Hello again everyone, and welcome to the second part of my “All about Succulents & Cacti” series where I go over some of the things I’ve learned so far about these neat plants. This time I will be talking about 3 of my most prolific […]
30 Day HIIT and Mini Band Challenge The challenge- Today we are going to share with you something we have wanted to do for a long time; A fitness challenge! We wanted this challenge to be one that everyone can take part in, and that […]
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! Today I will be sharing with you a recipe I’ve been wanting to try for a while now—Gluten-Free Brownie Cookies! These were pretty interesting cookies to make, because they required an ingredient I had never tried baking with before, buckwheat flour!
The name would probably make anyone just learning how to deal with Gluten intolerance cringe, but contrary to the name buckwheat is not related to wheat at all. It is commonly advertised like most cereals, grains, or grass products…but it is actually a fruit seed related to rhubarb! So as long as the buckwheat flour you are purchasing is processed in a facility that is wheat-free, then it is 100% gluten-free!
I find Gluten-free baking to be a very interesting process, because it can be quite different from normal baking and it’s easier to make mistakes. Luckily these cookies didn’t have any major hiccups other than some adjusts I made to the ingredients of the recipe.
One of the first changes I made was to the amount of coco powder, since I was running low. I ended up only using 2/4 cups of the coco, and I used less chocolate chips, but I think the cookies were perfectly fine with these lower amounts. Still very chocolate packed!
My next change was to the amount of sugar. The recipe calls for 1 1/3 cups of light brown sugar or coconut sugar, but I only had dark brown sugar which I generally prefer more. I also wasn’t a fan of how much sugar the recipe calls for since I don’t like overly sweet things. Instead I just did 1 cup of packed dark brown sugar and the cookies are plenty sweet for my tastes.
This recipe is actually Gluten-free and Dairy-free, but I chose to go with the dairy version of the recipe, so I did to butter instead of coconut oil.
The recipe calls to chill the batter for 2 hours so they are easier to roll and this is a must! I actually chilled my batter overnight which made it really easy to form my cookies. From the batter I got about 24 cookies (2 trays) and they were definitely more like brownies than a traditional chocolate chip cookie. Once finished baking, I found that they are best after chilling in the fridge and will hold their shape better, since these are a rather soft cookie.
I definitely plan on using buckwheat flour for other cookies in the future and I would make these again.
1½ cups whole-grain buckwheat flour
2/4 cup Coco Powder
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup Dark Brown Suger, packed
2 large eggs, room temperature
2⁄3 cup (178 grams) crunchy almond butter, room temperature
¾ cup unsalted butter melted
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips
For the full baking instructions and if you would like to try the original recipe yourself, please follow this LINK.
Would you try these cookies? Have you ever had a buckwheat cookie?
Let me know in the comments! 😉
Looking for more Gluten-free recipes? Check out our previous post HERE.
The Chakra Series-The Solar Plexus Chakra We are continuing our chakra series today by discussing the 3rdchakra, or solar plexus chakra. If you didn’t read our root chakra or sacral chakra posts, you can check them out here, and here. In Sanskrit the solar plexus […]
This week in our Chakra Series, we will be discussing the svadhisthana chakra, or sacral chakra. If you missed our first post on the 1stchakra or root chakra, please go read it now here. In the root chakra post I suggest a great book to […]
Hello everyone, and today will begin my 12 zodiac series of illustrations and blog posts!
I have had these illustration ideas waiting for their final phase for quite a while now, so I’m excited to finally be sharing these with you. I spent a lot of time looking up different things about all the zodiac signs so that each illustration would have the right symbols and colors for its corresponding sign.
So to begin this series, let’s talk about our first sign…Leo!
Since we are in the month of August, I thought it would be best to work on Leo. Leo’s are characterized as being warm, noble, loyal and humorous while some of their weaknesses are arrogance, vanity, and stubbornness. Do keep in mind though, if you are born August 19-25 then you could be a Leo-Virgo cusper. This means you can present characteristics of both signs!
Keeping these traits in mind I wanted the main lady of this illustration to have a very regal and fierce look about her. Her hair needed to be reminiscent of a lion’s mane since this is the main symbol and animal for Leo’s. She also needed to have the gold and yellow colors associated with the sign.
Orange was another color for Leo that I used throughout the illustration, with a lot of it being seen on the background sun motif and the sunflowers themselves. Sunflowers are one of the main flower symbols for this sign, but instead of making them a bright vibrate yellow, I wanted something a little more muted or closer to a burnt orange/gold. I found some good reference photos to use as a base for this.
Something I wanted for each sign was to make sure that their symbol or glyph was in line to the body part in which that sign ruled. For Leo’s, you rule the heart which corresponds nicely to your “born leader” attitude and affectionate nature. The glyph itself is often interrupted as a simplified lion with other interpretations relating to your ruling “planet”, the Sun, or even two halves of a heart.
In my illustration I placed the glyph as a pendant over her heart with her hands encircling it, which draws your eye to the symbol, but not in an overbearing way. I also made her dress purple to relate back to the royal and regal personality traits of the sign.
As is typically for me with most of my illustrations, I use a mix of supplies with watercolor being my core component. I also used colored pencils, some alcohol based markers, ink pens, and for the final flair…metallic gold watercolors. These are some of my favorite watercolors because they are rather versatile with how opaque you can make them, plus! Leo’s metal is Gold, so it was necessary to add a lot of this to really drive home the kingly and rich aspects of the sign.
Compared to when I first started this series back in 2017 with just black line art, my style and skill has changed considerably. I didn’t change too much from those original sketches, but I did make some upgrades when it came to anatomy, especially for the face since the original version had quite a different expression and style about the eyes.
I’m definitely looking forward to how all of these will look once finished and how things will change by the last illustration.
I hope you guys enjoyed the first of this 12 part series, and let me know what you thought. What zodiac do you look forward to seeing next? Do you believe in horoscopes, and do you identify with your sign?
Let me know in the comments below! 😉
This year, to celebrate our 23rdwedding anniversary, my husband, kids, and I decided to head out to visit some wineries on the Monticello Wine Trail here in Virginia. If you have not visited a winery (or now cideries!) in Virginia, we highly recommend them! Not […]
Hello everyone! We have officially wrapped up the month of July, so it’s time to recap some of my favorite things from this month! Books I Read… Over the past few months I haven’t done much traditional novel reading, and I still have a […]