Juicy dates and creamy peanut butter make these the ultimate double stuffed cookies! It’s everything you’d ever want in a vegan and gluten free cookie.

Ahhh I have waited so long to share this recipe with ya’ll! Christmas and Meal Prep posts got priority during the past two months so these double stuffed cookies have been patiently waiting in queue. Finally, I present my masterpiece: The ultimate double stuffed cookie. It’s vegan and gluten free but who really cares because most importantly THEY’RE PHENOMENAL!

Shortly after meeting Chew in high school, she told me that Medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter tasted like Reece’s. Sure it’s a bit of a stretch but we like stretchy things. Especially stretchy yoga pants. Relating these cookies to our self-love series is also a bit of a stretch but I think it’s a punny way of depicting food for the heart.

The greatest test of courage on Earth is to bear defeat without loosing heart – Robert Green Ingersoll

Over Christmas break, I baked and decorated lots of gingerbread with my childhood friends. We thought it would be amusing to craft our ‘dream man’ and not being particularly good at creativity on the spot, I simply painted a heart of with royal icing. “Someone with a heart” is what I value.

Our heart is where we house our dreams, ambitions, insecurities, worries, hopes, and ambiguities. Here are some practical ways I chase my dreams and avoid getting butthurt.

If you want it, go get it

This is one of my signature phrases. Don’t sit on the couch waiting for it to rain dollar bills, puppies, plane tickets, brownies, or whatever from the sky. Don’t complain about how your life sucks if you aren’t actively trying to fix it. Results and success are not going to be served to you on a silver platter so get off that lazy bum and go get it!

Instead of mulling over the fact that you don’t have something, make a tangible plan to obtain it. Then get off your butt and put it into action.

One of my goals this year is to continue growing this blog. It’s disheartening to see our growth stagnate in the past two-ish years. To combat this, Chew and I sat down, drafted up emails, made a list of potential collaborators, and planned out a content schedule to ensure we stay on top of our A game. I’m dedicating my free time to fiddle around in Lightroom and improve my photo editing, reading up on how to effectively schedule Pins, and learn from bigger bloggers (Broma Bakery has been one of my biggest inspirations). There is a ton of blog work that needs to be crammed between our personal, school, and part-time job lives but if we don’t put 100% effort, we shouldn’t expect anything more in return.

Be a dreamer, but also be a doer.

Learn to laugh it off

Inevitably mistakes will be made as you navigate towards your goal. Sometimes mustering the mental strength to admit you’re wrong or to say sorry or to take ownership of a mistake is the hardest thing on Earth. Over the years I’ve learned that temporary embarrassment is much less burdensome than continual regret. Regret of not changing direction, regret of not fixing what was wrong. Why keep going if it’s inherently the wrong direction? Put that way, it’s silly to be stubborn and tunnel visioned.

People will forget the embarrassing things you’ve done but you will always remember the regret of trying to mask your mistake. Instead, laugh it off with them. You live and you learn, and so does everyone else.

A recent story to illustrate this is the time I spilled important chemicals all over my laboratory bench top. Now, I’ve always known I was a klutz. No matter how carefully I mix a batter, or the size of the mixing bowl, I will undoubtedly flick flour out of the bowl and onto the counter. I also bruise my hip bones from crashing into my granite counter tops. One would think that I’d be more careful in the presence of highly flammable, carcinogenic, and corrosive chemicals.

I’ve been dreading this chemistry course since first year and have pushed it aside for an entire two years. I cannot graduate without it so I figured that it’s about time I faced my fears. Due to a rough experience during the initial extraction experiment where we learned the technique, I was extra nervous for the first ‘real lab’ where our final product would be graded. The extraction was going smoothly, and I was even ahead of schedule at one point, until clumsy ol’ me knocked over an entire beaker of my unknown compound. What I needed to recover was now in a big puddle on my bench top. I literally screamed for my TA who immediately went to grab supplies to help me retrieve as much of the compound as possible. Again, bless her kind soul. I’m sure I lost plenty of technique marks but at least I still had something to work with in the coming weeks. (Cascading labs are so stressful, welp…)

When the instructor warns the class of spilling things, of course you never think it’d be you. When the whole class whips their head around to look at you in distress, of course it’s embarrassing. But instead of shedding tears (don’t cry over spilled acid?), laugh it off, thank the people who came to help you clean up your mistake, and make the mental effort to not do it again.

Be a tough cookie

I may appear to be a tough cookie on the outside but I’m soft and sensitive on the inside (just like these double stuffed cookies! Yup, das me!) Part of me is like “Fake it ’till you make it” but another part of me is like “I work so hard but don’t reap the same rewards, why bother trying?”

It’s easy for us to attribute the success of others to some external force. That blog is famous just because of luck. They just have hundreds of thousands of followers because they got featured by someone else. I’m 100% guilty of feeling pity for myself while watching everyone else succeed. A healthy reminder for us all is to not discredit the work of others. They work hard, we work hard and we can’t judge and compare those against each other. It’s like comparing an apple to an orange; which one is better? Well “better” is subjective and each of them are important in different ways. What would life be without apple pie? Or chocolate orange brownies? Sad, that’s what.

There will be those insensitive people who say to your face that you’ll never be good enough, to stop being naive, and that you’re wasting your time. Be critical about what is said about you; do they even know you? Don’t allow yourself to suddenly become doubtful of your own abilities because some stranger who doesn’t know anything about you said you’re hopeless. This is when you laugh it off in their face, put on your IDGAF attitude and strive forward. You will find your way to get there. A route that is achievable for you may not always be the one others’ think is “the best”. Focus on what you can bring to the table, rather than what you lack. Don’t loose heart when you come face to face with an obstacle. Like in the chemistry lab, don’t panic! There are people around to lend a hand and pull you up from whatever hole you’re stuck in. In your action plan, focus on making baby steps; the road to success is not a race.

You do you and they do them and life will be wonderful because of this diversity.

Lessons from stuffed cookies

Differentiate yourself from the masses by being like these stuffed cookies:

• Pursue your inspiration – Dreams can be crazy, and also crazy good ideas!
• Bend some rules – Showcase your personality by putting your signature twist on things.
• Put in your best – Quality of ingredients affects quality of results.
• Surprise and delight people – It’s the inside that matters most. For you, the drive and perseverance. For these stuffed cookies, the gooey peanut buttery date filling.
• Prove them wrong – Ya I made managed to make freaking delicious cookies that are vegan and gluten free. Come at me skeptics.

Recipe adapted from our Best Gluten Free & Vegan Macadamia Nut Cookies