My God! Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies....

So if you are like me (and at least some of you must be), you must have "ughed" at the thought of anything whole wheat. I was particularly against whole wheat desserts as they tend to be less springy, have a pronounced crumb to baked goods, or keep a lightness in flavor (letting your desserts actual flavor through).

Well I started on wheat with bread. It was a fighting match struggle between me and my sister. She being health-conscious and I being taste conscious. She won out, in more ways than one. She eventually got her sis to love wheat bread and hate white! After this I actually began to actually expand and try new things, such as desserts, in wheat. So far most of it was not as good as white flour based desserts. But the subject of this post spikes the pie chart :)

I found a recipe that was adapted from "Good to the Grain" by Kim Boyce, by another blogger that I unfortunately did write down the name for.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 3 c whole wheat


• 1 1/2 ts baking powder


• 1tsp baking soda


• 1 1/2 ts kosher salt


• 2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut in 1/2" cubes


• 1 c lightly packed dark brown sugar


• 1 c white sugar


• 2 large eggs


• 1tsp vanilla


• 8oz bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped or chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


2. Sift dry ingredients together in a bowl.


3. In a stand mixer beat butter and sugars for 2 min low speed, until blended. Add eggs, continue mixing.


4. Add vanilla. Then the flour mix, run mixer until barely combined, 30 sec.


5. Add chocolate, mix until just incorporated.


6. Cookie dough size is 3 Tb each, leaving 3" apart. Bake for 16-20 min.

*NOTES:

I chilled my dough before baking for thicker cookies and better flavor.

*I also halved the white sugar and added a bit stevia. Now I don't remember the exact amount as I was experimenting with it art the time, maybe 1/2 - 1 TS?

*I sprinkled some instant coffee (Nescafe Gourmet Blend is my favorite when I can afford to buy it) in the dry ingredients.

*I added some grated coconut. Again no measurements on this, I just sprinkled some in. And boy did it taste good. :)

Almond-Butt Circles

So my Aunt who lives abroad and does not own an oven (thought I'd just add that in, being very odd and horrible and all, not having an oven--not the aunt part of course! Gasp!), wanted me to bake her some of my famous Almond Crescent cookies. A light, buttery, flaky cookie for those few and far between times you do not crave chocolate. This recipe is quite special to me, it is the first cookie I ever made. I found the recipe in the coupon section of our Sunday Paper, on a Sunday, so many, many years ago. I had all the ingredients and the cookies looked so delicate and sweet, unlike the Oreos and Chips Ahoys I normally fattened myself upon, that I just HAD to make them. And I have been making them ever since. So here it is, "I Can't Believe it's Not Butters" Almond Crescents.

• 2 sticks room temp softened butter
• 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• 1 Ts Vanilla
• 1 cup finely ground almonds
• 2 cups flour, (sift before adding to butter mixture)

Using a HAND MIXER cream together butter and sugar, until light and fluffy. A Kitchen Aid, for example does not even GET all the butter and sugar mix, and therefore cannot fluff up the butter as much. Now dip a finger in and taste. You know, just to make sure it's creamy enough(hehe).

Add in the rest of the ingredients. DO NOT USE ANY MIXER BUT YOUR HANDS. The dough is delicate, just make sure all the ingredients form a dough, no more mixing than that or your cookies will not be as airy as promised. Wrap the dough in plastic and refridgerate for an hour. Set your oven to 350F and taking a TB of dough in your hands, lightly ball it, then squish it flat (1/4 of an inch). You can also make crescents by rolling your TB of dough into a baby sausage, flattening it out and bending slightly at the tips (you know...like a crescent moon). Bake for 12 minutes or until lightly tanned around the edges. I recommend using a spatula to remove them from the hot baking pan they were on, and placing in a cool pan. This does two things. Stops them from over browning on your hot pan AND Athey are easier to move around while still hot. When they are totally cool, they will become crunchy (as they should). You don't have to keep much space between cookies as they do not pounce upon each other, in oven.

These are not too sweet, so sprinkle some confectioners on top, or maybe try some icing. Go wild, decorate them, they do hold up. And I'd love to see pictures of yours!

Makin' those cookies look HOT!

