Salvaged From The Pantry

I was craving cookies, plus baking relaxes me. I had decided to take this week off of keto anyway, so it was a great week to do a little baking. I do keep an overstocked a well stocked pantry and I have an island cabinet I fondly call my baking center. It houses a ridiculous amount of baking supplies. Every so often I have to go through it to inventory and rearrange things that were put back in the wrong place, but also to  see what needs to be used or quickly frozen. Since I have recently added so many things from the lake, it had to be done.

I found a huge jar of raw sunflower seed which has a pretty short shelf life. I ground most of it into flour to tore in the freezer, because it is a pretty decent keto flour. I was packing it in one cup measures and had enough flour for 3 packs, with about a half of a cup of whole seed  leftover that  needed to be used in something else. I had an Aha moment and decided to make some sunflower cookies. I found a couple of recipes online, but did not like the way either sounded so I merged the two and came up with a pretty decent cookie.

Sunflower Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

3/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 small egg or half a large one

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup shredded coconut (I used a lingering partial bag of sweetened coconut)

1/2 cup sunflower seed (I had raw but roasted, salted would be delicious too)

Mix the butter and sugars until creamy, add the egg and beat until smooth and well incorporated. Mix the flour, baking soda and baking powder and slowly add to the butter mixture. Use a mixer to combine well then blend in the coconut and sunflower seed.

Place parchment on 2 large cookie sheets. roll the cookies into balls about the size of a large  shooter marble.  Place them fairly far apart because they will spread during the baking process. Slightly flatten the tops of the cookies. (I used my fingers but they were just for TheHub and me. If I had been making these with the ten ton of sharing them, I would have used a tamper or the bottom of a glass. Bake about 13-15 minutes (depends on your personal oven) until the cookies are golden brown. Let them sit on the cookie sheet until they cool a couple of minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. (I honestly almost always skip this part, but these cookies crisp so nicely they really do better with the air circulating while they cool)

I did not make these with the intention of having them become a regular in the cookie rotation but they were perfectly crisp, nutty tasting cookies which were delicious with coffee or a cup of tea. I tried it with both for science. Yes, that's what it was__science. Give them a try, you might really like them. I know we did.

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