(Note: updated on 10/3/2019 with ingredients for a 2.5:1 recipe)
My husband stays at home with our kids and one of the ways in which he is objectively better at it than I was is that he gets them out and about regularly - to gymnastics, to the library, to playgrounds, everywhere. But that means he needs easy foods that travel well to keep the kids happy, and moving to keto meant our trusty goldfish and cheesesticks weren't really an option for our son any more. Enter the all-in-one sunflower seed surprise cookie!
These cookies are actually based on a recipe of the same name in the keto diet calculator, but I was lazy and didn't want to grind my own sunflower seeds, and since the recipe didn't have any flour in it I wanted to add something to make them a little cakey and fluffy. So I modified it to use Sunbutter Natural (the crunchy Sunbutter) and threw in a little bit of Ketocuisine "flour". This puts this recipe at something like a 1.7:1 ratio, meaning my son can just eat a single snack serving's worth of cookie and no one stresses. (If his ratio goes up, I'd give him a shot of cream with this - everyone loves milk and cookies, right?) These travel well - they're not too crumbly - and they freeze well if you want to make a big batch. And they come with a colorful surprise.
Ingredients for a 1.7:1 ratio cookie
50gm egg, raw, mixed well
100g sunbutter (natural)
16g coconut oil, melted
12g Truvia
2g Baker's vanilla extract
20g KetoCuisine
1g baking powder
1g baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
Ingredients for a 2.5:1 cookie (note that they will not look as smooth and uniform as the lower ratio ones)
45g egg, raw, mixed well
100g sunbutter (natural)
33g ghee, melted
10g Truvia
2g Baker's vanilla extract
80g KetoCuisine
3g baking powder
1g baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (Or wax paper. A bare baking sheet will give you stuck cookies.)
Combine all the ingredients and stir very well to evenly distribute all the ingredients. The consistency will seem a bit like thick caramel.
Drop the batter in 10 separate spoonfuls onto the parchment paper, with each spaced 2-3 inches apart. (Since these are ratio-complete and my son's calorie needs aren't super specific or restricted, I just eyeball this rather than weighing out each cookie) Use the back of a fork dipped into hot water to press down the tops of the cookies in a criss-cross pattern. Re-dip the fork between each cookie to prevent sticking. Bake the cookies in the upper portion of the oven for 5-7 minutes. Watch closely for browning.
Allow the cookies to cool for several hours.
This makes 10 100 calorie cookies, which is about what my son needs for a single snack. If your child needs more calories at this ratio, make fewer cookies with the above batter. If they need fewer calories for a snack, turn this into 12 or 13 cookies.
And the "surprise" in question? The original recipe I used mentioned that the cookies would "turn green" as they cooled. It turns out that the chlorophyll in sunflower seeds reacts with baking soda during baking and creates a green color - cool, right? But I was still caught off guard - here's what they look like about 36 hours after coming out of the oven.
Surprise!
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