Gluten Free Coconut Macaroons - Μπισκότα Καρύδας

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Coconut Macaroons! Why, oh why, did I wait so long before I baked them? 

I am inexcusable! 

They are now officially my favourite cookies. It was a very close race, with the Chocolate with White Chocolate Chips Cookies coming a very close and proud second but in end coconut took down chocolate with a bang.

I hope you haven't forgotten that I set myself the challenge to bake and photograph all 125 cookies in Roben Ryberg's The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies II

It's time for another gluten free cookie recipe from The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book. 

If you've been following along, you know that I'm in the middle of a series of posts, baking and photographing my way through all 125 gluten free cookie recipes from Robyn Ryberg's "The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book".

You can find the recipes for all the cookies I've baked so far here and why not, subscribe via email to receive regular updates and don't miss a recipe.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

We've had lovely weather here in Zagreb for the past couple weeks. Sunny, warm days with a fresh spring breeze blowing gently and filling the air with white and pink petals from the flowering fruit trees and magnolias. It is beautiful.

It is going to be our 6th (!!) and final Spring here. Next year I will be writing to you from Athens where Spring is equally mesmerising. I can't wait to smell the seducing scent of the flowering lemon and pergamot trees that line the streets of the city and go for long lunches and even longer  coffee  tea and chatting sessions with my friends by the sea.

Unfortunately, I am not a huge fan of coffee. I love its smell, in fact I grew up next to a coffee grinder's and I can spend hours sniffing over cups of fresh brewed coffee, debating and analysing the intensity of the roast. But the moment the brown potion hits my stomach I get dizzy, cold sweat overcomes me and I just want to curl up in a hole and never ever drink coffee again. The only thing that can bring my old stomach some peace is a cup of milk and maybe, no definitely, cookies.

That's exactly what I was thinking before I set up to photograph these Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies, recipe No.5 in Roben Ryberg's "Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book", a book full of great gluten free cookies which I've been baking and photographing since the beginning of the year. 

I baked these a few weeks ago. I am a big-time chocoholic and any cookie with chocolate is arbitrarily given priority and has to be tried first.

I remember that day. It was a Saturday morning, grey and rainy. George was in, working on some Embassy stuff but I enlisted him to help me photograph the cookies. I promised him that he could eat as many as he wanted if he was willing to stand and hold the piece of Styrofoam I use as a reflector.

It feels so strange writing about Styrofoams and reflectors! When I started this blog, I knew nothing about photographing food, what a reflector was and why you need one. Now, two years later and after many, many, many hours of reading books - Helene Dujardin's "Plate to Pixel" has been my undisputed food photography and styling bible - and countless online articles and blog posts, I can say that I have only scratched the surface. There are still so many techniques to learn and implement...

But I am digressing.

Let's talk about the cookies. Lovely chocolate chip cookies made with, as most of the recipes in "The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book", brown rice flour. If you have never baked with brown rice flour you should! It is made from whole grain brown rice, is rich in protein and vitamin B and has a mild nutty flavour.

Even though Roben advices to avoid any substitution of ingredients, I could not help myself and I used coconut oil instead of plain vegetable oil (I am now working on making the recipes sugar/fructose free, so stay tuned!). I think the coconut oil works great with this recipe, and brown rice flour in general. It adds sweetness and an elegant coconut flavour to the cookies.

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Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe adapted from "The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book" by Roben Ryberg
Makes about 25 cookies

Ingredients
1/3 cup (65gr) coconut oil
1/2 cup (100gr) brown sugar
1 cup (125gr) brown rice flour
1/3 cup (40gr) cornstarch
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon Xanthan gum
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (160gr) semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.

Lightly grease a cookie tray.

Combine the coconut oil and the sugar in a medium bowl and beat well. Add the brown rice flour and the cornstarch and beat very well for at least 5 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients and beat again. Make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix again. Gently, stir in the chocolate chips. The dough will be soft.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough (it is quite sticky don't worry) onto your prepared tray. Wet your fingertips and press the cookies to 0.5cm/0.25inch thickness. I found that the thinner I made the cookies the crispier they became.


Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. Let them cool on a wire rack before serving them.

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To see all the recipes from the "The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book" I've baked so far, click here!

