Ingredients Archives: Vanilla Extract

Low Carb Chocolate Chip Cookies

By Ami on October 29, 2019 in Guilt-Free Treats

Aw College. The days of staying up too late, listening to music way too loud, and of course, eating junk every day. Life changed forever when my roommates and I discovered the 1-1-1 peanut butter cookie recipe. The 1 cup sugar, 1 cup peanut butter and 1 egg cookies we made 2-3 times a week about about 11 p.m. We’d eat about half the dough and bake the other half to eat while we watched movies about Julie Roberts finding the love of her life… again. It was magical.

For some strange reason, I can no longer get a way with that lifestyle. If I’m being honest, it didn’t work out too well at the time, but since there are much worse things I could have done being on my own for the first time, I won’t feel too guilty about it. The point is, I love cookies. Even though I eat tons of veggies, drink green smoothies, eat grass-fed meat, and work out daily, I STILL WANT COOKIES! I don’t believe in a life that doesn’t involve treats. But I have to be careful with my treats. I’m so sensitive to sugar and right now eggs and I aren’t friends. So I knew I couldn’t use my old, go-to pb cookie recipe. I needed to re-vamp. I’m very happy with the results.

I decided to go with tahini instead of peanut butter for a more neutral taste, but feel free to use any nut or seed butter. Almond butter, peanut butter or sunflower seed butter would work just as well. Since all nut butters have a different fat content, the texture will vary a bit, but you’ll still end up with a delicious cookie.

These are only low-carb if you use a sugar alternative. The only sugar alternatives I’m a fan of are stevia, monk fruit and erithrytol. This Lakanto sugar substitute is my favorite! And now they sell it at Costco!! I also use Lily’s Chocolate Chips instead of regular. They are sweetened with stevia and are SO YUMMY! Be careful though. If you are sensitive to milk, the only diary free ones are the dark chocolate chips. We also love Enjoy Life chocolate chips for regular (not sugar free) baking. So if you don’t care about the carbs and just want a whole-foods cookie, feel free to use coconut sugar or raw cane sugar; and the Enjoy Life chocoalte chips.

I store these in the freezer because I know myself well. If they are on the counter, I’ll go back to my college days and eat the entire pan. Now I have a cookie in the freezer to celebrate moments like birthdays, holidays, or making it through the day without my head exploding. What do you celebrate with cookies?

Continue Reading 1

Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Oat Bars

By Ami on September 21, 2019 in Guilt-Free Treats

My 8-year-old daughter loves to cook. Like… LOVES to cook. There are days I open my fridge and it looks like a science experiment exploded. It’s full of glass containers of “salad dressing,” “spice dip,” “flavored water,” and “soup.”

That face represents the pride that comes when you design and make your own oatmeal.

Yesterday, I couldn’t find my cocao powder in the pantry and rather than think I was going insane and skipping over it with my eyes (which I do regularly), I knew better. I asked my daughter, “Do you have my cocao powder?” She immediately ran up to her room and brought down a reusable grocery bag full of spices, crackers, marshmallows and… my cocao powder. Just an average day in our house.

She even delivers!!

We watch “The Pioneer Woman” together, read cookbooks before bed, and she’s a big fan of helping me meal plan. She claims she’s going to be a chef… right before she’s a teacher, but after she’s a waitress and an author. Astronaut and veterinarian are in there somewhere as well, but I can’t remember the exact order. Ambition, right?

So last week she brought me a picture of some oat bars and proclaimed she was going to make them for dessert. We tried to find a promising recipe, but in our house, to make food we can all eat it has to be gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and refined-sugar free.

Together, we came up with this recipe and it’s a hit! It’s easy enough my 8-year-old could “make it” (I helped a bit), it comes together fast, and is customizable and really yummy.

We used almond butter because that’s what my daughter chose, but you can easlily change the flavor by changing the nut butter. I wanted peanut butter because the combination of peanut butter and chocolate yields a result even more beautiful than if Henry Cavill and Scarlett Johansson had a baby. Am I right!? But this was her thing, so I let it go. Next time!

