Sasha's Kitchen: The Best Gluten Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have been craving chewy peanut butter cookies for the last couple of weeks.  I was looking for something flowerless for my peanut butter cookies, with plenty of chewiness.  I don't care for hard and crunchy cookies, as I prefer them to be chewy and tender.  I think the absence of the flour and the gluten free approach to these cookies makes them chewier and less dry than regular peanut bitter cookies.  The eggs also help increase that chewiness factor.  These are some great cookies to sink your teeth into, and in my opinion they are the best peanut butter chocolate chip cookies I have ever had.  The recipe below should make 20 to 24 cookies, depending on the size.  Mine are a bit on the large side, so try to make your cookies a bit smaller, and remind yourself that they do expand when you bake them.  I am very happy with the results of the experimentation to get this recipe perfect, and am so happy to share the final batch here.

It took me a couple of batches to get the cookies the way that I wanted them. I discovered the importance of using a combination of brown sugar and regular sugar to get the right chewy consistency.  The cookies don't caramelize properly if you only use granulated sugar, as I learned from one of my less desirable batches.   Practice made perfect with these cookies - I was very satisfied with the final batch, using the combination of sugar and the extra egg.  They were chewy and delicious!

Sasha's Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/2 cups of peanut butter

3 large sized eggs

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  To prepare the cookies, combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl, except for the chocolate chips.  Once the dough is fully combined, mix in the chocolate chips.  Use a tablespoon to make cookie dough balls about an inch apart on your baking sheets.  Remember to spray the baking sheets with PAM before dropping down the batter.  The cookies don't bake for too long - only about 12 minutes, until puffy and very lightly golden.  If you bake the cookies too long, they will burn on the bottom and become crispy.  They are still soft when you take them out of the oven, but harden as they cool to a chewy, flexible consistency.  Enjoy the peanut buttery goodness!  The recipe is very simple, and does not require a stand mixer.  Even better - these cookies are gluten free!

Sasha's Kitchen: The Best Gluten Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sasha's Kitchen: Purim Hamantaschen

The Jewish holiday of Purim begins in about a week, on February 28th.  I made hamantaschen (which can also be spelled hamentaschen), the traditional Purim cookie over the weekend.  Purim is one of the most festive and joyous Jewish holidays, celebrating an occasion when Jews living in Persia were saved from certain death by Haman, the Purim villain who wanted to destroy the Jewish community.  The holiday is traditionally celebrated by the reading of the Megillah, dressing in elaborate, carnival-like costumes, drinking and eating hamantaschen.  Basically, Purim is the Jewish Mardi Gras.  I usually enjoy this holiday simply by eating hamantaschen, but this year decided to make my own.

Hamantaschen are tri-corned cookies that are usually filled with a flavorful fruit jelly or jam.  The name "hamantaschen" is a reference to the villian of the Purim story, Haman, while the cookies are triangular shaped to look like his hat.  The shape is achieved by folding a piece of dough into a triangular shape by placing a filling in the center.  You can fill hamentaschen with almost any flavor of filling.  The most traditional are poppyseed, prune and apricot.  My favorite fillings are apricot, raspberry, peach and blueberry.  This year I made the latter two.  I loved eating hamentaschen growing up, and some things never change.  This recipe is a family recipe, that has been passed along amongst my in-laws for generations.

Hamantaschen Dough

1 1/2 sticks of butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Hamantaschen Filling (or substitute store-bought filling of your choice)

1/2 cup pureed fruit (blueberries, papaya, apricot, peaches and raspberries are my favorites)

1/4 cup sugar

To prepare the dough, beat the butter and sugar in the basin of a stand mixer, then add the egg and the vanilla.  Finally, beat in the dry ingredients.  Refrigerate the dough for at least ten hours, or overnight, so the dough is firm and not as sticky.

Roll out the dough, and cut into cookies using either a circular shaped cookie cutter or the rim of a glass. For the filling, you can use either pureed store-bought pie filling, or you can puree half a cup of fruit with a quarter cup of sugar and heat, stirring, over medium heat, until the filling has a jam-like consistency.

To prepare the hamantaschen, place a teaspoon of filling into each circle and fold each of the three sides inward to form a triangle.

Bake the cookies at 400 F for about 6-8 minutes.  Once they start browning, the bottoms will be burnt, so be sure not to let them back for too long.  Delicious!  The recipe made about 30 hamantaschen, all of which disappeared very quickly!

I'm excited to report that I now have an inexpensive (but suitable) pizza stone and will be experimenting with some different pizzas over the next couple weeks, so stay tuned.

Sasha's Kitchen: Purim Hamantaschen

Sasha's Kitchen: S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E Tile Cookies

I've long been a fan of the game Scrabble, and have played it to such a level that my family and friends often accuse my husband and I of making up words (all of which can always be found in the dictionary, I might add). I've even played versions of Scrabble (like Lexulous) on Facebook.  So, as a bit of a spoof, I decided to make royal icing cookies that looked like scrabble tiles, and taste like, well - cookies.  Part of the fun here was thinking of the words to use for the cookies.

Creating scrabble tile cookies, which are perfect for your next game night or scrabble party,  is actually quite simple.  I used the same cookie dough recipe that I used when I made purse and shoe cookies a few months ago (a project which I plan to repeat, now that my cookie-decorating skills have improved).  This is nothing fancy, just an ordinary butter cookie recipe.

Scrabble Tile Cookie Recipe


4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 cups sugar

Beat the butter and sugar.  Add the eggs and vanilla.  Then mix in the dry ingredients.  To make a good dough, you should do this using an artisan mixer.  You next need to chill the dough for a couple of hours before rolling out the dough.  I always used to dismiss this step, since I can be a bit lacking on the patience side.  On a prior baking adventure, I learned the hard way that this is a good step to avoid having your dough stick to the counter top when you roll it out.  You can also add some loose flour when you roll out the dough.

To make scrabble tile cookies, the process is as simple as cutting with a three-inch square shaped cookie cutter, which I bought at N.Y. Cake (my favorite baking supply store on the planet).  To frost the cookies, I used royal icing, which I was able to purchase in bag form (and just added water and a bit of food coloring).  I'm all about the do-it-from-scratch type of coking with most things, but purchasing the royal icing mix in this case just makes too much sense.

Bake the cookies on a baking sheet sprayed with PAM for about 15 to 20 minutes at 350 F,  They should come out just before the start browning.  If you wait until they are lightly browned, that is too late, as the bottoms will be slightly burnt by this point, which will impact the taste.

I frosted all of the cookies brown in various shades (I experimented with two shades of brown as you can see from the photos) using a spatula, trying to frost the royal icing as even as possible. Then, I let the icing dry for about an hour, and used a food coloring marker from my new gourmet writers set to draw the letters and point values on the tiles.

Scrabble challenge anyone?  I'd like to remind you that the word "Kitchen" is a Bingo, so that will add 50 points to my score.

Sasha's Kitchen: S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E Tile Cookies