There are phases I go through in my cooking life. The current one constitutes of finding ways to turn my baking adventures to less calorigenic. That endeavour unfortunately involves a little bit of kitchen upgrade and fishing out a bit more money in lieu for greater health benefits. Now this has an elitist aspect to it, but I also believe that most of the people who find their way onto this page are fancy enough to want to make cookies and hence can afford to buy the ingredients for the occasional indulgence. With that assumption in mind, let’s proceed.
If you want to use the walnuts into more decadent desserts, check out my recipe on Walnut Brownies.
Note: The instructions may seem to consists of unusually long sentences if you’re one of those who just skim articles to find the actual recipe (I am one of those too). But have a little patience, and I promise to humour you! In case you’re still not convinced, the words in bold should be an easy way out.
INGREDIENTS:
- 2 1/2 cups almond flour
- 1/2 cup AP flour (preferably unbleached)
- 1 cup raw sugar (or granulated brown sugar)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 eggs at room temperature
- 3 tablespoons butter, softened
- 6-7 tablespoons honey
- A pinch of cinnamon
- Chocolate chips
- Chopped walnuts
INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1
Let’s talk about different flours for a bit to increase your general baking knowledge. Ever wonder why most cookies are usually made of AP flour? Sure, it’s the least expensive one. But it also contains gluten – an essential ingredient for holding together the cookie dough. Nut flours, almond flour in particular here, is gluten-free. Hence it needs additional binding agents. An easier way to achieve this is just by a simple mix! Of course, if you have the Celiac disease, you can’t afford to do this. Otherwise, you can mix 2 and half cups of almond flour with half a cup of the regular all-purpose flour to get a healthy balance. Try to get the unbleahed flour, because hey, healthy!
Step 2
I have mentioned this in my previous post on Banana Oat Waffles and I shall reiterate it here : Mix your dry and wet ingredients separately! The dry ingredients here include the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon. Give a little whisk so it is all even and uniformly spread.
Step 3
Why is sugar not included in the dry ingredients, you wonder? Since we are using butter in this recipe, we need to first cream it. First step? Soften your butter, but don’t be a fool to melt it. Next, cream it. Creaming butter incorporates air into it. The sugar, when creamed together with the butter help to cut out small air pockets in the butter to hold the air. These air pockets, by trapping gases, help cookies rise gloriously inside the oven. Fun, right?
So cream your butter and sugar together and proceed.
Step 4
Remember what I mentioned 2 paragraphs ago about almond flour and binding agents? Egg is an excellent binding agent, as the proteins help to bind together the ingredients. For vegetarians/vegans, fret not! Flax and chia eggs do the job just fine (or so they say). Carnivores, crack those bad boys one at a time into the wet mixture. While you’re at it, add the other binding agent too – honey.
To summarize, time to add the eggs and honey into the creamy butter+sugar.
Step 5
Now fold in the dry ingredients into the wet in batches, making sure you don’t splash flour all over yourself. As you do so, you should start to see the batter thicken up. If by the time your flour is depleted the mixture is still runny, you have done something terribly wrong and you might have to discard off your entire batter! Hopefully not.
- If your batter is too runny, add in some extra flour.
- If your batter is too thick (it should be on the thiccer..err thicker side), add an egg or few drops of milk of your choice.
The usual is to make chocolate chip cookies, but trust me, adding the walnuts adds SO much flavoour and texture to these cookies! The nut crunch mixed with the dark chocolate chips is everything you need to uplift a bad day. Add the chocolate chips and chopped walnuts (size as per your liking, but I advice keeping it smaller) last into the mixture.
Step 6
I know the amount of effort it takes to stop yourself and your friends from finishing off the cookie dough, but resist the temptation and you shall be rewarded well.
Another baking basics: When you’re making cookies, use a parchment paper for easy removal of the cookies. Otherwise, spray your baking tray with sufficient butter such that the cookies don’t stick to the surface and you won’t have to bite it off the tray directly.
When putting the dough onto the tray – there’s 3 ways to do it:
1. Just grab a handful and put it there, as is.
2. Make into nice round balls.
3. Make into nice round balls and flatten it a bit to give it the typical cookie shape.
Things to keep in mind : The cookies will flatten out a bit as they cook, although thanks to the almond flour the flattening is much less compared to cookies made of solely all-purpose flour.
Step 7
After you’ve selected the shape of the cookies you desire to photograph, put them in the oven for 12 mins at 350F. You gotta choose now – crispy cookies or chewy cookies? I invariably choose the former, thanks to my colonization mindset (biscuits and the British, silly!). So I leave the cookies in a bit longer, around 14-15 minutes, till I see the edges browning up.
At this point, the cookies might still be very soft, but that’s the fun thing about cookies. They harden up once they are left out to cool, which YOU MUST! The science behind it is simple – as you leave it out longer, the trapped moisture in the cookies evaporate from the flour.
Step 8
The final step is the hardest of all: How to stop yourself from finishing these off in 10 minutes?
Easy, don’t. Gorge on these because guess what, they’re healthy too!
খুকি এবার আঁতেল কুকি বানিয়ে দেখাও।
Sheta ki kore banay ekhono sekha baki.