Flourless PB&J Thumbprint Cookies: Perfect for the Holidays!
'Tis the season for cookie swaps and homemade gifts. And, unfortunately, 'tis also the season for artificial food coloring, highly processed ingredients, stress, and weight gain.
It doesn't have to be. You can make simple, lovely treats from whole food ingredients. Are these diet food? Nope, they're still cookies. They should be eaten in moderation. But they should also be savored and enjoyed and shared with loved ones.
The base of these is similar to my Flourless Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies. You don't needs lots of equipment and you don't have to be a master baker. What I'd suggest you do need, though, is a quality jar of peanut butter. Ideally, you should use one that has just peanuts (or peanuts and salt) as its ingredients. If it has hydrogenated oils and/or sugar, avoid it.
You can also use almond butter or—for a lunch-box friendly, nut-free version—sunflower butter. If your nut butter is particularly wet/oily (as happened to me with a recent batch when I used almond butter), you can just add a couple of teaspoons of almond flour.
Adapted from Tate's Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies recipe:
Ingredients
(yield: 24 cookies)
- 1/3c raspberry 100% fruit preserves*
- 1T chia seeds
- 1 cup natural peanut butter
- 1/2 cup Sucanat (can substitute raw sugar)
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt (if using unsalted peanut butter)
*Note: I used raspberry because its seedy nature pairs well with texture of the chia, but you can certainly use any flavor jam you like.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the jam and chia seeds (a fabulous source of omega-3s and calcium, among other good things).
Bake for 12-14 minutes. Cool on the cookie sheets on a rack for about five minutes. then carefully remove the cookies from the sheets onto the racks to continue to cool.
Grab a glass of milk and enjoy!
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the jam and chia seeds (a fabulous source of omega-3s and calcium, among other good things).
In a large bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Scoop heaping teaspoons of the dough and (using your hands) roll into balls, about an inch across. Put them on a parchment-covered cookie sheet; they don't spread much, so you can put one dozen on each sheet. Press down with your thumb to make a small indentation in the center of each cookie; I spread mine a little so the indentation is wider and can hold a bit more jam.
Put about 1/2-3/4 teaspoons of jam into each of the cookies' wells.
These look tastetastic! Thanks for letting me know about them! :)
ReplyDeleteoh, good, hope you like 'em :-)
ReplyDeletethat sure looks so tasty with the raspberry .
ReplyDeleteThanks, hope you try them!
ReplyDeletei just made these and they are WONDERFUL. easy, so pretty, and delicious. my son loved making them with me!
ReplyDeleteWe really appreciate your posting a review (especially such a positive one)!
ReplyDeleteThis is a cookie recipe I think I can make. Looks delicious.
ReplyDeleteGreat, I hope you try them! Definitely doable, even for novice bakers :-)
ReplyDeleteI tried the recipe and they came out very flat and crumbly, so the next time I added an extra egg, a little more baking soda and some oats, and they were much fuller, but also completely fell apart. Advice?
ReplyDeleteOh, no! Hmmm, no idea - I've made them a few times and, while they are a bit delicate, i've never had them fall apart. You could try adding a flaxmeal slurry (1T flaxmeal mixed with 3T water) to help to bind. Are they completely cooling on a rack? That helps, too. Or try making the wells more shallow (in other words, don't press down as much with your thumb)? Sorry!
ReplyDeleteI really want to make these lovely cookies, but I'm Vegan. Any advice on what to substitute for the 1 egg? Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI would probably try using flaxseed meal slurry (mix 1 T. flax seed meal + 3 T. warm water, let sit for 10 minutes). I haven't tried it for this recipe, though, so i can't make any promises! If you do try it, will you come back and let me know how it turned out? Would love to know. Thanks :-)
ReplyDeletewe just made these again but substituted almond butter and added a little whole wheat flour as suggested since the almond butter was really wet. they were easy and perfect on this rainy cold day. perfect!
ReplyDeleteYay, so glad to hear it! I actually almost always make these with almond butter; but for the purposes of writing up a post, I thought the PB&J was catchier ;-)
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I don't usually bake with agave because I find it adds too much wetness. I would think that adding a bit of almond flour would work just fine, but I haven't tried it so I can't promise anything...Please let me know how they turn out!
ReplyDelete