My children eat oatmeal all winter long. They never tired of it. I don’t get it. Come summer I can’t even stand to make it any more, though I’m sure they would eat it. I need something cool and quick for hot summer mornings. Last year I discovered this recipe for chocolate granola and it is delicious. Really it’s not like granola at all, it’s more like cereal–real, out-of-the-box cereal, something that rarely shows up in this house.  But a jar of Hippie Cocoa Pebbles is now a staple in my cupboard.

The first step is extra hippie: soak the nuts overnight. Hippie Cocoa Pebbles are nut based–they contain no grains, no oats, no gluten at all. Super great! but nuts contain a lot of phytic acid, which is an anti-nutrient (I laughed the first time I heard that word too). Soaking minimizes the damage phytic acid can do. You can obviously read more about this on the internets if you are interested, but for now just know that soaking the nuts makes this cereal taste better and be better for you.

After the nuts have soaked overnight, you rinse them, dry them, and pulverize them in the food processor. I make quite a big batch, so the nuts fill my food processor up to the top. This involves a bit of stopping and stirring in between chopping, so they don’t inadvertently become nut butter!  You want them to be about the consistency of grape nuts–on the coarser side of finely chopped I’d say.

Then you make a delicious mixture of butter and cocoa and maple syrup. I freely admit that I hide from my children in the kitchen and lick the spoon clean.

About the cocoa powder: buy the best stuff you can find. Really. This recipe uses a lot (1/2 cup) and it is the dominant flavor, so break out the good stuff. I am in love with Penzey’s high fat cocoa powder. It smells like chocolate, rich dark chocolate. Cocoa powder should smell like chocolate, right? Sadly, most smell like ash (I’m looking at you Hershey’s).

Then you take that lovely buttery, chocolatey syrup you just made and mix it with the nuts. If you make a smaller batch you can get away with mixing in the food processor, but for a large batch it works out better in a bowl. This is where I usually forget to add the coconut, so if you don’t care for coconut feel free to forget it. Toasted coconut  (if you have some leftover) would be absolutely lovely.

All of it goes into a warm oven and as it bakes it fills your whole house with the most amazing chocolatey aroma. The temperature of the oven is so low in fact (200 F) that if you have a dehydrator now’s the time to dust it off. I think it would even qualify as raw then. This cereal does indeed come with a lot of buzz words: Gluten free! Grain free! Low sugar! No refined sugar! Paleo!  But there’s only one word it comes with that really matters: Delicious!

hippie cocoa pebbles

adapted from Gourmand in the Kitchen’s chocolate granola

ingredients

• 3 cups almonds
• 2 cups pecans (you can easily substitute walnuts, macadamias, or skinless hazelnuts, but if you use cashews only soak them for 2-3 hours)
• 3/4 cup butter (coconut oil is a good substitute if you can’t do dairy)
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 cup dried, unsweetened coconut (optional)

directions

1. Soak the nuts in filtered water overnight. Drain and rinse them well. Dry on a clean kitchen towel.
2. Chop in a food processor until they are the size of little pebbles (cocoa pebbles!)
3. Melt butter and maple syrup over low heat.
4. Add cocoa powder and mix well.
5. Pour the buttery mixture and the nuts into a big bowl and mix thoroughly
6. Add the coconut and mix.
7. Spread the cereal on two sheet pans lined with parchment paper.
8. Bake in a 200 degree F oven for 2 1/2-3 hours, stirring now and then.
9. Cool and store in airtight containers.
10. Hippie Cocoa Pebbles keep two weeks at room temperature, longer in the freezer.

This recipe makes 5-6 cup cereal. Enjoy!

I could have called this post, Sugar Free! Grain Free! Gluten Free! Vegan! All Natural! Possibly Organic! Ice Cream! Because this ice cream is actually all of those things.  If you take all the exclamation points away though this ice cream is frozen bananas in your blender.  And frozen bananas in your blender makes some seriously awesome ice cream! Damn another exclamation point snuck in there.

Banana ice cream is so dead easy, you really don’t need a recipe, but this is how it goes. Peel a banana (or 10), cut it (or don’t), put it in the freezer. Then go about your day. When you remember there are bananas in your freezer, take them out and put them in your food processor (or blender). Push the button. 5 minutes later you will have something very much like ice cream. You can also add a few tablespoons of peanut butter–which is delicious–or a handful of frozen berries, or really anything your little heart desires: chopped nuts, chocolate chips, pretzels, granola.

