Tag: chocolate

Sweet, Sweet Sunday

Dark Chocolate…The How

Christy

 

Sweet, Sweet Sunday

Choosing Chocolate Chock-full of Nutrition

Christy
Sweet, Sweet Sunday

Dark Chocolate…The Why

Christy

Dark chocolate, especially any 70% dark chocolate or higher, contains many nutrients—such as antioxidants, fiber, potassium, calcium, copper, iron, zinc, and magnesium that may help lower your risk of heart disease, reduce inflammation and insulin resistance, and improve brain function, alleviate stress, and lower your risk of diabetes.

Sweet, Sweet Sunday

Dark Chocolate…The What

Christy

In our quest to add more antioxidants to our diet, we havec talked about alfalfa sprouts… blackberries…broccoli…and corn…

…all of which may not seem very appoealing…

But there is one source of antioxidants that we can probably all warm up to…

Chocolate…

Specifically dark chocolate…

People have been enjoying chocolate for about four thousand years…starting in Central America by the Mayan population who enjoyed the chocolate as a fermented beverage that was mixed with spices or wine and had a bitter taste. These people used the chocolate beverage for ceremonial and medicinal purposes.

Chocolate was brought back to Europe from these groups of people in the early 1500s by Spanish explorers…and the Europeans soon started adding honey and cane sugar to to make the bitter chocolate sweeter.

.But where does chocolate come from?

Actually chocolate is deived from the the seeds of a cacao pod….which are fermented, dried, and roasted. After this process the shells of the beans are separated from the inside of the cocoa bean and then ground into a liquid called chocolate liquor…which is then processed further to produce cocoa solids.

There are basically three different types of chocolate…

  • Milk Chocolate
  • White Chocolate
  • Dark Chocolate

All chocolate contains the chocolate liquor mentioned above…as well as perhaps additional cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, and flavoring…what makes them different is the milk content.

Milk chocolate contains 10-50% cocoa solids,

White chocolate does not contain any cocoa solids at all and simply consists of cocoa butter, sugar, and milk.

Dark chocolate usually refers to chocolate that doesn’t contain milk.

For decades most people ate only milk chocolate…but as dark chocolate has been noted as having health benefits. this decadent and delicious treat has become more mainstream.

Speaking of the health benefits of dark chocolate, let’s take a closer look…

Sweet, Sweet Sunday

Making the Perfect Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Christy

Last week two important things happened in the lives of our family.

First of all, the “resident five year old” started real school…

…and we bought and moved into a new house.

 

 

So for a while instead of focusing so much on the raw foods pyramid…or cooking methods…or any of the other tangents that I have taken in the last few months, I have decided to make this blog more personal by studying those things that are most important at this stage in my life—such as home organization…school lunches…breakfast foodsz…setting up a command center and so forth for a while…blogging about those things that are really the most ijportant in my life at that point.

 

So first I wanted to start talking about making the perfect lunch for your kids…lunches that they look forward to eating…and that everyone else wants to swap things for…

Most of us have been making oatmeal cookies for years, but do we know how to make the perfect oatmeal cookies…ones that we would want to pass down the recipe for to our grandchildren so that they can teacher it to their grandchildren and so on for generation after generation

 

 

The perfect oarmeal cookies are super soft, thick, and chewy… loaded  with oats and perhaps some of your other favorite ingredients such as raisins and chocolate chips…soft, moist, and tender in the centers…slightly crisp on the edges..have a  delicious cinnamony, buttery flavor…and go great with a huge glass of milk.

This recipe is very simple…and probably one of the few that any of us have memorized by heart…but let’s talk about it anyway…

 

 

 

 

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Wet Ingredients

  • 1/2C  + 6Tbsp butter, at room temperature…butter is the base of any delicious cookie recipe. Let butter soften to room temp before using…honestly, I hardly ever do this…i just cut mine into little bitty pieces, but don’t tell anyone…
  • 3/4C brown sugar and 1/2C sugar...Sugar not only makes your cookies  sweet, but also provides structure and tenderness.  The cookies taste much better if you use brown sugar instead of simply plain sugar because brown sugar adds incredible flavor…contains more moisture than white, making your cookies turn out softer than they would be otherwise…
  • 2 large eggs...Eggs help bind everything together…and once again, experts will tell you that room temperature eggs are preferred….if I didn’t bother to bring my butter to room temp, my eggs probably won’t be there either, right?!
  • 1tsp vanilla

Cream together sugar, brown sugar and softened butter for 2min on medium speed of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachmen…until creamy and smooth.

