move over, Oreo

It's spring break, and my calendar is blank.  What should we do with all our free time, besides be outside where the weather is gorgeous?  Well, baking is always an option with an open window and cool kitchen inviting me to experiment.  After seeing a friend's recipe for gluten free whoopie pie (I'd never heard of such a thing), I have been itching to find a pan and give it a try.  A quick trip to the store and we were set!

Since Josiah can't have chocolate but Rachel and I love it, I decided to add cocoa to only half of Cha Cha's recipe and make the other half vanilla.  As soon as they came out of the oven, Josiah started calling our new creation "cookies" and ate one before I could even get it filled.

In the past couple of months we have discovered one of Josiah's last (please!!) sensitivities is to cornstarch.  It has made such a difference to get it out of recipes and he is finally not bouncing off the furniture anymore.  However, that does make frosting an interesting kitchen experiment.  One of these days I may get near a Whole Foods where they sell a cornstarch-free powdered sugar, but until then I wondered if there was something else I could use to fill our pies.

Cha Cha's blog to the rescue again!  She has a post featuring a delicious looking coconut, pecan, and chocolate spread.  When I looked it over it seemed there must be a way to use some of the ingredients to make a plain vanilla version.  So I tried combining this in a food processor:

2/3 c. coconut, shredded
1 T. coconut oil
1 T. honey

Process ingredients until creamy. 

Once again, I split my result in half and added a teaspoon of cocoa to one half.  It didn't make a lot, but I found a little goes a very long way.  The result was mouth-watering.  Still, next time I think I will try using a whole cup of coconut.

We ended up with these:

Now, if I could just locate some FG approved peppermint oil, we'd have peppermint patties to try, too!