Budget Friendly Peanut Butter Cookies

Enjoy this guest post from my IRL (in real life) friend, Tanya! She offered this recipe up to be shared because it has only 4 ingredients and it uses mostly pantry goods. Because we are a mostly sugar-free household, I tried replaced the 1 cup of sugar in this recipe with a 1/2 cup of raw honey. It was apparent immediately that they wouldn't set up, so I added 1/2 cup of sugar. Still pretty amazing, but more like flat PB Balls than cookie. I'd suggest going with the original recipe and substituting sucanat if you're looking for a change. The 6 boys I served them to for dessert last night approved! :) Try them yourselves and then head over to Tanya's fabulous blog, Free & Easy Living!

Today I want to share with you a recipe for Budget Friendly, Flour Free, Quick and Easy Peanut Butter Cookies. Now that’s a mouth full! These cookies offer everything in a recipe you could possibly be looking for: they meet special dietary needs (flour-free means gluten-free too, just make sure your peanut butter doesn’t contain any gluten either), they have 4 ingredients and only take about ten minutes to prepare so they are easy to make when you’re short on time or energy, and they only cost about $0.17 a serving! Cheaper if you used coupons to get any of your ingredients for free or at a discount.

This recipe is from Recipe Lion’s Budget Friendly section. If you’re looking for great, easy recipes be sure to check out their site.
 
Yields: 12
Cooking Time: 10 min
Ingredients

* 1 cup sugar
* 1 cup peanut butter (I used honey peanut butter. It was what I had on hand, and added another dimension of flavor.)
* 1 egg
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions (Edited from the Recipe Lion instructions, because I did things slightly different. You can see the original unedited recipe here.)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
2. Spoon out in heaping large tablespoonfulls onto lightly greased cookie sheet. This is the direction according to Recipe Lion. I actually rolled the cookie dough into balls in my hand, according to a more traditional peanut butter cookie style. (This is the way my mother has always done it.)
3. Flatten loosely with a fork and sprinkle with sugar.
4. Cook for 10 minutes; Remove to cooling rack after 4 minutes. Recipe Lion suggests waiting only 2 minutes, but I found that these cookies like to fall apart a little easier than normal, so you should let them set up a but longer.

That’s it! You’re done and are on your way to enjoying delicious cookies. Because these cookies are flour free, they are a little less cake-like, and a little more dense than traditional peanut butter cookies. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much you enjoy these cookies. This recipe is a great way to make cookies for any friends or family who have gluten allergies for much cheaper than the gluten free products sold in stores. Even if you don’t have gluten allergies, one less ingredient just makes these cookies that much cheaper and easier to make!

Happy Savings and Tasty Cookies for All! <3 Tanya

No-Bake Chocolate Almond Oatmeal Treats

Need a way to beat the Summer heat but still get your chocolate fix? No-bake cookies are a Summer favorite. Here's my recipe - with a few variations so that you can use what you have on hand!

Ingredients:

1 stick butter (or 1 cup coconut oil)

1/2 cup milk (or cream - so yummy!)

4 Tbsp cocoa powder (or carob powder)

1/2 cup sucanat (or sugar)

1/2 cup almond butter (or any nut butter)

1 tbsp vanilla (optional)

3 1/2 cups oats (try substituting 1/2 cup coconut flakes here!)

1 tsp milled or whole flax seeds (optional)

Directions:

Heat butter, sucanat, cocoa, and milk in a pan on stove or in a bowl in the microwave, stirring until melted and combined. Watch carefully as milk and butter have a low smoke point and burn easily.

Add almond butter, oats, flax, and vanilla & stir until combined.

Spread into a baking pan (8x8 or larger) or drop in balls onto wax/parchment paper/foil.

Refrigerate until cooled (2 hours or so).

Eat and enjoy!

Make it Yourself Monday: Nut Butter

So easy and so much fun! I decided to make a video in lieu of typing up a recipe and I hope you enjoy it! If you listen closely, you'll hear a brief outburst from both of my children. My hubby filmed it and Cora played supporting actress. :)

I used 11ozs of cashews and 2 Tbs. melted virgin coconut oil.

One thing I forgot to mention is that coconut oil is solid at room temperature so if you use it as your oil you'll want to let the cashew butter set out for a few minutes before you try to spread it. We had ours on warm toast this morning and just plopping it on the toast was enough to melt it to a spreadable temp.

What is your favorite nut butter? And what are you making yourself that most of us might buy in the store? Link up so we can read & enjoy!

Praise the Lord for Peanut Butter Balls

Yummy, high in protein, and so satiating! How I love every variation of thee!! And I've just discovered two more!!! I wanted to wait until the first of the two was available online before posting about them and Wondertime has updated it's recipes, so here we go!

Powerball Cookies - SOoooooo good!!

Makes 40-48 cookies

Mix together 1 cup peanut butter and 1 cup honey until smooth. Gradually add in 3 cups old fashioned oats and 1/2 cup ground flaxseed. Add 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup any

combination of nuts and soft dried fruit(try 1/2 cup coarsely chopped peanuts and 1/4 cup each of raisins and dried cranberries) and mix gently in your stand mixer or smush together by hand.

Roll into Ping-Pong-size balls and, for maximum presentation value, put in paper mini muffin cups. You can eat them right away, but they'll be less sticky after a night in the fridge. They freeze well too, layered on wax

I used Schmuckers Natural PB and lemme tell you... wow! Thanks Wondertime and thanks to my sister for recommending this recipe!

Peanut Butter and Honey "Truffles"

This recipe from Hold the Gluten tied for second place over at Peanut Butter Boy's PB Exhibition #4 and it's easy to see why!

1 cup DRY milk (I used non-fat)
1/2 cup peanut butter (Crazy Richards Chunky)
1/3 cup honey (local)
1/4 cup ground flax seed (Bob’s Red Mill)

Mix all ingredients together. Form into small balls. Roll balls in coconut, cinnamon & sugar, or cocoa mix. Refrigerate for 15 minutes and enjoy!


So simple! I love it (and loved eating it)!