Sunflower Seed Butter 'Puppy Chow'

Sunflower Seed Butter 'Puppy Chow'

Recipe:

1/2 cup of soy free smart and balance butter

1 cup of sunflower seed butter

1 cup of chocolate chips*

1 box 12 oz box of Crispex**

2 cups of powdered sugar 

additional 1 1/3 cups of powdered sugar

Directions:

Stir dairy free butter, sunflower seed butter and chocolate chips together in glass or microwave safe bowl. Heat at 30 second intervals. Remove bowl and stir in between each 30 seconds.  

Be careful, bowl and chocolate mixture will get hot. Continue until soft and gooey. Do not over heat chocolate or it will burn. It should take only about 2 or 3 times.

Pour box of cereal into large (unscented and new/clean) garbage type bag. Pour warm melted chocolate mixture over cereal in bag. Close up bag and gently shake and roll bag around in your hands to coat the cereal completely with the chocolate. 

When completely coated, but still warm and gooey, add in two cups of powdered sugar. close up bag again and roll around in your hand, being sure to get powdered sugar through out the entire bag. Gently break apart any clumps with crushing the cereal pieces. Set aside.

Add an additional 1 1/3 cups of powdered sugar after it has cooled. Wait at least 10 to 15 minutes to give the 'Puppy Chow' a nice white coating. Store in an airtight container.

*Be sure to choose dairy-free cocolate ships if you want this recipe to be dairy-free.
 **Crispix is NOT labeled as gluten-free, though they have discontinued using barley malt in the ingredients and now use brown rice syrup, which is gluten-free. It is still processed in a facility that also processes gluten and have not tested Crispix to determine its gluten-free status. There are not, however, any gluten ingredients listed in the cereal, itself. 

Both Rice and Corn Chex are gluten-free and can be substituted for the Crispix cereal. Add about 6 cups of each cereal for the recipe.

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Chocolate Suncheroos

We have worked on this recipe for a while now. After having many attempts turn out very flat and overly chewy, we have cut back on the amount of sunflower butter and used a smaller pan for our bars. 

Perhaps the reason it took so many attempts was because we usually make our  crispie rice bars with sugar and corn syrup. But, we thought we would start simple and go from there. A month and 6 pans of bars later, we have a tasty peanut-free, dairy-free treat.

Chocolate Suncheroos (Sunflower Seed Butter Crispy Rice Bars)

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons dairy free butter 

1/2 cup sunflower seed butter

1 bag large marshmallows 

6 cups gluten free crispie rice cereal link

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips*

1/4 cup butterscotch chips*

Directions:

Line 9" x 9" baking pan with aluminum foil. Spray with oil.

In a saucepan over medium/low heat, melt dairy free butter. Add marshmallows. Stir until melted. Remove from heat, and stir in sunflower seed butter. Mix in the rice cereal until evenly coated. Press the mixture into the prepared pan.

In a glass bowl in the microwave, melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips for 30 to 45 seconds. Stir. Heat another 15 seconds if needed. Stir again until smooth. Spread over the top of crispie rice bars. 

Chill until set and cut into bars or eat while warm and gooey.

*It is possible to order both dairy-free chocolate chip and butterscotch chips from Amazon. You can purchase dairy-free semi sweet chocolate chips from Ghirardelli retail locations, but the semi sweet chocolate chips from local grocery stores are NOT dairy free.

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Sunflower Seed Butter Monster Cookies

Yes, another day, another cookie recipe. In case you haven't noticed, we work up a recipe first, and then bake it up. Meaning, as I am typing these first few words, we have not baked anything, yet. Since the easiest way to record what ingredients we decide upon is just to write them right into this blog, we are literally testing the recipes as we go. 

Monster cookies is a recipe the we have made for many, many years. At the beginning of the school year, we would make up a big batch of monster cookies, and freeze them. Then, when the kids came home from school, or play rehearsal, or football practice, there were always giant cookies to snack on. Of course, I ate many of them, myself.

So, this is our first test of gluten free Monster Cookies. In order to cut down on the number of eggs we are going through, we have decided to test out a version of this recipe using mayonnaise as a substitute for part of the eggs. 

We are also in disagreement, at the moment, as to how much vanilla to use. I always increase the amount of vanilla in a recipe, Natalie has taken that idea and doubled up again. She believes we should add a whole tablespoon of vanilla to this recipe. Considering we start with Mexican vanilla, which is a very strong vanilla, to begin with, that will make these very, very vanilla-ey, indeed. 

Also note, even though we replaced the butter in this recipe with a butter free blend, this is not a dairy-free recipe because of the M&Ms. 

 Sunflower Seed Butter Monster Cookies 

Ingredients:

1/3 cup dairy-free butter blend

6 tablespoons mayonnaise (yolk only type)

3 egg yolks

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups sunflower seed butter

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

4 1/2 cups oats

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup milk chocolate M&M's

1/2 cup dark chocolate M&M's

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

In large bowl, cream together butter, sugars, sunflower seed butter, egg yolks and mayonnaise until well blended and creamy. Add vanilla.

Mix in baking soda and oats. Mix on low until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips and milk chocolate and dark chocolate M&M's.

Using a large spoon, scoop dough onto ungreased cookie sheets. Cookies do not spread much so flatten slightly before baking. Bake at 350° for 12-14 minutes. Remove from oven and cool a couple of minutes. Move to wire racks.

During the first test run, we ended up with more granola, than cookies. so we added another egg yolk to our batter. The additional yolk helped hold the cookies together better and, as Natalie says, "Gives them more poof. We also added a teaspoon of salt to our original recipe. We are learning that sunflower seed butter cooks up much sweeter than peanut butter. The salt helps to cut that sweetness.

Our oven cooks on the hotter side, so 12 minutes is plenty long enough for our cookies to bake and still have a bit of moist gooey inside.

This is, by far, our best recipe, to date. And yes, I realize that there are not very many recipes on this blog, yet, There are many attempts we have not recorded, as of this time. And a few that will fade away forever. Blah! Sunflower Seed Butter Monster Cookies, however, are definitely worth the effort of baking up several more batches!

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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!

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