Girl Scout Cookies: Tagalongs and Trefoils

It's Girl Scout cookie time and I think this is the first year ever that I haven't bought or eaten their cookies.  I was a Girls Scout when I was little and my mom was not only my leader, but was also in charge of the cookie sales for our area.  So, this time of the year, a huge semi truck full of Girl Scout cookies would pull up to our house and our garage would be filled from floor to ceiling with cookies, until all of the leaders would come and take their troops cookies.  I remember playing hide and seek in between those boxes, smelling the yummy cookies and wishing they were all ours. :)  Well, I still want my Girl Scout cookies and there are quite a few gluten-free recipes to choose from, so I decided to try making a few this weekend.  This recipe is adapted from Gluten Free Betsy, with a few minor changes--I left out the milk that she called for in her recipe and it turned out fine, and of course we made it dairy free as well. But her recipe worked out very nicely, so I give her all the credit for this.

The cookie base is your Trefoil cookie, to make the Tagalong add the peanut butter and chocolate. The cookie is more like a crisp sugar cookie than a shortbread cookie, but my boys loved them plain, so I was satisfied.  The cookie base also works for Samoas, but I'm still perfecting the caramel for it, once I do that, I'll post the recipe. :)


Also, I used Enjoy Life Boom Choco Boom rice milk chocolate bars to make the chocolate coating, this was a huge splurge for us, because they are not cheap, but these cookies really do need the milk chocolate taste, it was worth every penny to have the milk chocolate again--trust me!

Gluten Free Tagalongs
1 cup dairy free, soy free margarine, softened
½ cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose gluten free flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
Directions
In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Mix in vanilla extract. Mix in flour, baking powder, and salt at a low speed. The dough should come together nicely and not be too sticky, if it's crumbly added a 1-2T dairy-free milk, I didn't need any though.

Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Either scoop tablespoons of dough, roll into a ball, and flatten, or roll the dough out between gf floured wax paper to about ¼ inch thickness. Use round cookie cutters to make small circles.

Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, they won't be really browned, but promise me they are done.


Tagalong Peanut Butter Filling and Chocolate Coating
1½ cups natural creamy peanut butter (soy-free)
3/4 cup powdered sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
8 Enjoy Life Boom Choco Boom Rice Milk Chocolate Bars (at least) or 1-1 1/2 bags of Enjoy Life mini chips
2 T Palm Oil Shortening (1T per cup of chocolate)

 In a small bowl, whisk together peanut butter, powdered sugar,  and vanilla. Spread a spoonful of the filling onto each cookie.

Chill cookies in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes, or until the peanut butter is firm. 

Chop Enjoy Life chocolate bars into small chunks, then melt in a double boiler with shortening until smooth. Dip each cookie into the chocolate, covering competely and place on parchment paper to set. Cookies can be pleaced in the fridge to spped up the setting process.



Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cookies are cooling, make the peanut butter filling:

Soy Update

Okay, I usually don't do posts outside of reviews and recipes, but this is part of our life and so I wanted to update we were are right now.  My little one has a soy sensitivity, but I know it isn't too bad, because it wasn't triggered until we switched all the dairy items to soy items.  But, we played it safe and took anything soy related out of his diet.  We soon discovered that soy lecithin was safe, so that made life a lot easier.  Now, I'm pretty sure that soybean oil is fine.  I've been using our Nucoa margarine instead of our Earth Balance Soy-free margarine for the past few weeks in cooking and on toast, etc.--and he's still the same happy boy, no reaction at all.  So, I'm starting to feel comfortable with the oils now.  It'll still be a long while before I test soy protein, because I know that is where the sensitivity lies, but for now, we have more leeway some of our food. :)

Banana 'Ice Cream'

Okay, I can not take credit for this recipe at all.  My brother told me about this and I had to try it out, so thank you to my brother for passing this along!  This is a very, very simple recipe...well, not even a recipe really. 

Take a banana, or two, or whatever you have. :)  Slice it into chunks, stick it in a ziploc bag and freeze it.  Once completely frozen, take those chunks and put them in a food processor and mix it until its nice and creamy.  Suddenly, you have a soft serve frozen treat that consists of a banana. :)  It has the same texture as ice cream, I love it!  If you want to change up the banana flavor a little add in cocoa, peanut butter, berry puree, etc. Mine has about 1 1/2 tablespoons of cocoa for 2 medium bananas and a handful of Enjoy life chocolate chips. :)

See doesn't it look just like ice cream?  Heck, this is the cheapest ice cream replacement I've found, and it's actually pretty healthy, too. :)

Fried Mac and Cheese

So, if you recall, I made mac and cheese the other day, and we had half a pan left over.  So, what did I do with the leftovers?  Well, I had been restocking my 'convenience' foods for my little ones (i.e. chicken nuggets, corn dogs, fish sticks), so I had nice hot oil ready in the deep fryer, so of course I had to try my hand at fried mac and cheese.  I know, I know, it's not healthy, but it was good. :)

Fried Mac and Cheese
chilled gf/df mac and cheese
gluten free flour blend for dredging.  I used my blend, but you could also you the Gluten-Free Bisquick instead, or whatever blend you feel like.
1 1/2 tsp Ener-g egg replacer
2 T water
gf corn flake crumbs
oil for frying

Directions
Mix together egg replacer and water, set aside. Take a tablespoon full of mac and cheese and dredge it in flour, rolling it into a ball. Dip the ball into the egg replacer then into the corn flake crumbs.  Repeat with the rest of the mac and cheese.  Fry at ~350F until golden brown on all sides (it only takes a couple of minutes). 

Vegan Lemon Custard Icecream

Anyone that really knows me knows that my all time favorite ice cream, ever since I can remember, has always been lemon custard.  It's not really a flavor you find very often, unless you're at an ice cream shop, and even then they may not have it.  I have really enjoyed the Purely Decadent Coconut Milk ice cream that I've tried, but I have missed my lemon custard.  So, I set out to make it, it actually took a little while to get it how I like it, I may still tweak it a little.  But, I knew it was a success when my little when had three helpings of it this afternoon.  And yes, it's a vegan custard--I decided it may as well be egg-free if I'm doing dairy-free, and honestly, I think it made it a lot easier.  And now I have a good vegan custard recipe out of it, too. :)

Vegan Lemon Custard Icecream

1 can coconut milk (I use Thai Kitchen brand)
2 cups So Delicious Original Coconut Milk
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon zest
3 tablespoons Ener-g egg replacer
1 teaspoon vanilla

Bring the coconut milks, sugar, and zest just to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Whisk in the egg replacer and mix constantly until thickened. Immediately pour the custard through a strainer into a bowl and stir in vanilla.  Refrigerate, covered, for ~3 hours or until chilled.

Once chilled, pour the mixture into an ice cream maker, and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

(By the way, this is a custard, so instead of freezing it, you could also put it in a gf pie crust and have a custard pie!)