Healthy(ish) Christmas Cookies: Part 1

One of my favorite Christmas cookies is a recipe my grandma used to make every year. She called them Christmas Nut Balls and they are a simple combination of chocolate, nuts and plenty of sugar.

The thing is, I'd like to say, oh it's Christmastime, eat whatever, 'tis the season blah blah blah. But Max and I are going to Puerto Rico in a few weeks! So I'm really extra not interested in gaining holiday weight. And anyway, I've been cooking so much healthy stuff for us the past year, I'm just going to convert my favorite cookie recipes to something I'm willing to actually eat! Not that they'll be low fat or actually turn into magical health food, but... Anyway, here was the 3 step process I used to convert the recipe.

1. Replace. Whole grain flours replaced 100% of the white flour in this recipe. I just guessed with the spelt flour but it totally worked. And I replaced all of the brown sugar with pure maple syrup. The original recipe was always a little too dry so this 1:1 substitution actually improved things.

2. Eliminate. I cut the amount of white sugar and chocolate chips in half because there was enough sweetness in this recipe. Why overdo it?

3. Add value. I added fresh, healthy cranberries.

My grandma's Christmas Nut Ball have now successfully morphed into:
Christmas Cranberry Nut Balls
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
6 oz. organic chocolate chips
6 oz. fresh cranberries, chopped
1 1/2 cups organic butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup pure organic maple syrup
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 cups spelt flour
about 1/3 cup organic cane sugar or other granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Let butter softened in large mixing bowl.
Add maple syrup and vanilla, blend well. Mix in flours, one cup at a
time. Add chocolate chips, pecans and cranberries. At this point I
usuallly use my hands to mix everything evenly. Roll dough into small
balls, about 1" in diameter. Bake for 45 minutes on ungreased cookie
sheets. When cool, roll tops of cookies into a small bowl of
granulated sugar to coat.

I'm entering these into The Nourishing Gourmet's Nourishing Sweets and Treats Carnival and Food Blogga's Eat Christmas Cookies (enter here).

Healthy(ish) Christmas Cookies: Part 2

Moving on to another of my grandma's recipes! Her Italian Sesame Seed Cookies always had a really understated elegance. It's as if to say, who needs chocolate? Who needs icing? They sort of fall in that Stella D'oro category of cookies that seem perfectly acceptable for breakfast and are excellent with a cup of coffee. (And when I say coffee I mean organic green tea...ok, maybe coffee but just 1 cup!)

Following my patented (not really) 3-step method I converted this white sugar/white flour recipe to something that tastes even better and feels like real food:

1. Replace. Instead of 3 cups of white flour, I used 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 cup of rye flour. The wheat flour is necessary for gluten. I think. I'm no scientist. The rye flour I thought would complement the seed theme. Mostly it was a guess. As for sugar, I ditched white sugar for a combination of raw unfiltered honey and date sugar. (The date sugar was a surprising and happy find – pure ground dates!) Then, the baking soda became aluminum free and the eggs organic/free range. Finally, instead of regular sesame seeds I chose the unhulled variety for extra fiber. So lots of replacements here.

2. Eliminate. I got rid of 100% of the white sugar and flour in this recipe. Enough said!

3. Add value. I added poppy, chia and caraway seeds. Together these seeds are a powerhouse of calcium, copper, manganese, zinc, fiber and more. I'm sorry, what was that? Calcium in a non-dairy product? YES, yes that's right.

They came out fantastic. Reminiscent of my grandma's cookies, absolutely. But with way more full bodied flavor from all of the quality ingredients. I'm in love.

Toothdigger Seed Cookies
Considering all the seeds, you should have floss handy :-)
1 cup unsalted organic butter, softened
1/2 cup raw unfiltered honey
1/2 cup date sugar
2 organic eggs
1 tsp. organic vanilla extract
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1 cup rye flour
1 cup of seeds, poured into a shallow bowl (Combination is up to you, I had a mixture of unhulled sesame, poppy, chia and caraway)

Cream together butter, honey, and date sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add flour and baking powder. Blend to create dough. Shape with hands into 1.5" long log shapes, about 1/2" wide. Roll cookies in seeds. Bake 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees until lightly browned.

I'm entering these into Food Blogga's Eat Christmas Cookies (enter here).

Healthy(ish) Christmas Cookies: Part 3

'Twas two nights before Christmas and I just finished assembling my final recipe redo of the year. I'll be bringing all of my Christmas cookies down to the fam on Thursday so we'll see how everyone appreciates (?) these new takes on my grandma's classic cookies.

So finally we come to the simple butter cookie. My grandma would use her cookie gun to create shapes, then match them together as sandwiches filled with jelly. Then the sandwiches were dipped into chocolate and sprinkles and were just delicious and super professional looking. At least I always thought so!

