Heck to the YES I had so much fun creating this recipe for Holiday Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies – which let’s be honest, doesn’t happen with baking that often.
You may notice a weird ingredient in this recipe. It’s called “U Know Poo”, and it’s from my trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando last week! From Weasley’s Wizard Wheeze’s (or Honeydukes in Hogsmeade!) “U Know Poo” is one of the joke treats that Fred and George released during Voldemort’s return to power in the 6th and 7th books. You may remember it from Mrs. Weasley saying “They’ll be murdered in their beds!” or from the subtitle “The constipation sensation that’s gripping the nation” – aka these treats would make you super backed up.
Luckily for you guys, they’re basically just candy covered chocolates, and definitely will not make you “no poo”. But I did have a great time photographing and developing this recipe knowing that it had a little touch of Harry Potter (because hello, we could all use a little more fantasy, disney, and Harry Potter in our lives. DUH).
Also yes, you read that right. There are REAL, holiday M&M’s in here. There was a time I would NEVER eat holiday M&M’s (or any kind of candy, for that matter). Or if I did in the midst of Christmas cookie making, I would totally binge on them because they were an ‘off limits food’. And then it would send me into a spiral of eating all kinds of other ‘off limits’ foods that I had put on my “NO” or “unhealthy” list for whatever reason. Cue the shame spiral of restriction, bingeing, guilt, shame and then right back to restriction because I felt so bad about indulging in those off-limits foods.
It took me YEARS to figure this out, but the answer to getting out of that cycle was to eliminate the restrictions in the first place. The interesting thing here is, once you finally allow yourself to have those previously off-limits foods, they seem less like forbidden fruit, and then you don’t feel the need to overeat or over-indulge when you do choose to eat them. You eat them, you enjoy them, and you move on with your life.
This obviously isn’t something that happens overnight, but it’s something you can work on gradually – starting by slowly removing the restrictions you put on yourself in your everyday life. Or, as is sometimes more common, putting unnecessary restrictions on yourself whenever you go on vacation, over the holidays, or after you feel you’ve over-indulged in something.
I’ve been talking a lot about this on the podcast lately so if you’re interested, definitely listen to these episodes with Noelle Tarr, Brianna Diorio, Whitney Shook, and Amy Flashenberg-Laskowski!
- 1 cup peanut butter (or other nut butter)
- 1 large egg
- ¾ cup coconut sugar
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- ½ cup holiday M&M's or "U Know Poo"!
- Preheat the oven to 375 F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet.
- Mix the peanut butter, egg, sugar, baking soda, M&M's, and sea salt until smooth. Use a cookie scoop to form 12-16 cookies and place them on the baking sheet.
- Bake the cookies for about 12 minutes, until they’re golden brown around the edges but not cooked all the way through.
- Remove them from the oven allow the cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Top the batch off with a pinch of coarse sea salt.
You’ll love these recipes too!
Podcast: Survive the Holidays vs. Enjoy the Holidays
12 Days of Paleo Christmas Cookies
Paleo Pecan Pie Bars
