Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies

A few days ago I told you about the Oatmeal Flax Cookie recipe I found on the King Arthur Flour website, and hinted at another great recipe to come.  Well, I am so excited to share this one.  Many of my other cookie recipes are delicious but hearty and more healthy tasting...the type of cookie I happily serve as a snack, but might be self-conscious calling them dessert to a not-so-health-conscious audience.

This cookie, however, tastes like a delicious, home made chocolate chip cookie, no qualification or apology necessary.  But the secret is they are 100% whole grain, and have about half the sugar of some traditional chocolate chip cookie recipes I found, with no sacrifice in taste.  In fact, I think these are better because they are not so cloyingly sweet.  And the texture is great, slightly crisp around the edges, with plenty of soft chew, which is helped by the addition of the oats.  I cut the amount of chocolate chips in half from the original recipe and I think they are plenty chocolatey, but you could up the chips if you want.  Another great feature of these cookies is that they hold up really well:  they maintain their chewiness after a few days sitting on the counter and are amazing if frozen right away and warmed through in the microwave.

So I challenge you to try this recipe and still insist that whole grains don't belong in dessert baking.  Personally, I will enjoy the fact that I can have my treats and know that I am at least getting some health benefits even from dessert!

Refrigerated Dough*

Room Temperature Dough

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from King Arthur Flour

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg

3/4 cup white whole wheat flour

3/4 cup quick rolled oats, ground in a food processor or blender if you prefer a smoother texture

1 cup dark chocolate chips

Beat together first 7 ingredients using a hand or stand mixer (if you are doubling the recipe, I'd recommend the stand mixer if you have one).  Add the egg, beating until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.  Add the flour and oats, mixing until combined, and finally mix in the chocolate chips.  

Refrigerate the dough for as long as you have the patience for, up to overnight.  The colder the dough, the less they will spread (*see note below).  Drop dough in 1 tablespoon balls on 2 lightly greased or parchment paper lined cookie sheets, allowing for spread (note if you only have 1 pan and are cycling multiple batches, the cookies will spread a lot more if the dough is placed on an already hot baking sheet).  Bake in 375 degree oven for 10-11 minutes for room temperature dough or up to 14 minutes if it's been thoroughly chilled, until cookies are just browning at the edges.

Let cookies cool completely on baking sheet, or if you want the sheet for another batch, give them at least a few minutes to set before transferring to a cooling rack.

Store completely cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a few days (if they last that long!), or freeze and reheat in the microwave.

Makes 27 cookies

* I'd only recommend bothering with the refrigeration if you really prefer a thicker cookie.  I tried these both ways (as you can see in the pictures) and the room temperature dough yielded a very nicely shaped cookie as well, not too thin at all.  In fact, we preferred the thinner cookies since the appeared bigger so it felt like a better deal :).  Plus, refrigerated dough is very difficult to scoop (think about trying to scoop solid butter), so another option would be to scoop the dough FIRST and then refrigerate if you have the room.  Or better yet, scoop your dough and freeze on a cookie sheet, then transfer frozen balls to a zip-top bag to have fresh baked cookies whenever you want, no scary chemicals from grocery dough needed!

Coconut Variation: Replace half of the butter with coconut oil, reduce the oats to 1/2 cup and add in 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut.  YUM!!

Oatmeal Flax Cookies

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting the store and bakery at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, VT.  KAF is the maker of the Organic 100% White Whole Wheat Flour I love using for my pizza dough, hamburger buns, and every day bread.  White whole wheat flour is pretty amazing stuff - it allows us to make baked goods that are completely whole grain but still have the tenderness we've become accustomed to in years of eating white flour.  

