Peanut butter oat cookies with shredded carrot - Lockdown baking

Here is my favourite peanut butter cookie recipe. It includes shredded carrots and somehow my four-year-old loves them. 

I'm saving the recipe here it so that, should I have a dithery day, I can find it here. Reader, you might like it too. Who knows, maybe this blog will still be here, floating around on the Interwebs when I'm long gone and my son wants to bake his mom's peanut butter cookies for his loved ones. Maybe he'll make them even better. 

This peanut butter cookie is my little family's favourite. The inspiration came from another Monique, of the famed Ambitious Kitchen blog, and her delicious peanut butter cookie recipe. I made lots of changes, but these are the most important ones: 

• There's 1/2 cup less peanut butter (it's cheaper and the cookies contain less fat that way)
• The addition of over 1 cup more oats (I get more cookies out of a batch). 
• The addition of shredded carrot - It adds moisture and ups the healthy nutritional and fibre content (plus it's a great way to sneak veg into your family's diet). 
• There's no need for baking powder (I found you don't really need it for this chewy cookie). 

Ingredients 

• 2 - 2,5 cups of oats 
• 1- 2 grated carrot 
• 1/2 cup of peanut butter 
• 2/3 cups of sugar (I use white sugar but brown is good too) 
• 2 large eggs 
• Optional: a teaspoon of vanilla essence 

Mix all the ingredients together (by hand or in a processor) and bake at 180C for 10 - 12 minutes. Enjoy! 

P.S. You might like to try Wheat-free oat chocolate muffins

Wheat-free chocolate cupcakes

Here’s a surprisingly delicious wheat-free chocolate cupcake recipe (despite being egg- and dairy-free).  

I’m not much of a cook (I don't enjoy it), but I go through phases of baking. There was a year - I think it was 2014 - that I refer to as 'the year of baking.' I was baking bread, biscuits and making up cake recipes. It was lovely. I had no gluten issues back then. 

Living with gluten intolerance is a blessing and curse -  I can't eat cake at kids' parties, but I also can't eat cake at kids' birthday parties. But this mama has a sweet tooth. So, I’ve been tweaking some of wheat-free recipes and, before I forget, I thought I'd save them here. I still feel a little sad about the apple cinnamon oat cake I made once and can’t remember how I did it.

This is a quick and easy oat chocolate muffin recipe I tweaked from Power Hungry. 

It's wheat-, egg- and dairy-free, but the addition of coconut oil or olive oil and a little more sugar make the muffins a little less healthy but mouthwateringly good.