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Coconut Cookies Redo

Coconut Cookies Redo

These coconut cookies are low sugar, dairy-free & soy-free. They are also delicious & bring back fond memories of a friend who gave me the original recipe.

The original recipe for these coconut cookies was given to me in the mid-1980s by a woman who remains a dear friend. I’ve reworked the recipe a couple times to make it dairy-free and as healthy as any cookie can be. You’ll find the most recent version below. Enjoy!

Coconut Cookies Redo

1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup Earth Balance Soy Free Buttery Sticks, softened
1/2 cup lard, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups oatmeal
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups unsweetened, shredded coconut
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted

Preheat oven to 350°. Toast the pecans in the oven for 5-7 minutes. Remove them from the oven and cool.

Cream sugar, shortening, and eggs until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, flour, soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Add oatmeal, coconut, and nuts. Stir well after each ingredient is added.

Drop dough by rounded spoonfuls onto cookie sheets. Bake for 8 – 12 cookies, depending on how chewy you like them. Makes about 4 – 5 dozen.

Triple Free Monster Cookies

Triple Free Monster Cookies

This monster cookie recipe make yummy treats that are gluten, soy, and dairy-free. They are also low in sugar and high fiber. What more could you want?

My daughter Anne and I developed this variation on monster cookies because her son required a gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free diet as a toddler and pre-schooler. Gluten isn’t an issue in monster cookie recipes since they use use oats, a grain he could tolerate, instead of flour. To make the cookies dairy-free, we substituted lard for the butter called for in the recipe we adapted, replaced the M & M’s with peanuts and dried fruit (raisins or Craisins), and used the Enjoy Life brand chocolate chips. (If soy isn’t an issue at your house, Costco’s Kirkland chocolate chips are also a good dairy-free alternative.) Now, on to the recipe!

Triple Free Monster Cookies

3 eggs
1 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking soda
16 oz. jar of natural peanut butter*
1/2 cup lard softened to room tempature
4 1/2 cups rolled, not quick, oats not quick oats!
3/4 cup Enjoy Life or Kirkland chocolate chips
3/4 cups dried fruit (raisins, Craisins, or dried cherries are good)
3/4 cups peanuts

Preheat oven to 350°. Putt baking stones in the oven to heat them.

Cream peanut butter, lard, sugar, and eggs until creamy and fluffy. Add remaining ingredients in order, mixing well after each addition.

Scoop dough with a teaspoon or soup spoon, depending on how big you like your cookies. Shape them into balls and place them on heated baking stones. Press them slightly flat with a fork. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes to desired doneness.

*For best results use natural peanut butter (Skippy or Jiff) that doesn’t need to be stirred after the jar is opened. Otherwise the cookies will not hold together.

Gingersnaps (AKA Molasses Crinkles)

Gingersnaps (AKA Molasses Crinkles)

This recipe for gingersnaps, also known as Molasses Crinkles, is dairy-free, low sugar, and made with whole wheat flour...so they're kinda healthy.

Imagine my surprise when, after recording the All About Cookies podcast, I discovered a blog oversight of the first order. No recipe for Gingersnaps (AKA Molasses Crinkles) has been published before on this website. Today’s post rectifies the situation. The original recipe is from a cookies and candy cookbook Jolene received as a wedding shower gift in 1977. We updated it to make it lower in sugar, whole wheat, and dairy free.

Gingersnaps

1 cup lard at room temperature
1/2 cup Earth Balance Soy Free Buttery Sticksat room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cup unbleached flour
4 teaspoons soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves

Preheat oven to 375°. Cream together shortening, brown sugar, molasses, and eggs until light and fluffy. Stir together dry ingredients; stir into molasses mixture until well-blended. Form into small balls. Roll in granulated sugar and place 2 inches apart on heated baking stones. Bake for about 10 minutes. Remove from pan immediately. Makes about 8 dozen cookies.

Cranberry-Apple Pie

Cranberry-Apple Pie

Cranberry-apple pie adds zing to pie apples that fall a little flat. Lard in the pie crust & butter substitute in the filling makes it dairy free.