While I have been an avid fan in breads, I have generally stuck to whole wheat pastry flour in muffins and cookies.  After my visit to the KAF store, however, I was perusing the extensive recipe catalog on their website and curious about whole grain cookies that use white whole wheat flour (KAF doesn't actually sell whole wheat pastry flour, so that could have something to do with their recipes as well!).  If you have not visited the website yet, you should definitely check it out - there are recipes for everything, well thought-out comments from reviewers, and if you have any questions, a live chat feature where you can get answers from expert bakers!

Getting back to the recipe at hand, while I am very happy with my Healthier Oatmeal Cookie recipe as a wholesome dessert treat, I haven't given up on the idea that maybe there's a better whole grain cookie out there.  I decided to try a few from the KAF website, starting with one for Oatmeal and Flax Cranberry cookies.  I often add flax meal into my Healthier Oatmeal Cookies, but really liked that the flax was actually built into this recipe.  I was also curious about how different a cookie would be when made with butter instead of oil.  And I think the answer is, when it comes to cookies, butter is better.  These cookies are more cohesive and richer.  The oats give them nice texture and the flax makes them really hearty, but the addition of dark chocolate chips push these over the edge to being decadent even without tons of sugar and with NO refined grains.  I'm starting to be ready to throw my all purpose flour away for good, but I have one more cookie recipe coming up soon that may be the clincher if you're not already convinced!

Oatmeal Flax Cookies

adapted from King Arthur Flour

1 cup (2 sticks) soft butter - I know, this sounds like a lot, but this recipe makes a lot of cookies!

3/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour

1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

3/4 cup flax meal

1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips (or dried fruit)

1/2 to 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, brown sugar, vanilla, baking soda, salt, and egg until fluffy.  Mix in the flour, oats, flax meal, chocolate chips, and nuts (if using).

Let the dough rest for 30 minutes or so at room temperature, for the oats to soften. Towards the end of the rest period, preheat the oven to 350 and lightly grease two baking sheets, or line them with parchment paper.

Scoop the dough by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets. Flatten each ball of dough slightly (cookies will not spread, so create whatever cookie shape you like - I recommend keeping them on the thick side!).

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes, until just brown around the edges. Cool them on the baking sheets for 10 minutes or so, to allow them to set. Move them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Makes not quite 4 dozen cookies.

Healthier Oatmeal Cookies

I have been trying to get away from dessert recipes...really, I have!  But the little peanut in my belly seems to have quite the sweet tooth, and I have been wanting dessert all of the time lately.  In an effort to get my sweet fix from something moderately healthy, I decided to try out a new recipe for healthier oatmeal cookies.  I have tried a few others in the past (like these and these) but have not yet found anything to blow me away.  But my latest experiment has a ton of potential!  I made the first batch a few weeks ago following the recipe exactly...the result was a tasty cookie that was very cakey, not really what you'd expect from an oatmeal cookie.  There just seemed to be too much liquid, and as a result I ended up with more of a batter than a dough.  But the flavor was so good I decided it was worth trying again with some tweaks.

You may have noticed that many of my baked goods include liquid sweeteners (e.g., honey, agave, maple syrup), but this is not a requirement for me.  Despite the insistance of some in the health food space that such sweeteners are more natural and contain more nutrients, my general perspective is that sugar is sugar, and we shouldn't be eating enough of it to get any benefit from the small amounts of nutrients anyway!  Plus, brown and granulated sugar are cheaper and easier to work with than their liquid counterparts, so I thought a cookie recipe would be a great opportunity to make the substitution.  Theoretically you need to add liquid to a recipe if using sugar instead of honey, but since this recipe was so liquidy in the first place, the only thing I did to compensate was to increase the baking temperature.  Other tweaks include using whole wheat pastry flour, bumping up the vanilla, and using chocolate chips instead of the fruit and/or nuts (I just can't resist!).  The resulting cookie is soft and chewy and delicious, but not too sweet - exactly what I was going for! 

