Almost Oreo Cookies

One reason we should pray: it is because God can do  more in a second  than what we can do for ourselves in a lifetime

I am doing happy dance right now

Good news ya' alll!! 

I weighed myself and I lost another four pounds!!!! Yipeeeeeeeee! with a happy dance. Gosh, I worked so hard for this and I am just glad that finally, the hard work is showing good results. I am surprised that despite my effort for the last  6 months, I did not really notice significant weight loss until I was in my third month of exercising and eating well. I now fit in my old jeans. I am so excited!

Hard work really does pay off! 

To celebrate this progress, I am going to eat cookies! You heard me right. I am going to eat cookies. Not a whole lot, but still cookies. I deserve to eat them. 

I am not a very big fan of cookies because I heard they contain tons of calories. So I eat  cookies once in a while. I try not to bring in any cookies in my house as much as I could. This year for example, I only bought one pack of cookies just once. For that one time opportunity, I bought Oreo cookies because I loved that cookie so much! 

It has been two weeks now and those Oreo cookies were long gone, and I do not want to buy one anymore. So, I am making my own version of Oreo cookies. I am making a cookie that does not make me feel guilty of cooking and eating it. This is a vegan kind. Instead of the usual butter, I used coconut butter. Coconut butter contains healthier fat compared to that butter we usually used for cookies. I used Spelt Flour and agave nectar to sweeten it. Though you may get the discourage of the coconut butter's and Spelt Flour's price, I tell you,  this recipe yielded lots of cookies and you can use this particular ingredients for incoming recipes I am going to use. So do not lose heart.

I got this recipe from Chocolate covered cake and I decided to try this. It turned out great . Although it does not have the Oreo logo at the front but this surely is pretty close to Oreo taste. I am not sure if I can confidently say it taste like Oreo, but I can assure you it is a good cookie. When I made this, the mixture was crumbly. I got worried how  I will flatten it onto the surface. It was crumbly that  it felt like it was not gonna form a circle  form, but I stuck to it and I used a parchment paper so that the dough will not stick to the rolling pin. Also, the filling was difficult to spread with the use of spoon so I used my finger/hand to spread the filling. I just thought it will not break the cookie dough when you do this.

1. 3/4 cup spelt flour
2. 1/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa natural Unsweetened
3. 1/4 cup sugar
4. 1/4 tsp baking soda
5. 1 tsp pure vanilla extract ( I used imitation )
6. 1/4 cup canola oil
7. 3 tbsp silk soy milk chocolate flavor
8. 2 tbsp agave syrup

Filling:

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut butter (melted)

Grease/ Brush a cookie sheet. Set aside.

Mix 1 to 4 ingredients in a large bowl and whisk using to combine. Form a well in the middle and set aside.
Put ingredients 5 to 8 in a small bowl and mix completely. Add into the flour mixture and combine and mix thoroughly using your hands. The mixture will feel crumbly and smushy. Form the dough into a ball and place it into a ziploc and refregirate for 30 minutes.

Remove dough from bag and roll into a thin dough. I had trouble rolling the dough into flat because it was crumbly and it stuck on the rolling pin, so I put parchment paper on the dough and work my way on flattening it. Then I used biscuit cutter to form circles. You can use circle shape lid for this also.

For the Filling:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Make sure that coconut butter is melted. The store in the fridge for 30 minutes to harden the mixture. After this, put a small amount of the filling in the round dough. I used my hand to do this because it broke when I used spoon. Top the other half and place into the greased cookie sheet.

To Bake the Cookies:
Pre heat oven to 300 F
Bake for 10 minutes and remove from the oven.  Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes.

Serve and Enjoy!

Rocky Mountain Brownies

When Life Gets Bitter, Eat Sweets

- Me

It is not a very good day today. I haven't heard  about my clinical location yet and class starts next week. I think this is another case of promises made to be broken thing. The director told me, he will arrange my clinical location when I get done with the course but until now, no news. Looks like I will not be able to have my clinical this term.I am not sure if I want this opportunity or not but nevertheless, I am still broken hearted.  Oh well, things does not work as what we plan sometimes. I will just have to mend this broken heart. How else should I do it, bake brownies. The sayings above was knitted by yours truly. It just came up as I was writing this article. I am not sure if it is original or I read it somewhere, but I claim it as mine today.

This brownies was inspired/adapted from my favorite blogger Pinch of Yum  here . I thought, why not try it, it looks really good. Please check out her website. It is amazing. But when you do, please do not forget me, ok?
I am not a brownies fan nor a cake fan. But today is a special day because it is "broken heart day" so I made this brownies. I changed the recipe a little bit. Instead of 1 1/4 cups sugar, I change it to 1 cup. You can go lower if you do not want it to be really sweet. Then I did not include chocolate chips. But it still ,turned out great.

It was very challenging taking these  pictures . Now I believe what other bloggers say that there are non-photogenic foods. Usually, brown foods are difficult to take, they said. This took me awhile to take. It tried different angles and various lightings but these is all I got. What can I say, I am still amateur, I cannot help but get discourage. Uhhhh, not very good thing to do when I am mending my heart ache.

Ingredients:

1 cup minus  1 tbsp All Purpose Flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

4 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

2 large egg whites

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup mini marshmallow

1/2 cup white chocolates

Direction:

Line 8 X 8 baking pan lined with oiled parchment paper. What I do is, I pour in a little oil on the pan then spread it around it then I put the paper.

Preheat oven to 350 F

Mix ingredients 1- 3 in a small bowl. Set aside.

Melt butter in a large pot and remove from heat when completely melted.

While the butter is still hot, add the sugar and cocoa. Thoroughly mix. It will look sticky.

Add in vanilla, egg and egg whites.Mix thoroughly.

Add in the flour mixture. 

Mix to completely incorporate ingredients.

Pour into a 8X8 baking pan. Line marshmallows and white chocolate on top.

Bake until the marshmallow melted and golden brown or when you touch the brownies, it will spring back

Serve and Enjoy!