Post-Workout Cookie Sandwiches Revisited

I gave my I'm-Real-Beat-From-Running-Someone-Get-This-Girl-A-Cookie-Sandwich recipe a moderate facelift yesterday. It's the same basic idea, just a few ingredient replacement. So here goes it!

Ingredients

1/2 cup vanilla protein powder (use a soy-based powder for vegan)

1/3 cup oat flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

4oz fresh ground almond butter

18 packets Truvia

1/4 to 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbls instant espresso powder

1 1/2 cups oats

1/2 cup mini dark chocolate chips

Do These Things Now

Whisk your protein powder, oat flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder together in a bowl. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, "cream" the almond butter, applesauce and truvia til smooth. Add the tsp of vanilla and the espresso powder. Mix some more. Add the dry ingredient mixture a half a cup at a time. It should seem pretty dry. If it seems too dry, add a bit more applesauce. Add the vanilla and espresso powder. Smoooooth. Fold in the oats and the chocolate chips.

Divide the dough in half. Take one half and plop it down on some wax paper. Wrap it up like a tootsie roll and roll it out into a log. It should be about an inch and half or so in diameter. Wrap tightly in the wax paper and let cool in the fridge for 4-6 hours. Repeat with remaining half of dough.

4-6 hours/one reading of The Hunger Games later...

Preheat the oven to 350. Line some cookie sheets with parchment paper. Take your doughy logs out of the fridge. Slice the logs into thinnish cookie disks no bigger than a half an inch wide. If they crack a bit, you can always reform them with a little of the fallen off dough. Press the disks down onto the cookie sheets, making them just a tad slimmer and peanut butter spreading friendlier. Add fallen apart dough as needed. Bake for 9 minutes. Remove and cool for a minute or 2 on the sheets, then transfer to cooling racks.

Assembly!

This is pretty straightforward. If it isn't, I'm afraid of how you got this far and no, this is not a pie recipe. Take one cookie. Spread a tablespoon of your favorite chunky peanut butter on the smooth bottom side. Top with another cookie's smooth bottom side. Giggle about "smooth bottom sides."

Nutrition Facts

Per cookie 

50 calories / 6g carbs / 3g fat / 2g protein / 1g fiber / 0g sugar

(based off the recipe making the 42 cookies I made)

Per cookie sandwich with a tablespoon of Maranatha No Stir Crunchy Peanut Butter

190 calories / 16g carbs / 14g fat / 8g protein / 3g fiber / 3g sugar

You Eat Post-Workout Snacks Like A Girl

Vegan Chocolate Espresso Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches. (whew.)

I have some pretty silly fears. Elevator doors closing on me. Falling down escalators. Falling up stairs. Falling on my face. (There is something wrong with my balance? There is something wrong with my balance.)

But those are the normal socially accepted  ones I typically admit. I also have food fears that I keep somewhat to myself. Oh who am I kidding, I don't keep anything to myself. You look horrible today, by the way. But yeah. Food fears. Fears makes it sound a little too wacky, I think. We'll call them food aversions. Eek. These include, but are not limited to, the following: cheese, bread, cereal, butter, oil, meat of all kinds, sugar. They come and go (eggs and milk used to be there too, so I'm open to modifying my psychosis) for various nonsensical reasons. So I've been adjusting my foods to be less scary, more approachable, friendlier, faster, stronger, better, cuter, more charming. Wait what? No, no. All that's perfect. And true.

It's common knowledge that I like my cookie doughs to look as
much like bowel movements as possible.

But where I struggle the most is carbs. Specifically post-workout carbs. And to make it worse, I've been falling in love with running these days. And as we're getting pretty hot and heavy, it's becoming readily apparent to me that I need to eat some damn carbs after those runs. For the sake of having enough energy to run again. But I don't want to eat a tuna sandwich everyday. Orrrr ever.

Is that oatmeal in there or little glimmers of sunshine?
(It's oatmeal.)

So I'm going to eat my post-workout snacks like a girl. Mostly because that is clearly the only way I know how. They're going to be Chocolate Espresso Oatmeal Cookie Peanut Butter Sandwiches. And they are going to be life-altering.

Ok. They are going be incredibly yummy. And a little funny looking. Oh and they're going to be - relatively - good for you. And vegan. Because why the fuck not, amiright?

Cute in that ugly you-must-have-come-from-turdy-batter way.
You know?