Another motivation I had for trying to make this recipe work is that I wanted an alternative to my Wholesome Monster Cookies.  I think those cookies are great, and they get rave reviews, but when it comes down to it I really don't like peanut or other nut butters!  I have tried so hard, but it's just less enjoyable to me so I wanted another cookie recipe that I would look forward to but was not too much of a guilty pleasure.  Plus, with so many kids out there having nut allergies, I thought it would be helpful to have a nut-free option.  Which means despite the success of the recipe below, my next stop will be to try to pack some more healthy ingredients in, like flax meal, wheat germ, or coconut, just to bump up the nutrient level.  Stay tuned for the results of my experiments!

Healthier Oatmeal Cookies
adapted from Whole Grain Gourmet

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 3/4 cups rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon (optional; I did not include when using chocolate chips)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (optional; I did not include when using chocolate chips)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/2-1 cup add-ins of your choice (I used 2/3 cup dark chocolate chunks; could also use raisins/dried fruit and/or walnuts/other chopped nuts)

In a large bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients (flour through spices).  In a medium bowl, whisk together all of the wet ingredients (sugar through vanilla).  Pour the wet mixture into the dry, add the mix-ins, and mix with a spoon until combined.

Place dough in the refrigerator to chill for 30-60 minutes. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Scoop cookies by the tablespoon onto baking sheet and press down slightly to flatten (cookies will not spread while baking).

Bake for 10 minutes, until bottoms of cookies are light brown - you will just start to see some brown around the bottom edge.  Do not overcook!  Leave cookies on baking sheet for about 1 minute after removing from the oven and then move to a cooling rack.
 
Makes 27 cookies (using 1 tablespoon scoop)

Double Chocolate Cookies

Last weekend, hubby requested a family dinner out for Father's Day.  With the munchkin's 6:30pm bedtime, we don't often go out for dinner as a family because really, who wants to eat at 5pm??  But for Father's Day, hubby gets whatever we want, so at 4:45pm we packed up and headed out to try an Italian restaurant in our neighborhood that had outdoor seating, a perfect way to enjoy this beautiful almost-summer evening.  As a side note to this post, I have to say that the munchkin was outrageously cute on this outing!  She had the entire waitstaff who was, shockingly, not too busy while we were there lined up as an audience to watch her perform - she learned how to dip bread in olive oil, she attempted to eat her pasta with a fork, and she even demanded a napkin for her lap so that she could wipe her face after every bite - priceless!  I have no idea how she got to be such a little lady at only 18 months, but we could not have been more proud :)

Getting back to the point, the reason this early dinner outing is relevant is because we realized that we would be done with dinner by 6:30, which left an entire evening for a yummy dessert creation!  I contemplated a chocolate mousse recipe I tried ages ago and have been meaning to make again, but the mousse needed to be refrigerated for at least an hour, which sounded annoying for this occasion.  Instead, I decided that cookies would be perfect - I'd have plenty of time to make the dough and it would be great to have them fresh out of the oven.

Ellie Krieger has a recipe for Triple Chocolate Cookies that gets amazing reviews.  I've come across this recipe a few times but have never had a good reason to try it out.  Bingo.  But of course, I couldn't resist making a few changes - some for taste preference (avoiding milk chocolate - hence the Double instead of Triple chocolate in my version!), some for health (more whole wheat flour and less sugar), and some for convenience (all brown sugar instead of some granulated since I was out).  I had to make several batches to get the baking time right, but the end result is a really yummy and rich (they really needed a glass of milk!) chocolate cookie.  I do have a few complaints, though - first, they spread a little more than I would have expected (I even refrigerated the dough - any suggestions???), you can definitely detect the whole wheat flour if you're paying attention, and they get cakey (instead of crisp on the outside) after day 1.

But overall I really enjoyed them and found them to be 100% capable of satisfying a cookie craving.  I think these have a lot of potential for personalizing, too - add coconut, use dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet, add a dash of espresso powder, maybe even throw in some white chocolate or butterscotch chips?  The possibilities are endless, and with less butter and sugar and the addition of whole wheat flour as compared to traditional cookies, these are a dessert I feel good about indulging in.

