I dont have any New Years resolutions. Im not sure whether that portrays me as lacking initiative or rather being happy with where I am. Ive enjoyed reading and hearing about other peoples resolutions, however; check out Google Zeitgeist to read resolutions from all over the world. No junk food, Propose to Dawn, Quit Facebook, Get into shape, Tell my family every day that I love them, Play better golf, and heaps more. Good luck to those of you who have resolutions!
With todays post, I hope to encourage those of you who have goals of eating healthier, eliminating junk food, and perhaps going vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free. I have a friend who is vegan; she eats some crazy food, but the photos she posts on Instagram look spectacularly delicious. It appears that its actually quite easy to achieve a healthy and balanced diet without using refined sugars, processed foods and meats. She inspired me to try out a recipe I found for healthy peanut butter cookies via La Mesa that uses no sweeteners except medjool dates and almond meal instead of flour.
This simple recipe, which results in a cookie dough-like texture, uses only 4 ingredients and can quickly be prepared in your food processor.
Youll need almond meal (whole almonds, raw or dry-roasted, will also work), pitted medjool dates, natural peanut butter (although you can use any type of peanut butter, or other nut butter such as almond, cashew, etc) and pure vanilla extract. The ingredients are processed in a food processor, then formed into balls. You could probably leave them as balls and call them bites instead of cookies, or you could flatten them with a fork for that classic peanut butter cookie look. And thats it. Thats all there is to it. You dont even need to turn on your oven.
A word of warning processing the dates can put a bit of strain on a food processor, so process the mixture with caution. If you have a strong processor, you should be fine, but if you have a cheaper brand or if its just not a good processor, well, youve been warned! Remember to remove the pits from the dates before processing.
As I mentioned, these cookies have a cookie dough-like texture, and Im sure theyd be perfect to use as cookie dough truffles, or buckeyes, if you formed the dough into balls and dipped them in chocolate. You could even add some chocolate chips to the dough, if you felt so inclined. Id suggest mini ones, as the cookies themselves arent very large. Theyre not the type of cookie youd want to make large anyway as the cookie would just fall apart if it were any bigger, and the texture is very chewy; its best that the cookies are formed into a smaller size.
I admit, I was a little bit scared of tasting these because Im not real keen on dates. But, I love peanut butter, so I had to give it a go. I fell in love with these little cookies and couldnt get enough of them. The taste of the peanut butter overpowers the taste of the dates, so the cookies basically tasted like raw peanut butter cookie dough. I was so excited and immediately proclaimed my love for them! This is one recipe Ill be making again and again, and I would highly recommend it to anyone.
These particular cookies may or may not be labelled as raw, depending on the ingredients you use. If you prefer raw food, just make sure the ingredients you use are raw. In my case, I used store-bought almond meal and peanut butter, so I doubt Id be able to officially call these raw! However, these cookies are perfect for vegetarians, vegans, people with a gluten/sugar-free lifestyle and those just simply looking to eat healthier. Heres to eating right in 2013!
If you loved these peanut butter cookies, visit Megan at La Mesa for more delicious healthy and vegan-friendly recipes!
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