Coconut shortbread, lemon torte and sesame almond cookies – Recipe Roundup
Each week, fabulous recipes grace my in-box and pop up on my computer screen, and I’m sharing my favorites with you.
This week, desserts caught my eye. Luscious, sinful desserts, healthy sinless snacks and summery delights… gluten-free and/or flourless.
Anything that is wheat-free catches my attention, and there were a few offerings this week. The nicest thing about these treats is that they are designed to be gluten-free; they are not some classic cookie or cake recipe that is bastardized into a reasonable facsimile that is gluten-free and subpar.
Banana coconut muffins – Breakfast at Clique-any’s
As promised, even though it was extremely difficult for me, we made a breakfast this week that didn’t include any chocolate. And I enjoyed it! So it is possible, all you doubters out there. I am not a narrow-minded chocoholic … everyday.
Regardless of my inability to vary this column for the chocolate haters of the world (that one guy sitting in his temple out in the desert, fasting to prepare for his next full-body cleanse and herbal colonic), I’m pretty pleased with this recipe on a variety of levels.
First of all, my spelt flour muffins tend not to rise too much, but these formed pretty peaks, as you can see from the picture. They were also not as dense as one might expect, considering there are three bananas in them. They are pretty light and fluffy, in fact, and very moist. The coconut sprinkled on the top was a stroke of genius (my coconut-loving four-year-old’s brilliant mastermind — that kid is going places), adding a slight crunch that enhanced the textural complexities of this seemingly simple muffin.
Snow cones – healthier, tastier, addictive!
A while back, during a rare spring heatwave here in the northeast, I posted a recipe for a healthy snow cone that we make here at our house, using frozen orange juice concentrate. Even though it has been anything but hot and sunny here lately, my son and his friend have been relishing a new snow cone recipe that they helped create.
When I say addictive, I’m not kidding. They each had three snow cones in a row one day, and we’re talking an overcast, 60-something degree day. Yeah, it’s been a fun June here in Massachusetts. Regardless of the weather, these new snow cones are a huge hit, both with the kid who is used to getting healthy things stuffed down his throat, and with the neighbor friend who is used to getting sugary treats.
These snow cones have no sugar in them — none! They are sweetened only with agave syrup which has been touted to be healthy enough for diabetics to use. The juices used are all detoxifying, purifying juices, great for your liver, bladder and digestion.
Almond butter oatmeal banana cookies – sugar-free and healthy
Before you automatically dismiss these as unsatisfying, gross cookie-pucks that wouldn’t be appetizing to anyone normal, open your mind and read me out. Owen seems to be having trouble with white sugar lately (a wee bit of an understatement), so we’ve got the kid detoxing. We actually don’t eat white sugar in our house, but the birthday parties and end of the school year celebrations have gotten the better of us.
We were headed to yet another party, and Owen needed a treat and I wanted to try a new recipe. There aren’t a whole lot of sugar-free cookie recipes out there that are also healthy (honey doesn’t count as sugar-free — it digests like a white sugar — and artificial sweeteners aren’t actually edible).
So how good does the combination of peanut butter, oatmeal and banana sound? Yeah, it wasn’t good enough for me, either, so I switched a few ingredients, added grain-sweetened chocolate chips and created a cookie masterpiece. These are truly the most delicious sugar-free cookies I’ve made.
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