After October Unprocessed I was left curious about how I can make some of my favorite things less processed. I had tried to simply add whole wheat or raw sugar to other recipes and found that it doesn't always work that easily. Sometimes you need a recipe that is tailored to the new ingredients, so I turned to a cookbook I haven't used much but that I drool over often, Good to the Grain.
The only thing I wanted to change in the recipe was the sugar. I've been noticing that refined sugar makes me jittery and makes it hard for me to sleep, so I've been using raw sugar or honey whenever I can. This would be my grand experiment with these cookies- make them whole wheat, as the recipe suggests, but to change the sugars to raw sugar, honey and molasses.
The recipe calls for 1 cup of refined sugar and 1 cup of brown sugar. I used 1 cup of raw sugar and 1/4 cup of molasses and 1/4 cup of honey. I was worried about the moisture I was adding, more than I was worried about the flavors. That's why I started with the small amounts, 1/4 cup seemed small but also seemed like a lot of a much more viscous liquid than the sugars I was replacing.
Here I was, sitting in my kitchen doing math. I'm totally going to use this in a math lesson, as I do often. I bring in my recipes where I have halved or doubled a recipe and had to do real life math, adding fractions or converting them to decimals since me and fractions have a love/hate/super despise relationship. The kids always seem in awe of the chicken scratch pencil math above the recipes and the crumbs I so proudly leave in the crevices of my cookbook. It's fun. It's real.
The dough was much darker than your average cookie dough but it tasted amazing. The baked cookies were even more so. But the darkness of the dough did make it hard to identify when they were done in the oven, golden? They were golden to begin with! I went with a dark golden. I'm such a smarty pants with that one, eh? I actually always use the bottom of the cookies to tell when they are 'done'. I really really don't like crunchy cookies, so I just check the bottom of one cookie. If it looks golden, crispy and solid (as in, will provide a solid base as opposed to a floppy base) then they are done even if the tops looks less than done.
I wish I had made more. I want to have these around always. They were that good. Don't get me wrong, they were definitely a 'healthy' version of a cookie but they didn't taste like a cracker or a muffin (if you have ever attempted to convert any traditional recipe to a 'whole wheat' or healthy alternative I'm sure you'll know what I mean there- one time I tried to make whole wheat cookies and Dylan walked in the front door and asked me why I was making homemade cereal. That's just how it smelled, like I was making homemade bran flakes).
They were all cookie and all delicious. They were moist and chewy and the chunks of chocolate were just perfect. You can make them super large, 3 tablespoons of dough (!), or smaller, 1 tablespoon worked as well.
Even after a few days in an airtight container, they were still moist and tasty.
If you are looking for a healthy twist on a favorite, give these a try. I plan to include them in my cookie rotation.
Whole Wheat Cookies
adapted from Good to the Grain
click here for printable recipe
ingredients
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
8 ounces cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 cup raw sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 ounces dark chocolate, cut into medium-large chunks (depending on what you prefer)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, line your baking sheets with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together and set it aside.
Add the raw sugar and butter to the bowl of a mixer and mix on low speed until the mixture has blended. Turn the mixer on low and slowly add the honey and molasses, waiting until it is mixed together before adding each. Mix in the eggs and vanilla.
Add the flour to the wet mixture and stir until it is combined, then stir in the chocolate. The cookies were best when made large, about 3 tablespoons of dough, but also worked well with about 1 tablespoon of dough. Decide what size to make your cookie and drop the dough on the cookie sheets. Bake the large cookies for 14-18 minutes, and the smaller ones for 12-16 minutes. Keep your eye on them, pull them out when they are golden, but not dark, around the edges. I take them out before they seem done, when a finger pressed into the cookie leaves a little dent. but I'm crazy and love moist cookies.
They kept well for 3 days in an airtight container.
Enjoy!
-m
