Healthy(?) cookies!

Well, as some of you may heard, Brit loves to eat cookies. Unfortunately, though; her diet is a bit restrictive in the baked goods department. Fortunately, the current phase does allow for a certain amount of "slow carbs" which are things like whole wheat, quinoa, brown rice, yams, etc. So we decided to try whipping up some low cal/carb cookies.

For comparison sake I will list the recipe as written, and then list it as we altered it.

From the back of a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips:

2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

What we did:

2 cups whole grain oat flour (ground up oatmeal)
1/4 cup flax meal (ground up flax seeds) mmm... Omega-3s
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp olive oil (we ran out of butter and a website said this is equivalent to 1/2 cup butter)
1 cup stevia extract (no calories!)
1/2 cup sucanat (because we had it laying around so why no, I'm not convinced that it's healthier than normal sugar)
3 tsp vanilla extract (because I always use more than is called for)
2 eggs
3 tbsps cocoa powder
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup sunflower seeds

-I'd like to interrupt here and say I just tried my first bite, fresh out of the oven, and OH MY GOD. So good. So, so good.-

Preheat oven to 375 deg
Mix flour, baking soda, and salt and set aside.
Blend butter and sugar until creamy, add vanilla and eggs (and cocoa).
Slowly add flour mixture, then chocolate chips and nuts.
Bake 10-12 minutes.
EAT.

Here's the thing though; recently our oven has gone to shit and takes 45 minutes to reach 375. Bullshit. This time it kinda worked out though because one thing I learned working in a restaurant is that refrigerating cookie dough before baking makes for much prettier, less puddle-y, cookies. So we had the time to spare. Also, I LOVE baking on parchment paper, then you don't have to clean the baking sheet s or destroy the cookies while transferring them to a cooling rack. And yeah, as I interjected above; these things are BOMB. They are lighter and less dense than normal cookies, most likely because of the stevia which is eerily light-weight; a 10oz bag has the same sweetness as 5lbs of sugar.
I'm not exactly sure how much healthier they are than normal cookies, but they are certainly lower calorie and higher in heart-healthy oils. I highly recommend them. And so does Brittany.

 

[UPDATE: after cooling and getting a little drier, these guys have gotten fairly crumbly, but still amazingly delicious.]

looks like pudding, tastes like pudding, must be...

This blows my mind; a dessert recipe straight out of Brittany's diet book.  It's crazy because it actually tastes incredibly similar to normal chocolate pudding, maybe just a little less sweet.

Chocolate/Avocado pudding

1 avacado
2 tablespoons coco powder
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla

Blend it all together till smooth.
Stuff your face.

Super healthy and tastes amazing, literally like chocolate pudding and avocado. Each flavor distinct in every bite and they mingle brilliantly.  Enjoy.

Bet you haven't seen this one before...

For my next trick, I've turned a boring old dinnerish food into a very intriguing dessert.

I found this recipe for Pumpkin Tart with Chocolate in the November 2009 issue of Portland Monthly Magazine and it has been stuck to the front of my fridge ever since.  I'm not exactly sure what about it snagged my interest; though it must have been my love of both chocolate and squash I suppose...

I was especially excited to try this thing out this Christmas as it was my first attempt at pie (or tart) crust and it turned out to be much easier than most people tend to lead you to believe.

Tart Crust
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 cup confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
9 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold. cut into 1/2 inch pieces
4 tablespoons sweet white wine, cold (I used Chateau Ste. Michelle Reisling)

Filling
3 pounds pumpkin (or squash, I used butternut. I suppose you could use canned if you wanted to...
   but fresh is classier)
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup dark rum
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
confectioners sugar to sprinkle on top

It's important before you start to make sure you have the proper bake ware, the recipe calls for a 9" tart pan, but you could probably do it in a pie pan as well.  Needless to say,  we ended up running to Kitchen Kaboodle at quarter till 5 on Christmas Eve. 15 minutes till closing, the clerks were a bit bitchy.

Start out by roasting the pumpkin (whole) at 375 deg until it collapses on itself, about an hour or so.  Pull it out and let it cool.  Remove the seeds and skin, then cut the thing into chunks, mine were between 1/2 to 1 inch.
Preheat the oven to 450 deg.  Mix the dry crust ingredients in a food processor with a few pulses.  Add the cold butter, and pulse it about 10 times or until it takes on a granulated texture.  You can also do the the old-fashioned way with a pastry cutter (funny "D" shaped whisk thing). Then, with the machine running, slowly add the cold wine.  Once the dough is mixed, form it into a 1 inch disc and refrigerate it for 30 minutes.  Roll the disc out and place it in your tart pan.  And freeze it for at least another 30 minutes, or until you are ready to bake.  This is pretty important, I think my crust thawed a little much before I baked it, causing the crust to settle away from the edges so the crust was pretty much just on the bottom of the tart.
Heat the sugar in a small saucepan until it caramelizes (if you have a candy thermometer, USE IT).  When the color is deep, remove from heat and carefully add butter.  Carefully because the butter sizzles pretty well when you add it and you don't want it splattering on you.  You really want the color to be pretty deep because you're looking for caramel and not toffee, I don't think I heated mine long enough so when I added it to the pumpkin, it cooled hard and crunchy and didn't mix well.
With the butter in, pour the mixture over your pumpkin and mix coarsely, not so much that you blend the pumpkin, just mixed.  Add the rum. Cool to room temperature.
Turn the oven down to 400 deg, wrap the frozen dough in foil and bake for 15 minutes.  Remove the foil and bake for another 5 minutes until dry and slightly golden (this is where my crust slumped down into the bottom of the pan).
Chop the chocolate (again coarsely, the idea is for there to be distinct chunks of pumpkin and chocolate and not a blend like your usual pumpkin pie) and add to the pumpkin.
Pour the filling into the shell; bake for 25 minutes at 350 deg.
Voila! When the thing is golden brown, pull it out, let it cool a bit and dig in! Sprinkle a little powdered sugar on top for aesthetic appeal and you've crafted yourself a gorgeous little dessert.