Gluten Free Chocolate Cookies with White Chocolate Chips

If you've been following along, you know that I'm in the middle of a series of posts, baking and photographing my way through all 125 gluten free cookie recipes from Robyn Ryberg's "The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book". You can find the recipes for all the cookies I've baked so far here.

Now! 

Do you want some cookies? 

Wait, wait. Let me rephrase that! 

Do you want a bite of the most amazing, chewy, dark and white chocolate cookies that are also gluten free?

I am sure you want...and not just one. You will want - need -  to eat at least three of them until you even consider stopping. Because they are really, really good! I was surprised by how these cookies turned out! After four very good cookie recipes I've tried from Robyn Ryberg's The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book this one was a revelation!

The cookies came out perfect! Chewy on the inside, crispy on the outside, rich and so full of chocolate flavour! I loved them! My dear friend Maja who tried them also loved them, hell everyone loved them and now it is your turn to love them! 

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Chocolate Cookies with White Chocolate Chips

Adapted from The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book by Robyn Ryberg

Makes about 30 cookies

Ingredients

1/3 cup (65gr) coconut oil

1/2 cup (100gr) sugar

1 cup (125gr) brown rice flour

1/4 cup (20gr) cocoa powder

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup (130gr) white chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. 

Lightly grease a cookie tray.

Combine the oil and sugar in a medium bowl and beat well. Add the flour and beat very well for at least 5 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients and beat again. Make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix again. The dough will be soft.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough (it is quite sticky don't worry) onto your prepared tray. Wet your fingertips and press the cookies to 0.5cm/0.25inch thickness.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. Let them cool on a wire rack before serving them.

Gluten Free Banana & Walnut Cookies

It has been quite an indulgent week on my part.

I made the most amazing Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake for my birthday - thank you all so much for your wishes (heart) - which I followed with a classic French pastry filled with the most amazing praline and vanilla cream, the by now famous Paris-Brest. 

This has to end soon! 

My body is not as forgiving as some years ago and my spine has started to complain again about the extra kilos I am forcing her to carry around these past few months.

If you have lower back issues like I do, whether those are a simple pain when you get up from a sitting position that goes away after a few steps or a persistent pain when you bent which has unfortunately moved down your leg, the first thing you have to do is book an appointment with a physiotherapist or an osteopath and then begin exercise to strengthen your core muscles but most importantly lose some weight. Believe me, I know what I am talking about. After two lower back operations and three years of physical therapy I think I have earned my right to talk about this issue with authority

There was a time when I did not spent too much time worrying about how I looked and how my weight might affect my health.

We were posted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the time. Life there was so different, to say the least, from everything I had experienced thus far. I had to wear an abaya whenever I was out in public, there were no movie theatres, no bars, no coffee shops, at least the type of coffee places we are used to in the rest of the world, where men and women (even married to each other) could sit and enjoy a cup of coffee, seeing other people around them. Every cafe and restaurant has a "singles section" where only men are allowed, and a "family section" where women with their husbands are allowed to enter. Each table is curtained off and very private. Imagine eating in a place where you hear other people eating around you but you don't see them. It is a very peculiar feeling. And don't get me started on religious freedom or the lack thereof...

Since there were virtually no ways to entertain ourselves outside our house we went to restaurants on a regular basis. There were not many to chose from, no let me rephrase that, there were not many quality restaurants to chose from. Saudis love American fast food ironic given the recent history, but not really because before the 1980's America practically build the country. But in any event, this is primarily a food blog and I do not want to delve deep into the political intricacies of the Saudi-American relationship. I promise to talk more about the everyday life in Riyadh in many posts to come, but for now if you are thinking of moving there and need more information and an unbiased opinion about living in the country you are welcome to contact me by email.

Now where was I? Going out to restaurants and eating our hearts out because we were frankly too bored to care and was too hot to do any type of physical activity. That was our lifestyle and in three years I managed to gain 30 kilos - that is 66 pound for you, my American friends. 

Here is a picture of me at a very important occasion. The President of Greece was on an official visit to Saudi Arabia. We hosted a reception at our embassy and I look horrible because they're nothing in my closet that would fit me. 90 kilos is A LOT to carry around and that is when my back gave way at age 29. I started to suffer terrible back aches. In just one year the pain spread down my left leg. It went numb and was very very very irritating. Disc hernia was the diagnosis and operation the treatment. 

