Nutty butter balls

First of all, I am so tired of fruit flies in this house and I don’t know where their breeding ground is. I have set up two contraptions: 1) a glass bottle with strawberry tops, sealed with saran wrap with a few holes poked in and 2) a glass jar with apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap with a funnel on top. Neither are working, though I forced two into the acv mix myself. I couldn’t even leave my leftovers out last night to cool before storing them without guarding them from those nasty drosophilas.

And man, oh man, it is HOT outside!!

But on to the good stuff.
Last night I made a delicious snack? Dessert? It’s hard for me to give them a name, as they are a mix of so many ingredients. This is an estimate of what I put in them.
1/4 c chopped walnuts
1/4 c chopped pecans
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tbsp cinnamon
in one bowl
1/3 c of raisins and goji berries
used a small blender to blend into an almost, but not quite, puree mixture, then added that into the bowl of nuts/spices
1/4 c almond butter
1/4 c peanut butter
1 tbsp honey
some raw shredded coconut
mixed well, and rolled into balls.
I chopped up a few raw cacao beans and rolled a few balls in the chopped cacao beans.

this made about 8 two-inch sized balls, that i stuck in the fridge to store. The process is really messy, but they are delicious and totally guilt-free. Plus, I have heard great things about raw cacao beans, so when I make these again, I will add some chopped pieces to the actual mix. These are also incredibly versatile, and ingredients can either be omitted or added, along with adjusting the amount of nut butter/honey to keep the mixture roll-able.

and, because I can’t get over how cute Lucy is:

Hamantaschens

So.. I’m not really into religion, but I do like having an excuse to make something new. Since today is Purim, and yesterday I went to a Pre-Purim festival because I was invited to hang up some of my photos, I decided to go along and bake something tonight.

I tried searching for an already-tried agave hamantaschen recipe, but the only ones I found were gluten free too. And although I’m all for gluten free, I didn’t have the right flour substitutes. So I used this recipe for the dough. I only used a third of each ingredient, replaced the sugar with agave, and lowered the oven temp 25 degrees. I melted the butter in the microwave for 20 seconds, and mixed it with the agave and egg before adding the dry ingredients. I came out with 8 hamantaschens about 3.5 inches in diameter, and one baby hamantaschen about 2 inches in diameter. 

I decided to use two fillings: poppy seed and Crofter’s Super Fruit Spread (Cam’s favorite with peanut butter sandwiches).
With the poppy seed filling, I halved the recipe and used 2% milk.

I used a pint glass to cut out the circles, but ended up flattening them even more with the palm of my hand… Apparently that wasn’t even flat enough (not for my likings anyway).

I couldn’t grind up the poppy seeds very much in the mortar and pestle, but it turned out fine without grinding.

Though it was a bit runny, and could have used something to thicken it up.


I put the dough in the fridge while I was making the poppy seed filling, and then put the filling in the fridge to cool down while I did some dishes. When I took everything out, the dough was a bit dry and stiff, so I wet my fingers with water while folding the sides… but the dough kept cracking. Luckily it wasn’t too hard to seal up.

I kept them in the oven for 10 minutes, turning the baking sheet around halfway through.

They came out nicely. Kind of cakey, and they reminded Cameron of breakfast scones. I think it’s hard to make anything crispy/crunchy with agave. I had made 3 with the Super Fruit jam filling and the rest with the poppy seed filling and still had some filling left over. Cam favored the jam hamantaschens, and even put some more on.

notes for next time:
use less milk in the poppy seed filling
if using heat with the poppy seed filling, do it before making the dough so it cools down when the dough is ready
roll out dough thinner
bigger variety of fillings