Gluten Free Fake Samoas

Fake Samoas

Very important: mix by hand. Doesn't do well in a mixer.

Ingredients

¾ cup shredded coconut/coconut flakes
¾ cup almond flour, packed
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp sea salt
¼ cup brown sugar (or coconut or palm sugar)
1/3 cup honey
2 tbsp coconut oil, liquefied
¼ cup chocolate chips (minis, chips, or chunks; larger chocolate pieces will give you more of a “Samoa” taste, but your cookies may not be as pretty as when using the minis)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line one baking sheet with parchment paper.

Spread coconut flakes on a baking sheet. Bake for about 3 minutes, being sure to stir every minute to prevent the flakes from burning. (Note that a few flakes on the edges may actually burn or darken too much. Those can be discarded.)

While toasting coconut flakes are in the oven and/or cooling after toasting, mix other ingredients adding one by one in large bowl, stirring after each addition.

Once all ingredients have been added (including cooled, toasted coconut flakes), the mixture will be very thick and you may need to use your clean hands to finish incorporating all of the ingredients.

Roll cookie batter into balls, slightly less than walnut sized. Place on the parchment lined-baking sheet.

Using the bottom of a glass or a metal spatula, press balls down slightly to about ½-inch to ¾-inch thickness.

Bake for about 8 minutes or so. Outer edges should be brown, and middles should be non-glossy, but not very brown.

Cool on baking sheets for 10 minutes. Cookies will continue baking/setting up during this time, so do not skip this step. Remove from baking sheet to wire rack or serving plate to cool additionally as needed.

Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour

All-purpose flour, modified from: http://glutenfreegirl.com/gluten-free-holiday-baking-2010/

Grains or Proteins (sub by weight)
200 grams brown rice flour
150 grams sorghum flour
50 grams oat flour

Starches (sub by weight)
250 grams sweet or glutinous rice flour. Ironically contains no gluten.
150 grams potato starch
100 grams arrowroot powder
100 grams cornstarch

Mix all of these together in a container. Makes roughly 10 cups of flour. You can substitute a protein for a protein and a starch for a starch by weight. The ratio is 40% protein to 60% starch.

Grains:

Flours I use:

Brown Rice Flour
Oat Flour
Sorghum Flour
Almond Flour or Meal

Other Flours:

Corn Flour
Masa Harina(it's a finer corn flour, used for corn tortillas but makes a hell of a cornbread)
Teff Flour
Millet Flour
Potato Flour

You can also use bean flours such as garbanzo, fava, etc as well but the taste may not be what you want.

Starches I use:

Potato Starch
Tapioca Starch
(A note about Potato and Tapioca Starches: The more you use, the stronger the taste. Experiment but use sparingly if you can)
Arrowroot Flour
Corn Starch
(Can be used as thickeners)

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

GF Chocolate Chip Oatmeal modified from http://glutenfreegirl.com/gluten-free-oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cookies/

10oz All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup white sugar (we use unbleached organic)
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
9 ounces rolled oats (make sure they are certified gluten-free)
6 ounces chocolate chips
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into chunks

Preparing to bake. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat.

Combining the dry ingredients. Sift each of the flours into a large bowl, then stir in the guar gum, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir well and set aside.

Creaming the wet ingredients. Put the softened butter and white and brown sugars into the bowl of a stand mixer. (You can also do this by hand.) Mix them together until they are combined well, lighter in color, and feel fluffy. Don’t forget to stop and scrape down the bowl to make sure everything is incorporated.

Crack one egg at a time and add it to the mixture, allowing the egg to be fully incorporated into the dough before adding the next one. Pour in the vanilla extract and mix well.

Finishing the dough.  Add the dry ingredients to the mixer, 1/3 at a time. Scrape the sides from time to time. Add the oats and mix them in. Finally, add the two kinds of chocolate and mix. This you might want to do by hand.

Shaping the cookies. Scoop out 1 ½ ounce balls of cookie dough (or about the size of a ping pong ball, if you don’t want to be that meticulous). Form into a tight ball. Place all the balls of cookie dough on the baking sheet, then flatten them into ½-inch disks.

Baking the cookies. Slide the baking sheet into the pre-heated oven. Bake until the edges of the cookies are browned and the middle is just slightly underdone, about 10 minutes. (Rotate the baking sheet at 5 minutes.) Remove the baking sheet and allow the cookies to cool for at least 15 minutes before eating.

Repeat with the rest of the cookie dough.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

New site

Had to move my blog over to Blogger thanks to a very short notice closure of a friend's hosting service. Everything's moved over but I still need to mess with formatting.

Like to thank Paul "Rura Penthe" Kehrer for keeping me up for the past year. Much appreciated, sir.

Waiting for the other shoe

As I'm sitting here at work waiting for one of my supervisors to call me about our Google Mail project, I'm realizing that nothing has gone wrong yet. It's been an incredibly smooth transition so far, which makes my Spidey Sense tingle. Where's the drama? This is a fairly major thing we're doing here, moving from MS Exchange to Google. Things are supposed to go wrong at some point right?

It's only paranoia if they're not out to get you, right? Right???