Add eggs and vanilla.

Mix on high 1min, scraping down sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.

 

 

 

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Dry Ingredients

Whisk together the following dry ingredients in another bowl….

  • 1-1/2C flour.…(When measuring your flour, do not scoop it out of the container with the measuring cup. Instead, stir the flour around, spoon it into your measuring cup, and level it off with the back of a knife)…
  • 1tsp baking soda…
  • 1tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2tsp salt

 

 

 

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Combining the Two

Slowly add the dry ingredients into the butter-sugar mixture. Mix on low until combined.

 

 

 

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 Oars/Optional Ingredients

Oats…Use old-fashioned rolled oats instead of quick-cooking rolled oats for chewier cookies.

Optional Ingredients…For added flavor, use about 1C of any of the following…

  • Chocolate Chips
  • Craisins
  • Dried Fruit…Think outside the raisin box when it comes to dried fruit. Experiment with other options—such as chopped dried apricots, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, dates, figs, or mixed fruit bits
  • M&M’s/ Reese’s Pieces/ …
  • Nuts—such as chopped walnuts.
  • Raisins…(soaking the raisins in warm water for about 10min before using them will make sure that the are nice, plump ,and soft when you finish making your cookies..
  • White Chocolate Chips

Add oats and whatever optional ingredients you are using. Stir the oats and raisins…either do this by hand or on the lowest speed of your mixer so that you won’t end up smooshing it all together into one big unrecognizable blob.

 

 

 

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Chill

If you’re like me, now that you’ve made the batter, you definitely do not want to stick around for at least thirty minutes while the dough chills before throwing them into the oven and then into a glass of milk.

I have finally figured out that if I make the dough very late at night, I am more than likely to want to stay up waiting for cookies to bake…and I have some deliciously warm homemade oatmeal cookies for breakfast the next morning.

So why even bother “chilling” them?…and how long?

Refrigerating the dough now that you have finished making it will…

  • allow the flavors to “marry” together, combine, and deepen
  • cause the dough to get a little richer
  • help the cookies to bake up thicker
  • keep the cookies from spreading out too much
  • make the center of the cookie softer
  • make the edges of your cookies crispier

You can chill your dough for any amount of time from about 30min up to 2 days.

If you are chilling the cookies overnight like I do, then let the dough sit out on the counter for about 30min before you start baking them.

 

 

 

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Shaping

Spray cookie sheets with cooking spray…or line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Use a 1.5-2Tbsp cookie scoop to scoop spoonfuls of the cookie dough onto a baking sheet,

If the dough it too hard to work with using a cookie scoop…or you don’t have one…or you can’t find yours…or you simply want to…you could also roll the dough into balls.

If forming into ball by hand, pack the balls lightly…instead of smooshing it all into one compact unit. If the ball are too dense, the cookies will not spread out at all.

Leave about 2″ space between each ball of dough because the balls of dough will obviously spread out a little while they bake.

Regardless of how you got your dough onto the cookie sheet, now gently flatten each ball of dough before throwing it into the oven.

 

 

 

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Baking

Heat oven to 375°F.
Bake for about ten minutes…until lightly browned on the sides…and the centers appear very light in color, soft and undone.
Be careful not to over-bake these cookies…at this point, the cookies may seem underdone, but they continue to cook as they cool.

 

Remove from the oven.

Leave the cookies on the cookie sheet for about five minutes.

Transfer the cookies, using a metal spatula, from the cookie sheets to a wire rack to  finish cooling completely.

 

 

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Storing

The baked oatmeal cookies will stay fresh, as long as they stay covered in an airtight container, at room temperature for up to a week.

 

 

 

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Freezing/Making Ahead

You can also freeze your baked cookies up to three months.

Make the cookiers as normal, but instead of chilling and baking them, shape them and then flash freeze the entire cookie sheet. Once frozen, transfer individual cookies to a freezer bag or container.

Whenever you start craving oatmeal cookies, simply take out as many as you need…allow them to sit at room temp for about five minutes…and then bake.

Another option would be to go ahead and bake and let them cool completely before placing them in a zip-top bag. These cookies will stay ready for you to eat within the next 30 days.