So in my last post I mentioned how I went about my sugar cookies. In this post I shall tell you how I decorated them, rather I'd like to say designed them, rocked 'em, used my artistic mojo. I'm not showing off, I'm just proud of myself for not giving in to laziness and really really trying to make these cookies look good.

So first of all is the recipe, easy peasy.

1 cup of confectioners sugar

1 TB corn syrup

2 TB water

food coloring

brush dedicated to kitchen use only

I got together small sauce bowls and ramekins, basically anything small. Made up the icing and divided between each, then added the food coloring. Now the recipe I used states 10 drops. I think that should be personal choice. Some of my colors were light, some darker, just mix them in and keep adding until YOU like the color. You may have to add less or more water, just do it very baby-step like. Add in more sugar if it gets to thin; and don't worry you don't even really need a recipe for this.

I like my brush method for two reasons. One it gives a lighter coat of icing than just dipping the cookie in, and two, it gives you more control over the smaller designs you may have in mind. The back of a spoon works very well for the inital backdrop coat, pour a small amount on your cookie and spread with the back of a spoon. Don't worry if it looks "wrinkly", give it minute and you'll see the icing settles and smoothes out on its own. Remember the spoon method will give you a slightly thicker coat.

To have greater control over your art, use colored sprinkles. The multi color bottles are cheaper, if you want to spent hours seperating the slippery little confections and coerce family members to work for you with future cookie shares. This is the route I took (hey, I told you I'm cheap!). You can get the Wilton Sprinkles, if you'd rather buy presorted.

To get colored sugar, make your own. I didn't think this needed explanation but seems like people will buy expensive colored sugar when they can make as many colors as they would like for far far far less. Take a ramekin of sugar, add a DROP of color and mix very well. To make it darker add another. But beware, at certian point overkill on the food coloring can give you icing. :)

The sugar dries out fast, so if you want to add sprinkles or colored sugar do it as soon as you finish with the backdrop coat. Sprinkle the sugar on, when the icing has gotten slightly thicker (on your cookie) but not quite dry. This is to prevent your colored sugar from melting into your icing coat. Depending on your icing, (one or two of our batches got more thinner than the others) we had to wait to add our sugar.

So that's a lot of help, the most I can give you. Now I kick you out of the nest and see whether you can fly or not. Show me your cookies!

Sugar Cookies--Too Good to Eat

The sugar cookies above are just some of the ones we managed to put into our gift baskets (see post, Gift Baskets). The taste was good, but could have been better. I would have preffered a more pronounced butter flavor, and maybe a better vanilla extract. AS to the more butter flavor aspect, I added a teaspoon of Wiltons butter flavor extract to one batch of the dough. This batch I felt tasted better than the non extract one. One thing to note is, I am a cheapo (with limited funds). I buy cheap store brand vanilla extract. I know, I know, I've heard enough now about how good vanilla should always be used, (problem with that is the ka-ching).

Our recipe, chosen from many was Georgie Bowers, Soft Sugar Cookies. Now personally I love a nice crunchy sugar cookie, but my partner (sis) won out this round.

3 3/4 cups white flour
1 ts baking powder
1/2 ts salt

Sift the above ingredients together. Set aside.

1 c butter (or margarine) softened
1 1/2 c white sugar

Beat together until light and fluffy. Remember not to melt the butter completly when trying to bring it to room temp. I have done this often, not thinking my recipes ahead and wanting to make cookies, 'spur of the moment'. I have found a good enough method for me, chop the butter into small cubes, then place in microwave for a few seconds, take out, see if you can mix it a bit (softened).

2 eggs
2 ts vanilla extract

Add these into the butter mix, when incorporated, add in the flour mix. When you have formed a dough, cover and chill for 2 hours.
Now my method to make rolling easier was dividing the dough and placing the balls into ziploc baggies. I closed the bag and smushed the dough flat in each bag, then refridgerated overnight. I like flattening the dough before freezing so that when I did take my dough out to roll and cut, I would save that much time. The refridgerated dough "melts" really fast.

Roll our 1/4" thick, cut your shapes, and bake 8 minutes at 400 degrees. Basically, when your cookies start to get a little tan around the edges, take them out and put in your next pan.

I'll show you in the next post how we decorated these babies.