my test kitchen results!

Some of you may know that while I love to "cook", am pretty decent at it and never use recipes, I CAN'T BAKE worth a darn!  Sure, I can follow recipes for cakes and cookies, etc and have acceptable results but at the very core I have never understood how baking ingredients work together and cannot veer away from a recipe when it comes to doughs or pastry crusts.  I really envy those of you who can.


Well, I've done it!  The following recipe has been tweaked for about a year in order to get all the ingredients I wanted in there, specifically incorporating soy, flax, wheat germ and oats while subtracting basic white flour down to the bare minimum that still works in a cookie.  It was loosely based on my mom's wheat germ choc chip cookies she has made forever, yum!  


Welcome to my new, relatively healthy (there's still butter & sugar in there) cookie recipe.  I need a name, I'm thinking "Hippie Cookies" since there's a lot of good stuff in there, hubby loves them and he's from Oregon, and well - you know those Oregonians......  :)


If any of you decide to make these be forewarned that they have a definite nutty flax taste to them so if you don't like that you can omit it and replace with the same amount of wheat germ or oats.  Most of the sweet tooth craving is gained by the dark chocolate chips.  They stay chewy and freeze well also.

Guiltless Hippie Cookies

Ingredients

1/2 c. soft butter

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 c. regular flour

1/4 c. soy flour  (I was able to get an extra 1/4 c. in there for a total of 1/2 c. but wait til the end to see if your dough ball is moist enough to allow you to get away with it)

1/2 c. oats

1/3 c. flax

3/4 c. dark chocolate chips

Instructions:

1.  mix butter & sugars to cream consistency

2.  add egg & vanilla and mix into sugars

3.  mix in wheat germ, baking powder, flours, salt

4.  stir in oats & dark chocolate chips

5.  drop by spoonful onto cookie sheet and bake 350º approx 15 mins (my oven is electric so adjust as needed)

* makes 3 dozen cookies

I would have loved to not use any white flour but a certain ratio has to be met so they will rise and "cookie up", for lack of a better phrase!  If any of you super bakers can improve on it, let me know - but these are delicious, not too sweet, and perfect for satisfying a sweet tooth without guilt.  There also a heck of a lot better for kids' lunches than those pre-packaged sweet things some kids take to school!