Every time we make it (and we make it a lot) it’s different. Last night we mixed in almond butter and made some Magic Shell to go on top. Do you remember magic shell? I was crazy for the stuff when I was a kid. I don’t know how I got my mother to buy it–I must have somehow snuck it into our grocery cart. It seems odd and chemically and not at all natural, right? Actually you can make it with two things: chocolate and coconut oil. I melted a bar of dark chocolate, which is about 4 oz, and added 2 tablespoons coconut oil. Mix until everything is smooth and melty. You are now the most awesome mom in the world (until you tell them it’s time for bed).

One more thing: don’t store your magic shell in the fridge or it will magically turn hard as a rock.

I wanted to make a little something for all the people who helped us out while we were gone on our trip (thanks guys!), so I made two big batches of brownies. Nick Malgieri’s supernatural brownies have been my basic recipe for a few years, mostly because it has a ton of chocolate in it and not very much flour–because really it’s not about eating cake it’s about eating chocolate buttery goodness. They were good, but not as good as I remembered. Luckily I just found a brownie recipe with just as much chocolate and even less flour (1/4 cup) in David Lebovitz’s new book Ready for Dessert. These I might not share at all.

And I found these perfect little plates to put the brownies on while I was at the thrift store. They look Dutch, don’t they? but they actually say Lad n’ Lassie on the back. So, Happy St. Patrick’s day I guess? Now go make some brownies.

Supernatural Brownies

from the New York Times

2 sticks (16 tablespoons) butter, more for pan and parchment paper
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark brown sugar, such as muscovado
1 cup granulated sugar (I would say 1/2 cup is probably enough, unless you use super crazy dark chocolate)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or 3/4 cup whole walnuts, optional.

1. Butter a 13-by-9-inch baking pan and line with buttered parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In top of a double boiler set over barely simmering water, or on low power in a microwave, melt butter and chocolate together. Cool slightly. In a large bowl or mixer, whisk eggs. Whisk in salt, sugars and vanilla.

2. Whisk in chocolate mixture. Fold in flour just until combined. If using chopped walnuts, stir them in. Pour batter into prepared pan. If using whole walnuts, arrange on top of batter. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until shiny and beginning to crack on top. Cool in pan on rack.

Yield: 15 large or 24 small brownies.

There have been some lovely things coming out of the oven these days. I always tell myself I won’t make a thousand kinds of cookies this year, but then well: there are the ones I always make and the ones my mom used to make and the favorite ones from last year and the new recipe I found this year. I kind of like getting carried away, but the problem is that I tend to favor the extra complicated cookies at christmastime and I come away never wanting to see another cookie again. This year that hasn’t happened. yet.

fig pinwheels: these were a favorite from a few years back but they are less exciting to me now. The dough is super delicious, but the filling is too figgy. I think next year I’ll make it with dates and orange peel.

english toffee: always good.

hazelnut thumbprints: I made these last year and didn’t give any away because they were so good. This year I made a double batch (so I could share) and filled them all with apricot jam.

basler brunsli: I think these are Swiss cookies? They are chocolate and almond and rum and so grown up and wonderful. I’m going to share the recipe with you next week.

alfajores: this was a new one for me this year and blazzam! they are amazing. Two little flaky cookies, like barely sweetened pie crust with dulche de leche inside. awesome.

mexican hot chocolate cookies: these are new to me too and they are lame. The cookies are boring and not spicy at all. Oh well, there has to be one crummy recipe every year.

gingerbread and ganache sandwich men: I think gingerbread and chocolate are the best together, so I made these little sandwiches. How could they not be good?

All of the cookies I’ve made so far are packaged up and ready to go, but I’m working on another list: christmas cookies just for us. So far I have down these (which I make every year) and these (which are a perfect new twist on an old christmas favorite).

I bought the Liberty of London cookie jar from target for my mom’s birthday. I also picked up a kid’s sundress while I was there solely for the fabric, but now a little bird tells me they will be selling cotton curtain panels (aka straight up yardage) sometime soon!

Now you can’t just give someone a cookie jar and not put cookies in it, so I made some chocolate cherry oatmeal cookies and damn if they weren’t pretty good.  Dried cherries are dear, but they are so, so good. Raisins would work, but then they would just be oatmeal raisin cookies and that’s no fun.

Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 tea salt
• 1 1/2 cups oats
• 1 cup dried cherries
• 3.5  ounces good dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream the butter and both sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the egg and mix on high speed to combine. Then add the vanilla.
3. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Add the flour mixture to the mixer (make sure it’s on low) and mix just until combined. Add the oats, cherries, and chocolate and mix by hand.
4. Spoon heaping tablespoons full of dough, a couple inches apart, onto a lined baking sheet.
5. Bake cookies until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Cool and give away or keep them all for yourself.