Yes, that slice of cranberry-apple pie looks delicious. And as everyone in the Home Again gang can testify, it tasted even better than it looks. Anne and I mentioned this pie in our live Facebook video that showed how to make Grandma Conrad’s Never Fail Pie Crust.

I promised to publish this recipe more than a month ago. But between my broken foot recovery, the men racing to complete a basement remodel project before the baby arrives, Anne’s contractions coming and going for at least a month (and still 3 weeks until her due date), and Tad being 2-and-a-half, our three generation household has been a three ring circus. So Anne and I would like to apologize for the lack of a new podcast episode for the second week of January 2018 and for not completing the promised pie making video on our Patreon page. To be honest, the video probably won’t happen for quite a while and new podcast episodes will be scarce until Anne and the new baby, once she’s born, get into a manageable groove.

However, as we mentioned during our first Facebook live video of 2018, I am walking again. So at least I can share the promised recipe for cranberry-apple pie. We created it after we discovered the pie apples we froze last fall make a rather bland pie. Because we had purchased and frozen extra cranberries when they were on sale at Thanksgiving, we searched the internet for cranberry-apple recipes. But we wanted a simple recipe, and the ones on the internet required oodles of spices, orange zest and more. Once again, I pulled out the 1977 Betty Crocker Cookbook, which was a wedding present from my grandmother and found the simple recipe we wanted. As usual, we used much less sugar since Hiram tries to watch his sugar intake. We replaced the flour in the filling with minute tapioca because we like it better. We also used Earth Balance Buttery Vegan Sticks instead of butter since 3/5 of our household can’t do dairy.

Cranberry-Apple Pie

3 cups peeled, sliced pie apples
2 cups whole cranberries, washed
1/2–3/4 cup sugar, depending on taste
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup minute tapioca
2 tablespoons Earth Balance Buttery Vegan Sticks
Cinnamon sugar in a shaker

Preheat oven to 425°. In a bowl combine apples, cranberries, sugar, cinnamon, and minute tapioca. Mix thoroughly until fruit is coated. Turn into a 9 inch pastry-lined pie pan. Dot fruit with Earth Balance. Carefully cover with top crust and crimp edges to seal. With a knife trim off any excess pie crust. Cut small air vents in the top crust. Spritz top crust lightly with water and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Bake pie at 425° for 15 minutes. Turn oven down to 375° and bake for 45 minutes longer or until the center filling bubbles. If top crust begins to brown early, lightly cover with a sheet of aluminum foil. Take out of oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

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Dairy-Free Peanut Butter Protein Bars

Dairy-Free Peanut Butter Protein Bars

These protein bars are low in sugar, high in flavor, and a perfect meal on the go.My daughter and I went to a coffee shop in Madison during my last visit. We spied homemade peanut butter protein bars in the cooler. My daughter picked one up. “These look good,” she said.

“Too bad they probably have whey in them to jack up the protein,” I said.

“No dairy,” the woman behind the counter said. “But they do have flax seed.”

The daughter and I were ravenous as we’d eaten only salad for lunch, so we laid two bars on the counter, ordered our coffee, and sat down to enjoy our treats and watch my adorable grandson be adorable.

The protein bars were delicious. So good we spent every minute we weren’t laughing at the grandson’s high jinks deciding what ingredients were in the bars so we could make them at home.

Here’s the recipe I created after arriving home. That means the daughter hasn’t taste tested them. But the Man of Steel and I both think their pretty good. The recipe’s pretty forgiving, so you can add your favorite ingredients to the mix so they tickle your taste buds, too.

Dairy-Free Peanut Butter Protein Bars

1 cup natural peanut butter (the gooey kind)
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup Kirkland chocolate chips
1 cup puffed rice
1/4 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
2 tablespoons honey

Combine all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Stir until well mixed. Press into a greased, square 9 x 9 pan. Put in refrigerator until firm. Cut into 12 bars. Cover and store in the refrigerator.