Some kitchen experiments

I'm a hoarder when it comes to recipes from like-minded blogs! I favourite all the ones I think are doable, look tasty, and for which I already have most ingredients and can get the remainder with ease.

However, I often don't get round to any of them. Perhaps I am worried I won't do them justice, and I also like my kitchen routines as I explained last time, so deviating from my usual trends is a little disconcerting.

Stick with me on this, I have a cookie and a hummus recipe to show you!

But it's that time of year, may as well be 'cookie'mas, as every blog is laden with cookie recipes! I just had to find a 'too simple for anything to possibly go wrong' recipe to try, and thankfully this one seemed very promising. Just 4 ingredients, and I already had them ready to go.

I followed Caitlin's instructions exactly, though I omitted the chocolate squares on top. That niggling part of me that was worried I could STILL screw up made me too reluctant to potentially waste my precious dark chocolate. So they looked a bit naked, but I was happy with the taste none the less. The brown sugar nicely caramelised the natural peanut butter, and as my first time using a flax egg (or flegg?) I was impressed by how eggy it seemed as I added it to the bowl. I'm not sure what it added to the cookies but I wouldn't have risked leaving it out!

My technique for getting uniform shapes was to tightly pack them into a measuring spoon so they were perfect half domes. Trying to form the dough by hand was a crumbly yet greasy mess.

The texture was more crumbly than chewy, so if you prefer a chewy cookie perhaps adding some extra moisture (milk?) would help here.

It made a generous batch, so the danger here is eating the whole lot. But as the ingredients are relatively unprocessed and no unpronounceable extras, it's a preferable avenue to a whole box of chocs, or multiple slices of Christmas cake!

So, at this point I'm in an unfamiliar situation. I have a batch of cookies, which I never have, and a fridge depleted of staples...I ALWAYS have some form of dip or spread, perfect for lunch with some veggies and pitta bread. I had none, and no tins of chickpeas to make my usual batch. I did have a rather sorry looking lump of sweet potato though, and vaguely recalling a paleo recipe for hummus (paleo diets omit beans/pulses....I don't understand this!) got to work.

Dead simple.

Three ingredients:
About 300g sweet potato, chopped and steamed in the microwave until soft. Allow to cool.
2 generous heaps of tahini paste
1 generous pinch of cinnamon.

Blend in the food processor.

Slather on everything ;-)

So simple and creamy, high in fibre and beta carotene. Almost like eating dessert. Unfortunately lower in protein than usual. But we can make up for that later!

What have you been experimenting with lately? Broken any trends?

Bye for now!

Hannah xx