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.]

You really shouldn't ever read the 1st post, it's usually boring...

Well, here goes... I figured the day before Christmas Eve (and the first of three days straight of cooking) would be as good a day as any to start writing this thing. Time will tell how long I stick to it...

Today began the prep for Christmas Eve dinner. After a long, exhausting visit to the grocery store to stock up for the coming marathon weekend in the kitchen (3 holiday meals in a row) and a few hours distraction watching a terrible, but pretty, movie; I set to work...
The eventual goal for the meal is to have brined, roasted cornish game hens with sliced, baked potato things and some sort of greenery. (here's where this thing gets educational)
The brine recipe I have comes from the book Charcuterie  by Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, and let me tell you; if you love meat, particularly of the salty, cured variety, and want to be able to craft this meat yourself; you need this book! It's brilliant and chock full o' yum.
Anyway, among various aromatic things like tarragon and onions and lemons and of course lots of salt, the recipe calls for 1 gallon of water. Well that seems easy enough; bring 1 gallon of water to a simmer and fill it with the flavor-y things. So I get out my largest pot and start measuring out a gallon of water (using the blender container because it goes to 6 cups and my measuring cup goes only to 2). Turns out my largest pot holds just over 1 gallon.  Until you add an onion, a head of garlic, and 2 lemons... Then there's a lot of steaming and sizzling and all sorts of unpleasantness.  But at least now my house smells wonderful and I have brine ready for my hens tomorrow.

The only sad part has now been re-reading this and realizing that I am desperately out of practice at writing in a way that is interesting to read. Or maybe I was never that good to begin with, but I'll keep at it.