My daughter’s in high school now and for some reason I thought I wouldn’t be asked to sign up to bring food in for parent teacher conferences anymore. Not sure why I thought that but to my surprise, I got an email asking for food a few weeks ago. As I looked at what people signed up for, sadly, no one had signed up to bring a vegetarian dinner or a gluten-free dessert.
I’m neither a vegetarian or a gluten-free eater, I will eat pretty much anything! Since I am an eater of everything, I feel everyone should have plenty of options when it comes to food choices! So, I made a vegetable enchilada casserole loaded with roasted zucchini, bell peppers and onions and layered between corn tortillas and cheese, doused in a slightly spicy homemade vegetarian green chili. It looked really good and I resisted the urge to cut a hunk out of it before dropping it off at the school! For the gluten-free dessert, I thought a cookie would be an easy choice. I have tried gluten-free baking before and I struggle with it a bit because that darned gluten is so important in baking BUT I wanted to try again!
These cookies took a bit of experimenting for me to get them to bake up the way I thought a cookie should. I found the key is freezing the cookie dough after forming into balls and baking them straight from the freezer!
If only refrigerated and not frozen the cookies fell flat for me!
The original recipe also used coconut oil, I used butter instead. The author talks about trying both and liking coconut oil better so maybe that would have given me the desired texture without the freezing but I can’t help it…
1 1/2 c. peeled and diced granny smith apples (3 medium sized apples)
Rolling sugar mixture:
1/4 c. sugar
1/4 c. turbinado sugar
1 t. cinnamon
Instructions
Combine the first 7 ingredients together and set aside.
Combine the butter, almond butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attached and beat until well mixed.
Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract until combined.
Add the first dry ingredients and mix just until combined.
Add the oats and apples and mix just until combined.
Cover the bowl of batter with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Combine the rolling sugar mixture together in a bowl.
Roll the dough into balls and roll in the sugar mixture.
Place the balls in a large freezer safe dish with a lid and freeze overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees when ready to bake the cookies and place on cookie sheets lined with silpat or parchment paper.
Place the frozen cookie balls on the baking sheets and bake for about 15 minutes or until the tops are no longer shiny, the cookies may not look completely set.
Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets until completely cool, I let them cool on the sheets for about an hour.
Remove with a spatula into a storage container. Store in the refrigerator.
Strudel and Streusel are two friends living in different cities, sharing a love of baking (and butter) through this blog. With Streusel in Denver, and Strudel in Seattle, we've found our little site to be a great way to stay in touch, share recipes we love, and talk about experiences in our respective cities.
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