My recipe conversion went like this:

1. Replace. White flour got the boot in favor of whole wheat pastry and spelt flour. Goodbye margarine and white sugar, hello organic butter, maple syrup and Sucanat. And instead of the notion that if you are 'just baking with it' to get the cheapest ingredients, I got quality plum fruit spread sweetened only with fruit juice.

2. Eliminate. Since there's plenty of sugar in the recipe I simply ditched the chocolate and sprinkles. If I were catering more towards kids I would have kept it, but for me this time of year, cookies tend to be breakfast so I went chocolate-free.

3. Add value. In perhaps my trickiest move yet, I mixed ground flax seed into the plum spread. You can't even tell it's there but your colon can. I mean, in a good way.

Perhaps a bit plain, these are still stunning because of my grandmother's hardworking cookie gun I'm lucky enough to have snagged.



Butter Cookie Sandwiches
1 lb. butter
1/2 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup Sucanat (a non-refined cane sugar)
2 organic/free range eggs
2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 cups spelt flour
1 tsp. aluminum free baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1-2 cups naturally sweetened fruit spread of your choice
5 Tbl. ground flax seed

Cream butter with sugar in a large bowl. Add maple syrup, eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Add all dry ingredients and blend. Use cookie gun to create shapes on cookie sheets. You may need to bake in two batches as this recipe made enough to fill two sheets twice. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. They are thin and can burn easily to keep a close eye on 'em! Let cool on baking racks. In a bowl, mix fruit spread with flax seed. When cool, assemble into sandwiches with a small amount of fruit between the butter cookies.

Happy, healthy holidays to everyone!

Cookies for Breakfast

I think my mom let me buy a box of this stuff once as a kid. Oh, heavenly cookies for breakfast! When Christmas rolled around I also got to eat cookies in the morning, since as my mom put it, she made them and there was nothing bad in them. I assume she meant preservatives and had a memory lapse about the sugar.

Cookies for breakfast still sounds like a great idea though, IF it wouldn't put me into a hypoglycemic fit within minutes. Enter Delicious Wisdom and her delicious idea for making whole grain cookies specifically and nutritionally for breakfast. Awesome.

I like cookies for breakfast

I like cookies for breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunchtime treat, before dinner snack, dessert with tea...

It's a problem.

After a long bus ride down to NYC last weekend I wanted a little something and ended up eating a cookie from Starbucks. I wish I hadn't. Sugar before bed stinks and I'm convinced that it's the white/cornsyrupy sugar things that make my gums flare up. I've got these gums that just want to recede and I don't know why. Sometimes they get all red and pissed off, threatening their retreat. Have you ever had a gum graft done? I'd like to avoid this in the future. Send me your gum-health secrets. Um, if those exist?

But I digress.

After my moderate success with christmas baking and the more recent Apple Clusters, I've decided a good cookbook I should write someday will be called Cookies for Breakfast. And all the recipes would be healthy enough that you could eat 'em first thing in the morning and not feel too guilty. What do you think?

If I'm going to make cookies into a food group, they'd better be healthy. So this version uses whole grains AND whole grain flour, fruit AND vegetables. Whoa.

Sweet Potato, Apple and Banana Cookies
1/4 cup millet
3 Tbl. butter
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
3/4 cup Sweet Potato Apple Spread
(see recipe within this post)
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbl. ground flax seed
1 banana, sliced fine
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Add 1 cup of water to millet in a small saucepan. (Why don't recipes ever say "in a pot"? It's always a "saucepan") Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer until millet has absorbed all the water, about 15 minutes. In a large mixing bowl combine all wet ingredients. Add flour 1 cup at a time, then baking powder, flax and salt. Mix to combine. Fold in banana, raisins and choc chips. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, until browned.

Stealthy Healthy Holidays

All in favor of traditional holiday fare, raise your hand. Ok, put it down so you can keep scrolling with your mouse. I feel the same way about Christmas dinner, but this year I also felt guilt. Picture it. You've got appetizers full of antibiotic-laden cheese, plates of hormone-pumped poultry, genetically modified vegetables, and sugar cookies poisoning everyone right before your eyes. This is what I feed my LOVED ones?

I found myself walking the spectrum of idiot to zealot, before landing on a compromise to be merry, merry sneaky.

Hence, the organic green beans with orange, dill, and...ground flaxseeds that looked like pepper or sesame seeds or whatever the family wanted to think they were!

My mom's roasted butternut squash with cranberries, onions and...quinoa! It looked like stuffing and no one knew the difference.

And in a leap of faith we tried a quinoa/nut loaf with garden gravy instead of meatloaf. Delicious, satisfying, and perfect with regular mashed potatotes to even the compromise.

This book is full of awesome vegetarian recipes and gets a shout-out for helping us so much this holiday. 3 Bowls : Vegetarian Recipes from an American Zen Buddhist Monastery