Double Chocolate Cookies
adapted from Food Network

1/4 cup butter, softened (this is half a stick)
1/2 cup (rounded) firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (I wouldn't recommend subbing regular whole wheat flour)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch processed)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup chocolate chips/chopped chocolate (I used all semi-sweet chips; use whatever kind or combination you want!)
2/3 cup chopped nuts (e.g., pecans, walnuts - totally optional!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, mash together the butter and sugars with a fork until well combined. Add the oil and egg and beat until creamy (you could use a hand mixer here, but I just whisked vigorously and it seemed to get creamy enough!). Mix in the vanilla.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well. Stir in the chocolate chips and mix well.

Using a tablespoon, scoop the batter onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. Transfer cookies to a rack to cool for a few minutes and eat while still warm.

Makes 24 small cookies

Blueberry Coconut Oatmeal Cookies

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know about my quest for the perfect oatmeal cookie (see here and here if you're just catching up!).  Well, a couple of months ago I discovered Sweet + Natural, a great blog for desserts made with wholesome ingredients.  I've already had great success with Carrot Cupcakes and Banana Pumpkin Oat Muffins from the site, so I thought I'd give her Blueberry Coconut "Oaties" a try, too!  The idea of throwing dried blueberries into a cookie was intriguing, and the recipe was pleasantly healthy for a cookie - if eaten in moderation (not easy!), they are moderate in sugar, have oil instead of butter, and get lots of good nutrition from oats, whole wheat flour, and blueberries.

After a couple of taste testers, the concensus seems to be that the blueberries could easily pass for raisins if they didn't know better, so feel free to use whichever you have/prefer.  But the cookies themselves came out great.  Not the most moist I've ever had, but I didn't miss the butter or extra sugar in a traditional recipe.  I think the quest may have to continue, though, for a more decadent version when I'm in need!

Blueberry Coconut Oatmeal Cookies

adapted from Sweet + Natural

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsweetened dried blueberries
3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and oats.  In a separate larger bowl, mix together oil, sugar, egg and vanilla.  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir until blended. Stir in blueberries and coconut.

Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes to make it easier to work with (it will be sticky if used right away).  Preheat oven to 350 when you put them into the fridge or whenever you are ready to bake.

Roll tablespoons into balls (I used my 1 tablespoon cookie scoop), flatten slightly and place on cookie sheet (note that these cookies do not spread at all, so make them into whatever shape you want your final cookie to be). Bake approximately 8 minutes until edges are just barely starting to brown.

Makes 24 small cookies

Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies - Try #2

So as promised, I finally found time to try Smitten Kitchen's oatmeal cookie recipe to see if they are as thick and chewy as promised.  I am a big fan of this blog (see broccoli slaw!), and had high hopes that this could be my perfect cookie.  Obviously I made some adjustments, as the original recipe is for oatmeal raisin, and I'm dreaming of the perfect oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookie.  First of all, I eliminated the cinnamon.  I also subbed chocolate chips for the raisins, and replaced 1/2 cup of oats with coconut (as opposed to just adding coconut) so that the cookie wouldn't dry out too much.  And finally, I make my cookies pretty small (so that I can eat more!), so I dropped the cooking time. 

And the verdict?  Much improved over the first attempt - they were indeed thick and chewy, even after cooling.  But they are still not quite as dense and rich as the cookies in my head.  If anyone out there has any ideas, please let me know!  I'm trying to figure out how to make those cookies that almost taste like raw dough even after they are cooked.

One real benefit to this recipe was chilling the dough - it meant I could make the dough during the munchkin's oh so brief nap, and have it waiting to scoop and bake for fresh cookies after dinner when I was exhausted!  In fact, I kept it in a container in the fridge and had hot cookies on 3 separate occasions this week.  It was just as convenient as store-bought packaged dough, but without all of the scary ingredients!  I love the idea of scooping and freezing to be able to keep these around even longer, too.  According to Deb, frozen dough only takes an extra couple of minutes to bake.

