Flourless Chocolate Crunch Cashew Cookies Or Not

So in my effort to stop eating white flour for awhile I was intrigued by the use of rolled oats in this cookie recipe. So while I am sharing a new cookie recipe with you, please note for my family this was not of of best or brightest cookie recipe. It tasted great, it was just too crumbly cookie. I completely prefer a cookie that isn't threatening to crumble to the ground every other bite. BUT this turned out to be a brilliant & fabulous chocolate granola for breakfast, brunch, to throw on top of some frozen yogurt, or to layer in a parfait using up summers best fruits & berries. So welcome to a new breakfast granola recipe or cookie recipe... either way I hope you enjoy the crunch. When I adapted the recipe I also cut the ingredients by more than half. Ever notice that most batches of cookies make over 2 dozen? Yeah that's not going to happen here. Ha! Like I need that many cookies in my house. Excess cookie dough.. so yummy. Cookie dough is actually wonderfully freezable, but usually after my spoon and other spoons have gotten some "taste testing in" there isn't too much leftover to freeze. Yes the batches that yield that much cookie dough are dangerous.

Chocolate Crunch Cashew Cookies (Or granola)

Adapted from:King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book

Made 10-12 cookies

Ingredients:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, organic
1/4 + 1/8 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup of old fashioned rolled oats, ground up in a food processor or coffee grinder
1 cup of salted cashew pieces or coarsely chopped cashews


Directions:
1. Preheat your oven to 350
2. Lightly grease a baking sheet with butter, cooking spray, or use parchment paper
3. Mix the first 7 ingredients together in a large bowl. Then in the same large bowl, beat in the dry ingredients (ground oats, cashews).

4.  Drop the dough or roll them into circles and place them on the cookie sheet.
5. Use your fingers or a flat bottom drinking glass, press the cookies down pretty flat.
6. Bake the cookies - 12 - 14 minutes.
7. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool right there on the pan for a good 5-10 minutes. They will firm up when they have cooled but they are so crunchy they might crunch part way into a few pieces on ya :)

Crunchy, chewy, rasin-y, nutty - there is all sorts of cookies. Chocolate is one of my favorites.
If you don't find this one to your liking, try it as homemade granola. Instead of using the dough to make round cookies... bake it flat for 12- 15 minutes and let it cool. Store in an air tight container. Eat for breakfast. Or just eat them all with lots of cold yummy white milk or as ice cream sandwiches.

Enjoy!
From my kitchen to yours!
Stephanie

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Ice Cream Sandwiches. I mentioned this idea in passing before... but it was so darn good I thought maybe it should have its own entry. Just for the record since it is summer (even in Washington State) where it rains 6 months out of the year and is cloudy for 4 months, its quite necessary to encourage some ice cream eating. I don't live in Washington, but I grew up there, and just had some lovely visitors from there. Washington is on my mind. My house is so quiet now. I miss them.

Back to this super simple dessert sandwich. Its not even a recipe. But its fun. The kiddos can even help too. Mine (my son & niece) didn't help this time, they were too busy with the sprinklers outside. Takes like 15-20 minutes to make a fresh batch of yummy cookies. 5-10 minutes to let them cool. 5 minutes to make a large batch of ice cream treats. 1 batch of a dozen cookies yields 6 ice cream sandwiches.

Grab your fav cookie recipe and a frozen yogurt or ice cream that would pair nicely with it. There are tons of cookie recipes online if you don't have one. Also, most choc chip bags have the brand cookie recipe too. The hardest part is making sure you have butter that has been softened. LOL at least in my house. This isn't supposed to be complicated or hard. Here are some cookie recipes from my blog. I haven't tried all of them with this idea yet. But I could see it working well and being really fun. Especially if you played with the ice cream or frozen yogurt flavors. Like using pumpkin ice cream in the Autumn Choc chip cookies, strawberry ice cream in the pb & j cookies, and/or chocolate in the Triple Choc Irish Coffee cookies. This is making me hungry. I am sure you can think of some awesome creations yourself.

Autumn Chocolate Chip Cookies
Triple Chocolate Irish Coffee Cookies (for adults only)
PB & Strawberry Jelly Cookies 

So make a batch of cookies, let them cool, so they can get firm. If you have kids in your house, make sure you separate the ones you are using for ice cream sandwiches with the ones they can snack on - so you don't end up with an odd number of cookies. This principle applies to husbands as well.

Tear off a bunch of plastic wrap pieces about double the size of the cookie. Put one cookie on top of each square. Top it with one modest scoop of ice cream probably 1/4 cup or so. Then put the second cookie on top and wrap it up securely. Hopefully better than than I did (hahaha). See the picture below.

Put the wrapped sandwich dessert cookies in the freezer to get firm about 4-5 hours. Mine were in there overnight and did very well. After they have been in the freezer for awhile transfer them to a freezer bag to protect them and also so they don't get pushed back to the back and get lost.

Vanilla Bean Froz Yogurt with PB & Strawberry Jelly Cookie

There a perfect treat. WAY better than those store bought ice cream sandwiches and way more personalized with your fav cookie recipe and possible exotic flavor combos. Looking fwd to the rest of the summer and trying out some more of these with my family. If you try this I would love to hear about the flavors you tried/used.

Enjoy summer time with ice cream sandwiches
From my kitchen to yours!