But I will save this story for another post. 

What I wanted to say before I got so carried away - damn you A.D.D - was that I managed to get back on my feet and feel normal again with lots of exercise and weight control. Here is a picture of me and George at a friend's Halloween party a couple years ago where we won the prize for best costume!

See what difference a bit of exercise does? 30 kilos in three years!!

If you are still with me reading my ramblings please stay a little longer to read the recipe for the Gluten Free Banana &  Walnut cookies. 

This is recipe No3 in my series of baking all the recipes in Robyn Ryberg's The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book. 

I made them just after the New Year, hence the festive golden background and they turned out very well. 

I am not saying that because they are gluten free are good for a diet. There is sugar in the recipe and eggs and oil so not a typical diet food but as a person who managed to turn her weight around, I want to tell you that for me the most effective diet is not to starve and deprive yourself. 

Have just one cookie with your coffee in the morning or as a sweet treat after a meal and not the whole box.

Moderation is paramount to losing weight in a healthy manner. So don't forget to treat yourself to something nice once a week. 

Here is the recipe.

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Gluten Free Banana & Walnut Cookies

Adapted from "The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book" by Robyn Ryberg 

Makes about 30 cookies

Ingredients

1/3 cup (65gr) oil

1/2 cup (100gr) sugar

1 1/2 cups (185gr) brown rice flour

1 egg

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 xanthan gum

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup (60gr) chopped walnuts

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. 

Lightly grease a cookie tray.

Combine the oil and sugar in a medium bowl and beat well. Add the flour and beat very well. Add all the remaining ingredients and beat well. Make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix again. The dough will be soft.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough (it is quite sticky don't worry) onto your prepared tray. Wet your fingertips and press the cookies to 0.5cm/0.25inch thickness.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes until they begin to brown. Let them cool on a wire rack before serving them.

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Gluten Free Applesauce & Raisin Cookies

Recipe No.2 in Roben Ryberg's book "The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book" is Applesauce & Raisin Cookies. 

For those of you who did not had a chance to read about my decision to set myself the challenge of baking and photographing all the gluten free cookie recipes found in this cookie book you can read about it here, but basically this is it...I decided to bake them all and photograph them because it is really a pity that there are no photographs of the cookies.

I have already baked 4 out of the 125 cookie recipes and I will be posting them here soon. 

On with today's recipe: Applesauce & Raisin Cookies. 

I have to confess, I had to bake them twice over. I made the mistake I always make. I did not pay attention to the recipe instructions. To my defence I was in a hurry and it was quite late at night so I took a short-cut. I did not shape the dough before I put it in the oven to bake. Big mistake! These cookies do not rise nor spread while they bake and that's how I ended up with half baked blobs of cookie dough which was really tasty but completely un-photogenic. After a brief session of I can't believe I did it again I put the cookies in a tapper-ware container and the next morning I send them off to the food twilight zone that is George's office. 

I am serious, the moment anything edible passes the Embassy's threshold it immediately disappears.  It does not matter if the food I give them is ugly and not picture perfect. George's colleagues are happy to oblige and are my best recipe guinea pigs. 

And these cookies are no just edible. They are delicious! 

George reported  back to me that the cookies disappeared in record time and I decided that I had to bake them again. And this time I had to put more effort in making them look as beautiful as they taste. 

This was no small feat though. The dough is very sticky and the only way to shape it, is, as Roben says in her instructions, by patting it down with wet fingers. 

These cookies are definitely worth baking. Sweet raisins, tangy applesauce, and cinnamon are just the perfect combination! Like small bites of apple pie.  

So go ahead find the hidden sculptor inside you and get busy with your fingers! 

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Gluten Free Applesauce & Raisin Cookies

Adapted from "The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book" by Roben Ryberg

About 40 cookies

Ingredients

1/3 cup sunflower oil

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups brown rice flour

1 egg

1/2 cup applesauce

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum 

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/3 cup raisins

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350F/180C.

Lightly oil a cookie sheet/tray.

