Quinoa Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been organizing the freezer, and found the quinoa flakes. I enjoy making hot cereal with them, but had forgotten about them since the kids didn't like any of the recipes I'd tried them in. I saw this recipe on the back of the quinoa box (Ancient Quinoa Harvest), and thought I'd give it a shot. It's the first time the kids have eaten quinoa and liked it!

Crispy Quinoa Cookies

1/2 Cup Local Honey
1/3 cup Organic Brown Sugar
1/2 Cup Soy-free Earth Balance
1/2 Cup Organic Peanut Butter
1/2 tsp Organic Vanilla Extract
1 cup Organic Rice Flour
3/4 cup Organic Quinoa Flakes
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup Organic Nuts (optional)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Beat honey, brown sugar, butter or substitute, peanut butter, and vanilla in a medium bowl till creamy. Combine rice flour, Quinoa flakes, baking soda & salt in small bowl. Add dry to wet mixture and beat until well blended. If desired add nuts.

Drop by rounded teaspoons about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool 1 minute before removing from cookie sheet.

Yields about 3 dozen (small) cookies

My changes:
I added 1/4 cup of Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips, and used slightly more peanut butter (I rounded the 1/2 cup). I didn't add nuts this time.

Chocolate covered Christmas bean balls

The kids wanted to make Christmas cookies. I've made gluten and dairy free sugar cookies that looked good, but am not thrilled with the way they taste. I decided to do some poking around on the internets and see if I could find another treat that we had ingredients for. A large pot of garbanzo beans had just finished cooking when I came across this recipe for vegan chocolate chip cookie dough truffles. They are grain-free, full of protein, and covered in chocolate. Three things that make them worth a try in my opinion. They were really quick to make in the food processor, and not a lot of mess. After scooping the dough onto a cookie sheet, they did need to firm up in the fridge for about 15 minutes to be able to handle them enough for dipping into the melted chocolate. If we make them again, I'll definitely make them smaller so the dough-to-chocolate ratio is better, and they are more bite sized. The taste is pretty good, possibly a bit "healthy" tasting, but if you didn't know there were beans in there, you'd never know there were beans in there. The girl gave a big thumbs up, but the boy is on the fence (however, he's not feeling well enough to want to eat chocolate, so his vote won't count here.)