GF Almond Quinoa Cookies

Cookies!



Let's get personal today.

In our house, we generally eat gluten free. We never committed to a gluten-free diet, as many have. However, eating gluten-free is the result of the kind of diet (or lifestyle, or whatever you want to call it) we have. Yes, I know I've posted some very sugary and sweet recipes, and also pizza dough, but truthfully, I rarely eat that stuff. Since I do eat it on occasion, I don't consider myself gluten-free.

For meals, we eat always have some sort of protein and tons vegetables. We snack on things like raw nuts, fresh fruit, and sliced peppers or carrots. For this reason, it irks me when people say that eating or cooking healthy takes a lot of skill. Although I do spend my Saturday nights doing food prep for our very busy weeks, most of the work involved is slicing or chopping. I don't really cook at all during the week. I cook everything on Saturday and Sunday, package it all up into containers for lunches, and generally spend more time cleaning up the mess than I did actually cooking.

I've been wanting to introduce the baby to some sort of "bready" food, as he is totally obsessed with cat food. He fights the cat for it, by crawling over to his food bowl, throwing the bowl at the cat's head, and then eating the pieces of food off of the floor. I was hoping to wait until he was closer to a year to introduce grains since toddlers are obsessed with crackers and similar-like crap. I guess it could be worse.

Yea, that's concrete. Right now my battle is sleeping past 5 am, so this will be fought later if necessary.

I came up with this recipe before I realized it was GF, as I said before, most of my cooking is just by the way we eat. It is truly delicious, and can easily be made to accommodate a baby as well as a kid. I made a few cookies for baby by simply removing the honey, cranberries and almonds (because he doesn't have teeth, and honey is dangerous for babies under 12 months due to botulism). Although I don't think he liked it as much as he enjoys cat food, he did eat it. And the toddler devoured them! I really think they taste amazing, so I hope you enjoy them too!

You can easily swap out eggs for some other kind of binder like applesauce, pumpkin, and I'd bet a nut butter would work too. We've been giving our baby eggs for awhile now, as he decided to try them (and peanut butter) at only 7-months old right from his brother's hands (hey, better than concrete, right?!). #Secondchild #NoOnePaysAttention #CanYouHashTagABlog?

GF Almond Quinoa Cookies

Yields approximately 15-17 2.5" cookies

Ingredients:

2 cups of cooked quinoa, cooled (1 cup of dry quinoa cooked in one cup of water)

1 tablespoon extra virgin coconut oil, melted

3 eggs

1/4-1/2 cup almond flour (play around with desired moistness)

2-3 tablespoons honey (to desired sweetness, we were happy with two)

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut

1/4 cup slivered almonds

1/4 cup dried craisins (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or slipmat.

Mix the quinoa with the melted coconut oil, eggs, 1/4 cup of the almond flour, honey and extracts. The batter will be wet but you should be able to press it into a patty without it totally falling apart. If it doesn't hold together, add more almond flour. Fold in the coconut, almonds and craisins. Take the batter in your hands and form a ball, then a patty, and put it on the parchment paper. They won't spread so don't worry about the spacing.

Bake for 20 minutes, then take them out and flip each cookie, and bake them for another 7-10. They should be slightly golden but not hard or tough.