Adapted from this recipe.  Here's how...

Assemble these things:
3/4  cup of oat flour
1/4  cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4  tsp salt
1/2  tsp baking soda
6  tbls vegan buttery flavor sticks
2  tbls unsweetened applesauce
18  packets of Truvia
2  oz cooled espresso
1 1/2  tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2  cups of oats
1/2  cup of chocolate chips
wax paper and parchment paper

Do these things to those things:

1. Whisk first 4 dry ingredients together in a bowl. Set aside to let it think about what it did.
2. Cream the "butter" and applesauce with the "sugar" in a mixer. Make air quotes.
3. Add the espresso and vanilla. Is it smoothish? Let me introduce you to step 4...
4. Nice to finally meet you. Stir in the oats and chocolate chips with a spoon of sorts.
5. Divide the dough in half. Place the halves in their own wax papers. Roll the doughs into 2 log (you-know-what) shapes, about 2" in diameter. Wrap up and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Come back. Preheat the oven to 350. Parchment paper your cookie sheets.

1. Slice the logs into 1/2" wide cookies. I got about 3 dozen cookies out of this. The original recipe claims 48. I call bullshit on this.
2. Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, or until the tops look a bit dry.
3. Remove. Cool in sheets for a few minutes. Cool on cookie racks for many more minutes.
4. Assemble two cookies with a tablespoon of crunchy peanut butter.
5. LOOK WHAT I'VE CREATED. I HAVE MADE PERFECT POST-RUN SNACK!

Nutritional Info Per Cookie
56 calories / 8g carbs / 3g fat / 1g protein / 1g fiber / 2g sugar


Nutritional Info Per Sandwich 
202 calories / 19g carbs / 15g fat / 6g protein / 3g fiber / 6g sugar

This beats a tuna sandwich 99% of time.
Dolphin meat wins 1% of the time.

RATE ME!!

TASTE: 5/5 TASTES SO GOOD IN MY SWEATY RUNNER MOUTH. It also tastes good in my regular mouth. These would also probably taste good in a shoe.

EASE: 4/5 I made the dough on my lunch break today, but only after stopping at the grocery, eating some lunch, and some general fucking around. The hardest part was cutting the turd roll. And that was easy as Sunday morning. Or Wednesday lunch break.

FILTH OF KITCHEN: 3/5 This is hard because my kitchen is a pigsty to begin with. As is the area by my kitchen (known from here on out as The Entirety of the Rest of My Studio Apartment) where I decided I didn't feel like folding my laundry yet. Oh me. I didn't add too much extra mess, however. Just a lot.

DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH? STOP REMINDING ME THAT MY DOG IS AFRAID OF MY KITCHEN ALREADY.

IMPRESS-O-METER: 2.5/5 Yeah these guys are ugly. That's for certain. -2 points. But they are Vegan (+1), Sandwich Cookies (+1), and made entirely from my heart (+.5). And then -1 for that last comment. And add another +1 for healthy-ness. Have we carried any ones yet? Perfect.

Flour-less Cakes: A Love Story in Three Parts

Preface

That Time I Decided to Make a Bunch of Flour-less Cakes

Occasionally on this blog, I bring up the very true fact that I am a Jew. I made hamantashen and told you all the story of three-cornered hats (it's Jew-talk...don't worry about it). My first venture in bread baking was challah because duh. So what's this getting at? Passover's coming up soon!!!!!!(!!!!!!) And Passover is my (only) favorite Jewish holiday! So in an effort to find recipes for my mother to slave over help plan our upcoming seder, I went about researching flour-less cakes. Because here's the only thing you need to remember about Passover food: that shit better not have ever risen a day in its life. Because Pharoh. And the Jews. And the desert. And Pharoh again. RESEARCH TIME!

Epilogue to the Preface
Research!

My fellow Jewess blogger, The Awesome Lady Over at Smitten Kitchen, compiled an extremely helpful list of flour-less Passover friendly desserts. I decided to tackle three of her flour-less cakes while putting my own little spins on each of them. All in the name of science. And research. And my expanding waist line. But mostly, PASSOVER!

The Jews didn't have yeast in the desert but they definitely had melted chocolate.
They weren't heathens.

Part 1
Chocolate Flour-Less Cake

with Espresso Whipped Cream and Raspberries

Use your vivid imagination to insert some raspberries where
I clearly ate the raspberries before taking this picture. Please.

