Hot and Spicy! Mayan chocolate chip whole wheat cookies aren't right!

Mr. Maven was walking through the house, munching on cookie in hand, muttering “this isn’t right.”

“What did you say, dear?”

“This just isn’t right. These are spicy cookies”

“What? You don’t like them?”

“That isn’t what I said.”

I threatened to toss them into the garbage. “No! Don’t you dare! I’m just saying that a hot and spicy cookie isn’t right.”

You decide, dear reader.

Ingredients

1 cup light brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter( one stick), softened

1/2 tbsp. finely minced orange  peel

1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1/2 tsp. vanilla 

1 egg

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1/2 cup barley flour

1/2 tsp. sea salt

1 tablespoon (or less?) of red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon ancho chili powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 cup bittersweet (60% cocoa if you can get them) chocolate chips

Technique

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine brown and granulated sugars, egg, orange juice, orange peel, chili powder, red pepper flakes and vanilla. Beat until well combined. Add white whole wheat and barley flours, baking soda, cream of tarter and salt and beat until well combined. Add the chocolate chips and mix in by hand with spoon.

2.  Form the cookies into 1 inch balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

3.  Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. Cool 2 minutes and remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack.

Serve with orange or mango sorbet and strawberries? You decide. I think they go dandy with espresso. These cookies spread out and are chewy, crispy. The dough freezes very well indeed.

-maven  

Whole Grain Sourcream Banana Bread - With Pistachios.

Those banana’s were getting too soft for me, and I hate to waste anything. My duty was clear, make banana bread.

In my continuing effort to educate my readers on the benefits and ease of baking with whole grains, I offer you a pretty tasty banana bread recipe. I think you’ll like this one for the light balanced flavor, and the tender, well formed crumb. This loaf slices very cleanly, and is even good toasted.

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Make a whole wheat angel food cake to die for

Figuratively speaking, that is.

Really, making an angel food cake isn’t terribly hard, nor does it take an inordinate amount of time to whip - literally - up. All you need is a bunch of egg whites, some whole wheat pastry flour and an angel food cake pan.

I blogged about my first whole grain angel food cake a couple weeks ago, and what a success it was. So much so, that Mr. Maven returned from the grocery store with a couple containers of egg whites - I think that was my first clue to get with it.

I was a bit spare on the side of technique, just having given you - my readers - the basic recipe. I’ve since had requests for the lowdown on how-to.

Here it goes ( and the recipe will be repeated at the end ):

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Pistachio-lemon olive oil cookies

These cookies were one of those things I made on the fly one evening - well, while I was precooking the corned beef brisquit for St Patrick’s Day actually. I took a couple of standard recipes, combined and tweaked them.

The next day at work, my co-workers were telling me that I should sell the cookies in two packs. Yup, right after I start marketing my homemade jams, as everybody nags me to do.

But, anyway the cookies disappeared in record time. Nobody has ever made mention of not liking the whole grain thing either.

Recipe

Makes about three dozen cookies depending on size

Time: about 40 minutes

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Carrot Ginger Nine Grain Muffins

We’ve been on a muffin kick of late at the workplace, so I had to see if I could up the bar just a little bit with something along the multi-whole grains line.

These turned out quite good in fact, and I hope you’ll try them.

I used the 9-Grain flour blend from King Arthur Flour. I love working with some of these really intriguing whole grain blends offered by King Arthur, as I’m also looking to up the flavor in addition to banning the plain, the white, the refined, the blah from my diet for something nutritionally richer.

These were ever so light, with a really nice rise, and were very tender crumb and even texture. The flavor was balanced and wonderful, especially the day after - I baked Sunday and took them to work on Monday.

The recipe follows:

Carrot Ginger Nine Grain Muffins

1-3/4 cups King Arthur Nine-Grain Flour, or a combination of Whole Wheat, White Whole Wheat

1/2 cup Barley Flour

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Quick and easy cranberry-orange quick break

This cranberry orange quick bread is a ‘no-brainer’ for christmas gatherings at the office or in your neighborhood and makes a nice gift.

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