Flourless Chocolate Cookies

A friend of mine just had her first baby, so I offered to make her dinner one night. Enter the tricky problem, she has a gluten allergy and cannot eat pretty much most of my good recipes. Well I headed to Trader Joe's because their aisle are full of gluten free products. Dinner was planned, but I had to include a dessert, that's the best part. Luckily while I was visiting in Utah I was browsing a magazine and came across this recipe for flour less chocolate cookies. I went ahead and made them and guess what?! They are yummy! I really enjoyed them. The only problem was I put the dough on wax paper and they stuck, horribly stuck to the wax paper. My suggestion, grease the cookie sheet and skip the wax paper.


3 c powder sugar
2/3 c Dutch process cocoa powder
1/2 t coarse salt
5 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
4 large egg whites
1 1/2 c chopped nuts

preheat oven to 325. in a large bowl whisk together sugar, cocoa, and salt. Stir in chocolate and nuts. Add egg whites and stir just until incorporated (do not over mix). Drop dough onto two parchment lined rimmed baking sheet. Bake 25 minutes.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of my favorite things to make is chocolate chip cookies. I always use the Nestle Tollhouse recipe but I make my own adjustments to what I think will make them better. So far I've discovered using half butter (real, unsalted butter) and half shortening plus a teaspoon of baking powder. Ever since I was younger and made cookies for my brother I was always on a mission to have the best chocolate chip cookies. This time around I made it with three types of chocolate chips; semi-sweet, white, and milk chocolate. They turned out really good! Everyone who likes a different type of chocolate will be satisfied with one cookie.
2 1/4 c all purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1 t salt
1/2 c butter, softened (very important it's only soft)
1/2 c shortening
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c packed brown sugar
1 t vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 c milk chocolate chips
1/4 c white chocolate chips
1/4 c semi-sweet chocolate chips (or you can do it in any variation, we prefer milk chocolate)

Preheat oven to 375 and spray cookie sheets with cooking oil. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. In a larger bowl beat butter, shortening, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by tablespoon. Bake for 11 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool on wire racks.

For High Altitude: Increase flour to 2 1/2 cups. Add 2 t water to flour and reduce both sugars to 2/3 cup each.

*You can wrap dough in plastic wrap and then again in foil and freeze. Then let thaw to make cookies for another day.

Special K Cookies

Once a month at my husband's work they have a Friday Birthday treat day. Every other month my husband brings treats. Well at about 9:00 at night the night before he tells me he needs to so he throws some frozen cookie dough in the oven, forgets to set the timer and burns them. It's now 9:30 and we still need to whip something up and all I can think about it taking a shower and going to bed. Then I remembered I had a box of Special K cereal in storage and some peanut butter. My Mom would always make these cookies. They are delicious and incredibly easy to make.


1/2 c sugar
1 c corn syrup
1 c brown sugar
pinch of salt
2 t vanilla
1 1/2 c peanut butter
5 c Special K cereal

In a medium saucepan combine sugar, corn syrup, brown sugar and salt and bring to a boil. Add vanilla and peanut butter and blend together until smooth. In a large mixing bowl mix the peanut butter mixture with the cereal until cereal is covered. Lay out wax paper and drop scoops of peanut butter cereal in tablespoon sizes. Let cool and they will become firm. Enjoy!

Banana-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I buy bananas almost every time I go to the store but they usually end up brown before I can eat them all. So what do I do? I throw them in the freezer until I have time to make banana bread. Well this time it got a little out of hand. I had THIRTEEN, 13, bananas sitting in my freezer taking up precious freezer space and not getting put into banana bread, much to my husband's dismay. Well I set out to make banana bread, but after I doubled the recipe and had 2 large loafs and 3 small loafs I still had 3 bananas waiting to be put in something. Then I came across this recipe in Cooking Light. I already enjoy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies so why not add a little banana. And the nice thing is it reduces the butter and sugar in the recipe so I don't feel as guilty eating one. One cookies has 115 calories and only 3.6 g of fat.


1/2 c mashed banana (about 1 medium)
1/2 c packed brown sugar
1/4 cu softened butter
1/4 sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1 egg
1 1/4 c flour
2 c oats
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 c chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl, beat with a mixer at medium speed until smooth. Add egg, beat well. In a medium bowl combine flour, oats, baking soda, and salt. Stir. Add flour mixture to banana mixture beat until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop batter by tablespoon onto greased cookie sheet. Bake for 18 minutes or until golden. cool on pans. Enjoy! Yields: 2 dozen Serving size: 1 cookie