I picked this recipe because it involves separating a dozen eggs and I like breaking things. I also like to pretend that the really loud noise my ridiculously over powered KitchenAid Professional Mixer makes while beating the shit out of one dozen egg whites is my own personal air show, minus the planes, the tricks, and the inevitable plane-trick tragedies.

Like the clouds at an air show, but with less impending doom!

So here's the recipe, adapted ever so very tiny bit slightly from Smitten Kitchen.

Cake:

• 12 oz fine quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 6 tablespoons of water
• 12 eggs, separated
• 1 1/3 cups of sugar
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Filling:

• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 7 tablespoons of sifted confectioners sugar
• 4 tsp instant espresso dissolved in 4 tsp water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• raspberries

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease your baking pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper. Set aside.
2. Melt the chocolate with the water over low heat. Set aside to cool to lukewarm.
3. Whip together the egg yolks, 2/3 cups of sugar, and salt in a mixer for 5 minutes or until pale yellow and thick. Fold in the chocolate until blended.
4. Clean your mixer, you filthy disgrace.
5. Beat egg whites until soft peaks are formed. Slowly add the remaining 2/3 cups of sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture to make it light. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites until blended.
6. Evenly spread batter in your pans. Bake until puffy and the top appears dry. Rotate to ensure even baking. For my heart shaped mini pans, this took about 13 minutes. For my 5" and 6" circular pans, it took about 16 minutes.
7. Let cool on a wire rack. When cooled, sift some cocoa powder on the top of the cakes. Place wax paper on top of the pan, then place a baking sheet on top of it all. Invert the cake onto the pan, gently removing the paper lining. Place the layers in the freezer for about an hour so that they are firmer and easier to handle when frosting.

Make the frosting!

1. Whip all the ingredients together. BAM. You have delicious frosting.

Assemble the cake!

1. Keep the cocoa side of the cake down.
2. Frost the bare side with a heaping amount of whipped frosting. Place some halved raspberries on top of the frosting.
3. Place the next layer on top and frost, frost, frost.

You know you're a Jew when you subconsciously decorate your cake with a raspberry Star of David.

I stopped at 2 layers for both of my circular cakes. My heart shaped cake used 5 layers...then I ran out of frosting. Sigh.

If salt water at Passover reminds us of the Jews' tears, this clearly reminds us of
how sad we were as young Jews to not find the hidden matzah at Passover.

This cake is totally delicious. For realz. It's crazy light and airy because it has a dozen fucking eggs. My Elijah, that is SO MANY EGGS. I just want to make a million and a half egg puns here. But I'm stronger than that. Or something. Also, I've recently become a big girl and started drinking coffee. Currently my drink of choice is a grande soy cappuccino so this espresso whipped cream was right up my big-girl alley. Plus who doesn't love fresh berries with their cake? Pharoh. That's who. Fucking Pharoh.

This cake batter is very light but it could have used more plagues.
Are a few locusts too much to ask for?

Next I'm going to make this ridiculous sounding orange flour-less cake in various tiny, adorable shapes. But first...one more look at my sickeningly cute heart shaped cake. No but seriously. I feel ill after like two bites.

And Moses parted the flour-less cake so his people could escape the mighty Pharoh.

RATE ME!

TASTE: 3/5 You know what, the cake is really good. It really is. I think I just underbaked it a bit. I chalk this up to my inexperience with making flour-less cakes (see: Never) and my overall impatience. Surprisingly, this did not stop me from gaining a solid pound eating this cake last night. Nor did it stop a mysterious member of my family from going to town on these cakes sometime between last night and this morning. Hm.
EASE: 3/5 I was actually pretty surprised how easy this cake was to make. The only points deducted from ease come from the ONE DOZEN SEPARATED EGGS. Amazing for pent up rage, however.
FILTH OF THE KITCHEN: 5/5 I - I don't know what happened. It looked like a bomb went off. A bomb went off and then another, slightly chocolate-ier, bomb went off just for good measure. It was terrifying. It was so filthy.
DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH: He most seriously knew what was up when I was icing the cakes. I'm pretty sure I had his full I-Don't-Know-How-to-Sit-on-Command attention.
IMPRESS-O-METER: 4/5 Flour-less seems unnecessarily tricky and espresso whipped cream seems unnecessarily mature. Overall, that's not too shabby.