In a medium size bowl, combine the oil and sugar and beat well. Add the brown rice flour and beat some more. Scrape down the sides of the bowl at least once during mixing.

Add all the remaining ingredients and mix well.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough (it is quite sticky don't worry) onto your prepared tray. Wet your fingertips and press the cookies to 0.5cm/0.25inch thickness.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes until they begin to brown. Let them cool on a wire rack before serving them.

Enjoy!

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Gluten Free Almond Cookies

I got an early Christmas present this year! It's yet another cookbook but I am so excited about it!

It is the Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book by Roben Ryberg. A lovely little book full of - yes, you guessed it - gluten free recipes for cookies and bars. Roben Ryberg has a lot of experience with gluten free cooking and baking. She has written two more books all full of delicious gluten free recipes. In this one she concentrated on developing gluten free recipes for all the all-time classic and favourite cookies. They are easy to make and most importantly affordable; she only uses two different types of gluten free flours instead of a mix of many which can be very expensive and quite difficult to track down.

There are so many cookies in this book!!! Definitely more than 100... and I have decided to bake them all!

Yes, I made the decision the moment I opened the book and I realised that there were no pictures of the cookies! What a disappointment that was. Such a useful gluten free baking manual and it only has no more than 20 - let me be honest here - very ugly, poorly lit and unappetising pictures! I was seriously heartbroken.

I am a very visual person, I love looking at the pictures in cookbooks and magazines and blogs, analyse them and try to understand how the stylists and photographers went about creating all these delicious looking and inspiring images. I have no professional photography training, I learn as I go and looking at food pictures, trying to recreate them in my own way is a great source of inspiration and training. 

So I decided then and there that I was going to set myself a challenge: Bake all the recipes and photograph all the cookies in this book. By the time I finish with it I am going to be an expert at photographing cookies :)

I should have waited for the new year to set myself  a challenge. It is customary that way but I was never a person to follow custom very faithfully. I mean, I never start a diet on Monday, it's either Sunday or Tuesday; or even better, Thursday! So now I will start baking ten days before the end of the year and don't really think about New Year's Resolutions. And since its Christmas I might as well use the decorations to make a few festive cookie pictures.

So let's begin...

The first recipe in the book is Almond Flower Cookies. A classic very soft and moist cookie. If you like almonds you are going to love this one! It is made with brown rice flour and almond meal. Both are very easy to find either at your local organic foods store or online at Amazon or here.

I blanched and ground the almonds into almond flour by myself. It is dead easy and kinda fun especially when skinning the almonds. Just follow these simple steps:

• Bring a small pot of water to a boil and place the raw almonds into the water.
• Let them boil for exactly one minute. If you boil them for longer they will start to soften!!.
• Drain the almonds immediately in a strainer and rinse them with cold water to cool them. Their skins are now loose and easy to peel away. You can squeeze them out quite easily. 
• Resist the temptation to start an "almond launching war" between you and your husband or children :)
• Let the almonds dry off completely. 
• To grind them place about 1/2 a cup in an electric coffee grinder and pulse several times until a fine meal forms. 
• Don't over-grind them because they will release their oils and turn into almond butter!!
• Shift the ground almond meal and place any large particles of almonds into the coffee grinder and give it another go. 

Now let's get on with the recipe....

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Gluten Free Almond Cookies

Adapted from "The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book" by Roben Ryberg

Makes about 25 cookies

Ingredients

65 gr oil

100 gr sugar

125 gr brown rice flour

60 gr almond meal

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

1 teaspoon almond extract

25 whole blanched almonds

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350F/180C.

Lightly oil a cookie sheet/tray. 

In a medium size bowl, combine the oil and sugar and beat well. Add the brown rice flour and beat some more. Scrape down the sides of the bowl at least once during mixing. 

Add the eggs, almond meal, baking soda, baking powder, salt xanthan gum and almond extract and mix well. 

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough (it is quite sticky don't worry) onto your prepared tray. Wet your fingertips and press the cookies to 0.5cm/0.25inch thickness. 

Place one whole almond at the centre of every cookie.

Bake the cookies for 8 - 10 minutes until there is the slightest hint of colour. Let them cool on a wire rack before serving them. 

Enjoy!