Jumping off point

    My car is boiling over again, so this recipe may be punctuated with random profanity. Or profane randomity as the case may be.
    Regardless, I decided the other day to invent amaranth peanut butter cookies. Immediately I received application to add chocolate chips to this, uh, culinary concept, an idea which I found had merit. For one thing, I had looked up oatmeal cookie recipes and saw how much freaking sugar they put in. I figured some chocolate chips couldn't hurt.
    I didn't put in that much sweetener, but I did put in more honey than I've put into anything so far. I made up about a cup of amaranth. Which is to say, I took 1/3 cup of amaranth and a cup of filtered water, a grind or two of sea salt and a splash of EV olive oil, brought it to a boil which takes 6 minutes around here, then lowered to a quick simmer (a bit under 2 on the electric range here) and let it cook for 25 minutes. I cooled it a bit by putting the whole pot in a sink of water, which is probably insane, but who are you talking to here?
    Preheat oven to 400. In a large mixing bowl, mix in roughly this order 1/4 cup of EV olive oil, 1/2 cup of honey (told ya!), a large egg (preferably broken then scrambled, but whatever works for you), 1/2 cup of natural peanut butter, 1 tsp of cocoa, 1 tsp of vanilla, 1 cup of brown rice flour, the amaranth and about 1/4 cup of Enjoy Life chocolate chips. (What I used was the rest of the bag, but it was about 1/4 cup.)
    When you've mixed this devil's porridge thoroughly, you will notice like I did that you do not have cookie dough. You have bread dough or cake batter. So I lined a rectangular pan (sheet cake pan, Google thinks they're called) with parchment paper and dumped the whole mess in there, making some effort to equalize the thickness.
    I cooked it for a half hour, which left it very slightly singed at the very edges and a bit soft on the insides. What I got were interesting amaranth/peanut butter/chocolate chip brownies. They aren't awe-inspiring, quite, but they're very very pleasant and no doubt frightfully healthy, as well as being as usual gluten-, casein- and soy-free. I suppose I could have made the amaranth with less water or cooked it longer or added more flour and I would have wound up with cookie dough. Clearly this is just a jumping-off point for any projected amaranth peanut butter cookie. But I think it's a good one, and I may just declare victory and call it good enough. Dammit.