Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Awful falafel waffles

    I call them this because I'm a fool for rhymes and not good at marketing, though more accurate would be almond chocolate chip shortbread cookies. They turned out fairly brilliant even though I forgot the vanilla. If I remember it next time, they'll be even better. You should try them!
    OK, this time there's no way around it: you're going to have to go to a health food store. Or at least an Indian/Asian foods store. Because this one requires gram (garbanzo bean/ chick pea) flour and brown rice flour, as well as cocoa butter. On the other hand, beans and rice combined make a complete protein. I don't know if the associated flours do, too (processing often destroys a lot of nutritional value), but it's at least possible.
    You might want to start by preheating the oven to 400 degrees. I've learned enough about cooking to mix the wet ingredients first. Then again, since I use honey in everything, it's an open question whether it's liquid or solid. I call it liquid and run with it.
    Ditto the cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is a pain in the butt to find. I could only find it in the health and beauty section of the health food store. (They do assure me it's food grade, and in fact snack on it.) Unfortunately, the packages aren't always the same size, as the cocoa butter comes in chunks. It's always about 3 oz., though; I just use the whole package. Cocoa butter melts at body temperature, but it's surprisingly reluctant to melt. I stick it in a saucepan and put it on medium heat for five minutes or so.
    I do the usual thing with two tablespoons of EV olive oil and four of honey. (That is, one of oil, two of honey, one of oil, two of honey, this to minimize honey sticking to the spoon.) Add half cup of almond milk. Then add the melted cocoa butter. Scramble a large egg and add it. Unlike me, add a teaspoon of vanilla. Mix the heck out of it all.
    Add a cup of garbanzo bean flower and a cup of brown rice flour. Stir until just before your arm falls off. Add a cup of chopped almonds and a quarter cup of chocolate chips. (In gluten-free casein-free soy-free world, this means Enjoy Life brand, but obviously not everybody has the restricted diet I do.) At this point, you have cookie dough, so mix as best you can, but don't worry about it too much.
    Cookie dough is a lot more fun in stories about Grandma's house than in real life, but between a fork and a spatula I was able to transfer the muck to parchment paper. I use parchment paper on a pizza pan or a regular pan since I don't actually have a cookie sheet. I bake the cookies for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. I find them a bit undercooked at this point. I tend to turn the oven off, flip the cookies and put them back in for another 5 minutes.
    Turns out addictive and excellent, like pecan sandies without the pecans. If you just can't find the cocoa butter, I guess you could substitute another quarter cup of chocolate chips. But make sure you have a mountain handy to climb right up; you're likely to have that much energy!

2 comments:

  1. A lot of work. Can I just come to DL and you will have them there?

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    1. Maybe. I'm almost out of gram flour. If I buy more, I would start another cycle of having to make everything out of gram flour, since it doesn't keep phenomenally well. But I am curious about how it turns out when I remember the vanilla, so it's a good bet that I'll get around to it pretty soon.

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