So overall I'd definitely recommend these, but I haven't quite finished my search for my dream recipe!

Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, softened
2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 teaspoon salt (original recipe calls for 1/4; Deb uses up to 1/2 tsp, so I decided to split the difference)
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the oats, coconut, and chocolate chips.

Chill the dough for at least 1 hour.  I loaded the whole batch into a storage container and put it in the fridge, but Deb also suggests scooping the dough onto a sheet and chilling the whole thing.  I definitely do not have room in my fridge for that, but if you do it might be worth it - the dough is a bit hard to scoop when chilled.  If you are going to freeze the dough, you will definitely want to scoop first!  If you skip the chilling step, your cookies will not be as thick.

The cookies should be 1-2 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet (the chilled cookies do not spread very much at all).  I used a 1 tbsp cookie scoop (approx 1 inch cookies), and my cookies needed to bake for 8-10 minutes.  Take them out when the edges and top are JUST starting to brown.  They may seem undercooked on top but will set up more out of the oven.  Let them sit for a few minutes before taking them off the baking sheet.  Theoretically they are supposed to finish cooling on a rack, but in my house this is the perfect time to start eating :)

Makes approximately 2.5-3 dozen small cookies

Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ok, so in my blog description I said that I'm passionate about healthy cooking, and yet my first post is for cookies - what gives?  Well, I should further explain what I mean by "healthy cooking":  as much as possible, I am committed to preparing foods that are organic, whole grain, and recognizable, with minimal proccessing and no trans fats, excess sodium, flavorings, or other chemicals.  That's not to say that everything I make comes from local organic farms, but I do obsessively read ingredient lists when buying packaged foods to look for the highest quality possible.  After all, I am a new mom in NYC - looking for convenience is a big part of my life!  So my goal is to prepare foods that are wholesome, nutritious, delicious, AND do not take hours and hours to prepare.  Because labor intensive foods will not get made in my house, and above all I think home cooked trumps take out or processed!

That being said, this weekend I had a craving for oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookies.  And they DO qualify as healthy cooking in my book - I can use almost entirely organic ingredients, they have whole grains in them, they can be on the plate quickly without any fancy equipment (my rule with baking is that it can't require a stand mixer, flour all over the place, or time to rise), and they are delicious!  After a quick web search, I found a recipe on a blog with the cutest title - Two Peas and Their Pod.  As it turns out I had every ingredient on hand except chocolate chips, so after the baby went to sleep, I left hubby in charge for a few minutes while I ran down to pick some up.  About an hour later, we had hot cookies!

And they were good, but did not quite live up to my expectations.  You see, in my mind these cookies were going to be dense, soft, and chewy, and this recipe produced cookies that are light and crisp.  If that sounds good to you, by all means check out the recipe below.  But for me, the quest for the perfect Oatmeal Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookie is still on.  Luckily, after just searching for chewy oatmeal cookies, I found a recipe on Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite food blogs!  The recipe doesn't have chocolate or coconut in it, but the description sounds like exactly what I am looking for.  I figure I can easily sub chocolate chips for raisins, and (hopefully) add some coconut without changing the texture too much from what Deb promises. 

In the mean time, the first batch is sitting happily in my freezer waiting to answer a dessert craving, but I'm looking forward to trying again...I will let you all know how it goes!

Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
from Two Peas and Their Pod

1 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl.

Cream together sugars and butter with a mixer. Add egg and vanilla and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes.  Add flour mixture and beat until combined.  Stir in oats and coconut, and then chocolate chips.

Shape to form 1 inch balls (I used a 1 tablespoon cookie scooper).  Place on ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart and bake 10-12 minutes or until tops are just golden. They will still be jiggly but will harden as they sit.

Makes approximately 40 cookies.