Sunflower Butter Cookies

Working on our first recipe, we thought we would start with something easy. Easy, like one of those three ingredient peanut butter cookie recipes. How hard could those possibly be to alter into a allergy friendly recipe?

Since these recipes are being created around my personal allergy issues, we chose to create Sunflower Butter Cookies using sunflower butter, egg yolks (as my allergy, thankfully, is only egg whites) and brown sugar. 

Natalie separating egg yolks from whites just like the food network taught her!

We started with:
 
     1 cup sunflower butter (We used Trader Joe's Sunflower Seed Butter)
     1 cup brown sugar
     2 egg yolks

Then, we beat all three ingredient together for a few minutes. This was our first mistake. And should have been the beginning of our realizing that 'easy' was probably not the word to use for our first attempt at creating a stack of recipes.

By the time Natalie had two cookies on the tray, we realized that the dough was too stiff to work. The two already rolled cookies went back into the bowl, and we tried again. 

This time, we added a tablespoon of coconut oil to make the batter smoother and not so tight. The coconut oil, also from Trader Joe's is currently is in complete liquid state in my August California kitchen. I also keep a jar in my refrigerator. The coconut oil in that jar is solid and white.

After adding the oil, we again, roll out the sunflower butter cookies, 12 to a pan. These are placed onto parchment paper. There is enough oil that an un-greased pan should work fine. Then, pressing them down with a fork, like peanut butter cookies, we place them into a 350 degree oven. Before doing so, we have sprinkled half of the cookies with sea salt and left half plain.

 We cook them for 8, then 10, then 12 minutes. The cookies look dark, but that is just a combination of the brown sugar and sunflower butter. The taste of these cookies is good, but the texture is like sawdust. Not pleasant, at all!

Adjusted recipe:

Sunflower Butter Cookies
     1         cup sunflower seed butter (We used Trader Joe's Sunflower Seed Butter)
     1         cup white sugar
     2         egg yolks
     1 t       vanilla
     3T       coconut oil
     1/2 t    baking soda
                sea salt to taste

Mix sugar, coconut oil, egg yolks and vanilla together in bowl. Beat together for several minutes until smooth and glossy. Add in baking soda. Mix until blended. Blend in sunflower seed butter. Mix until smooth. Roll into 1 inch balls. smash with fork into criss cross pattern. Sprinkle with sea salt, if desired. Bake in 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes or bottoms lightly brown. Let cool on tray. Very fragile while hot. Makes 24 cookies.

These are pretty sweet cookies. I think that will vary depending on the type of sunflower butter that is used. But, not bad for a few hours worth of work. Definitely not a three ingredient recipe, though. And, way more work to tweak it than we thought it would be, but for a peanut butter cookie lover, this will work!