Bonus Post - Peanut Butter Cookies

I got a couple recipes I had been working on finished up tonight so you get a bonus post tonight!

As part of DS's allergies, I can use dairy products in baking as long as it is baked at 350 for at least 40 mins.  So when hubby had a birthday I could eat cake!  BUT, I can't eat cookies and you know how you always want what you can't have?  Well, I tried out a cookie recipe with these ingredients as a substitute for butter:

Canola oil and applesauce

(homemade applesauce because all the store bought ones had high fructose corn syrup,

which I can't eat due to DS's allergies)

 

 

Doesn't this dough look yummy?!

 

 

Baking away!

 

Peanut Butter M & M Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups peanut butter (creamy or chunky)
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 medium-sized bag of M & M's (I used plain, but peanut butter would be awesome!)

Directions:

Mix butter, sugar and peanut butter together.  Add eggs, flour, baking soda and vanilla extract. Fold in bag of M & M's. Roll dough into 1 inch (or a little larger) balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake at 350°F for about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 3-4 dozen cookies (depending on how large you roll your cookies).

 

 

The only other adjustment I made was leaving out the M&M's.  I had 3 dozen cookies and enough dough left for just a few more cookies so I added some chocolate chips to them for hubby and DD.

 

It's interesting going to the store as a label reader.  When you don't have to read labels, you can just run in and run out.  Now I have to stop and check everything.  The peanut butter we usually eat is Skippy Natural with Honey.  I didn't want to use my "good" peanut butter for baking so I looked around at some of the cheaper/store brands.  The first one I looked at had corn syrup.  It was the last ingredient so I might have been tempted to try it but it was only the first jar I checked so I looked at another one and this one had molasses instead of corn syrup.  Sounded interesting so I bought it.

 

 

 

Don't these cookies look really good?!  They were and DD loved helping me make them so it was a great day all around!

 

 

 

Zucchini Chips

I had seen several people post on Facebook about making zucchini chips.  Most didn't seem that excited about it but I just had to try it.  The recipe I found was from http://www.thebootblog.net/2012/07/baked-zucchini-chips.html.

I had to modify it slightly due to DS's allergies so I will show what I did but I encourage you to check out the recipe at the above link.

Ingredients needed are shown below:

 

On the plate I have one sliced zucchini.

The bowl closest to the front has 1/4 cup of almond milk.

The bowl in the back has 1/4 cup Panko bread crumbs, 2 Tb of honey wheat bread crumbs, 1/4 tsp each of salt & pepper.  In this batch I also included a little bit of cayenne pepper. 

 

In the second batch I made I left the cayenne out because I thought it was too spicy.  I gave the rest of the first batch to Hubby and with a glass of milk, he survived the first batch!  We both liked the second batch better, although I still thought it was a little spicy.

 

 

Bake at 425 for 30 mins. 

As you can see, batch #1 only made 6 chips. 

For my second batch, I doubled the bread crumbs so I could make a bigger batch.

 

 

Pork chops, homemade applesauce and zucchini chips