The flavor is also influenced by the type of sweetener you use. Using coconut sugar will give it a more carmely flavor, maple sugar more of a maple flavor and raw sugar just a sweet flavor. We actually used Lakanto Monk Fruit sweetener because I have to keep my sugars (even natural ones) really low right now.

Because she’s all about the bling, we had to add something on top. She wanted 3 different kinds of chocolate, edible glutter and several types of candies. We settled for one type of chocolate, and one type of candy that happened to come in three different colors. I think she was satisfied.

So when my daughter is a famous TV chef, we’ll look back on this post and laugh. Or at the least, when my daughter has a daughter 0f her own who steals all her ingredients, hides food in her room until it’s moldy, and uses half a bottle of safron to make her mac-and-cheese look pretty, we’ll laugh. Or I’ll laugh… a lot… maniacally.

Happy baking (with your kiddos)!

Continue Reading 1

Dairy-Free Chocolate Fudge Frosting

By Ami on June 17, 2019 in Guilt-Free Treats

We love to have people over for dessert, but I often feel guilty serving them something that fits into our family’s food sensitivities. It’s hard to make something that tastes like Grandma’s cooking when it has to be gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and egg-free. Luckily, food is a big enough part of my life, we figure it out. I’m not okay living in a world that doesn’t allow me to have treats…regularly.

A few weeks ago, I wanted chocolate cupcakes with chocolaty, fudgy frosting. I’d always loved ganache back in the day, so I wanted to make a replica of my favorite ganache frosting using ingredients that won’t wreck me.

This frosting did not disappoint! My kids referred to our cupcakes as “magic cupcakes.” Pretty much I felt like the most awesome mom ever.

I was confident enough in these to serve them to guests, and didn’t even have to lead with a disclaimer. We baked a basic paleo-style cupcake but like all cakes, the frosting made the dish. I consider all cake a vessel for frosting. I always double the frosting on my birthday cake because… it’s my birthday.

If you don’t want to make frosting out of this chocolate goodness, you can skip the whipping part and roll it into balls to make truffles. Or you can just call it pudding and eat it with a spoon. All of the above are a perfectly acceptable way to eat this mixture that may resemble chocolate unicorn tears.

We used Lily’s chocolate chips to keep it sugar-free. These chips are sweetened with stevia and erythritol, neither of which bother me in reasonable amounts (I know this because I’ve eating unreasonable amounts and the result “cleared the room” if you know what I’m saying…).

You can use a dark chocolate or your favorite semi-sweet chocolate as well. We love Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips and Nestlee Simply Delicious Chocolate Chips. Both are made with minimal ingredients and dairy-free.

If you’ve ever made ganache, you know how easy it is. Just add hot milk (coconut milk in this case) to chocolate…

Once it’s melted, whisk it together…

Let it set up in the fridge…

And whip it. Whip it good! (I’m so sorry. I had to. And do you see my finger mark in the frosting? No apologies here)…

So easy and yummy!! We actually had to add a bit more coconut milk as we were whipping to get our perfect texture. If you need to add more coconut milk, do it 1 Tbsp at a time until it seems perfect to you.

So if you’re planning a birthday party, a BBQ to have friends over for dinner or if you just want something that goes well with a spoon, you can make this frosting and be proud!

Continue Reading 0

Healthy, 5-Ingredient, Frozen Fudge Pops

By Ami on February 23, 2018 in Guilt-Free Treats

Today I have an awesome recipe for you! We made the most creamy, rich, perfectly sweet frozen fudge pops last week. Before I get to that, here’s the story behind the need for such a delicious treat.

My poor, sweet 10-year-old son has braces. I’m super impressed with all the advancements society has made as far as convenience goes in the last 20 years, but I’m sad to report, braces are exactly the same. Metal death traps that steal childhood innocence.

My son has been so brave these last 7 months with his braces, but this last wire change was particularly rough. Two days after his appointment, he sat at the kitchen counter crying. “I just want an apple! Everything hurts! I’m tired of protein smoothies!” I felt so bad for this kid. I asked him if he wanted to make some fudge pops and nodded his tear-streaked face. Poor dude.

