a load in the winter. I managed to fit in quite a few meals while working.

We started the day with a pineapple coconut smoothie.  Scott had noticed some coconut pineapple juice in the market the other day.  Even though it may have been organic, it was still processed juice, and about $5 for a quart.  We always have coconut milk, all we needed was a ripe pineapple.  I chopped half a pineapple, two oranges, and a cucumber, added a handful of soaked and dried cashews, and a couple cups of coconut milk. It made for a really creamy, refreshing breakfast.

While going through the kitchen counter clutter I came upon some treasures, one being a bag of bean and grain soup mix from Bob's Red Mill. I got started with my weekend of cooking for our meals this week. I chopped an onion, some celery, and some carrots. Simmered them in vegetable broth with dried thyme, rosemary, sea salt, and fresh ground pepper.  I added about a pint of my canned tomatoes and the soup mix and simmered for about an hour and a half.  When they were almost done I added a couple tablespoons apple cider vinegar and a tablespoon of raw agave.

Bean & Grain Stew

While the beans were cooking I through some little squash I had from the garden that didn't quite make it to regulation size in the oven to roast.  I thought I'd make a cake or soup with them.  There's a couple yellow acorn squash, a couple small pumpkins, and a little sweet meat squash.

I thought I'd fit in a millet loaf. It's pretty easy and very good the next day in a sandwich with dijon mustard. This is an easy recipe from the Forks Over Knives Cookbook by Del Sroufe.

Start by cooking 3/4 cup millet in 2 1/2 cups water until all the liquid is absorbed.  I cooked mine in vegetable broth for a little added flavor.

While the millet is cooking sauté a medium onion and four cloves of garlic in a little water or vegetable broth until tender adding a liquid 1 tablespoon at a time to keep from sticking to the pan.

I added 1 TB sage, 1 TB thyme, a dash of fresh ground nutmeg, freshly ground black pepper, sea salt, 2 TB mellow white miso, and 1/4 cup cup nutritional yeast. I let that all simmer together for a minute or two then added about 3/4 cup of my home canned tomato sauce. Let that simmer about five minutes and then added the cooked millet.

Simmering Sauce

Baked at 350º for 30 Minutes

The squash became winter squash cake. The cake is dark brown due to the raw turbinado sugar and wheat flour I used. We ate it warm and soft. It sure is tasty. Glad those little squash didn't go to waste.

Now with a few items cooked, I can relax a bit today. I did re-hydrate some dried figs. I'm thinking about maybe a fig crisp of some sort. We'll see what happens to them.