These were sooooooooooo easy to make. I thought about sneakng in some pureed veggies or collagen powder but I just wanted to give my son a pure treat. Luckily, I’m completely okay with all the ingredients in these. So okay with them, that I let both kids have one for breakfast the next morning.

I just threw all 5 ingredients into my blender and blended it until it was smooth. You could seriously just drink it that way. It was so delicious!

I got these cute molds on Zulily one morning when I was sprawled on the floor with my phone recovering from a HIIT workout. Since I only got 4, we used paper cups for the rest of the batter. The cups were about double the size of the molds (these molds are tiny), so without the molds this is enough to fill about 8 small paper cups. This will vary based on the size of your molds.

With the paper cups, I covered them with plastic wrap first, cut little holes in the wrap and stuck in the wooden sticks.

These took about 10 hours to freeze. It was longer than I would have liked, but TOTALLY worth it. The kids feel like they’re getting an awesome treat (and they are) and I don’t have the feel bad about all the junk in store-bought fudge pops. AND… the whole batch cost about $2.00 to make. That’s way cheaper than it would cost to get the all-natural fudge pops at the grocery store.

And I had two very satisfied kiddos. Eating fudge pops on a Friday off of school in pajamas. Childhood rocks!

Continue Reading 0

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Protein Bites

By Ami on October 28, 2017 in Guilt-Free Treats, Healthy Snacks

I have one child who will eat almost anything and another who eats… almost nothing. Not in the sense that he doesn’t want to eat, but in the sense that the number of foods he’ll eat is very small. He has five foods he’d eat all day long. I’m working on a post to talk about that but in the mean time, I’m posting about a great success I had!!

I try to cram as many nutrients in him as I can, which is very difficult. This week I decided to turn his favorite flavor (chocolate chip cookies) in to a low-sugar, high protein and healthy fats treat I feel good about sending to school with him. I almost cried when he took a bite and said, “Wow! These are so good!” And he was right! These are good! Plus they are easy to make and store. I keep them in the freezer and pull a few out in the morning for his school snacks. These would be AMAZING with walnuts but walnuts are not one of the foods he’s willing to eat. Let me know if you try adding them!

One key to making these as nutrient-dense as possible is to buy quality ingredients. This recipe calls for both protein powder and collagen peptides. I use this protein powder (click here for link) as a good compromise with me and my son. He’s willing to eat it and I mostly approve of the ingredients. I also like Great Lakes Collagen Peptides (click here for link).

The healthy fats (and awesome flavor) comes from coconut butter. If you haven’t tasted coconut butter, you’re missing out. I use it on pancakes bread or just on a spoon. It’s that good.

For the chocolate chips I use Enjoy Life Brand (click here for link). Yes they have sugar, but the ingredients are minimal and all pronounceable. Plus with one 1/4 cup in the entire recipe, each protein ball has very little added sugar.

Hopefully your family loves these as much as we do.

Continue Reading 0

Gluten-Free Brownie Pudding Cake

By Ami on May 17, 2017 in Guilt-Free Treats

When I was a kid, my mom would make brownie pudding cake on cold, wet days. It was so comforting topped with a big scoop of whipped cream that melted into the gooey chocolate. It really doesn’t get more comforting than that. One bowl of that and every problem would disappear. It was basically unicorn tears topped with whipped unicorn tears. Tears of joy that is. There’s no room for sadness here. Best. Thing. Ever.

A few weeks ago we got one of those miserable spring snow storms. Snow in winter is expected, but snow when I’ve spent the last week in skirts and flip flops? Not cool. I needed some warm gooey comfort. But I didn’t want the next day sugar/gluten hangover I get. So I set out to make a grain-free, low sugar version. I was so pleased with the results, the unicorns and I cried together.

This brownie pudding cake is super rich and dark. If you don’t like it that dark, up the sugar and down the cocoa powder. But I can’t image finding comfort from chocolate that isn’t dark chocolate. That’s just me though…

The reason this is so good is that it’s a moist rich cake with a gooey, smooth inside. I topped it with whipped coconut cream that melted into the warm cake just like the version from my childhood. It was so nostalgic I felt like putting on my rainbow bright leg warmers.

This cake comes together in three layers that all come together to make a gooey bowl of joy.

The cake layer: