White Flour Substitute

So the time has come for the last of the cookie recipes in Chef Brad’s cookbook. It has been a great section to work through, as has this last recipe: Multi –Grain Cranberry Cookies, and they were good! They are not a thin or crispy cookie, rather they are very soft and moist! Also for having rice, millet, quinoa, spelt, brown rice, and barley, these cookies are very good. My sister is kind of a cookie snob…if she is going to eat a cookie she wants it to be sugary, buttery, and just like it was from a bakery. Needless to say, she stuck her nose up at the fact that it was “Multi-Grain” as she tends to do with all of Chef Brad’s recipes. She thinks that if its healthy than it’s not going to taste good. Well to be honest, I really enjoy proving her wrong and with this recipe I did just that! And if that wasn’t enough joy for me, the easiness of this recipe made me even more ecstatic!

 The night before making them you will want to cook your grains: Rice, Quinoa, and Millet. If you forget to do it the night before, Chef Brad says that you can do it two hours before making the cookies. I placed all three grains in my rice maker with water in a 1:2 ½ ratio of grain to water.

(On the picture in the right, the Quinoa is the the lighter grain at the bottom of the picture. The rice is the white on the right, and the millet is the yellow floating grain.)

The next afternoon I gathered the rest of my ingredients.

Cream together your molasses*, butter, and sugar. (*Chef Brad calls for barley malt syrup, which I have not been able to find so I found out that you can substitute in molasses for the barley malt syrup in a 1 cup barley malt syrup: 2/3 cup molasses ratio.)

Blend in your egg whites.

Add in all of your other ingredients.

Chef Brad says that the dough will be more like a batter; however I found that it was very much like a normal cookie dough. Scoop out your dough and place on your pan.

Bake for 6-8 minutes. I scooped mine with a bigger scoop, so I cooked mine for 12 minutes.

Let them cool down and enjoy! My family really enjoyed these cookies. They all said that the variety of grains made the cookie very enjoyable to eat because you could taste each of them individually.

So Until next time…

Now Chef Brad calls this recipe “DIVINE”, however I would call it “DISMAL!” In all fairness, I really only like Basil in very small amounts, so I felt like this recipe was reeking with basil. I love brownies and these have a wonderful texture and the frosting recipe that Chef Brad pairs with them IS really good! I really don’t want to dissuade any of you from trying this recipe – I like to say that I have a “Sophisticated Palate”, but my husband always loves to remind me that it can be confused with a “Picky Palate”. He may be right, but my original claim is what I still believe to be the right one. Anyways, there are many of you who probably who like, or even love basil! So on this one please don’t take my word for it. Try them and tell me what you think.

 Get all of your ingredients ready

Ever since the Carrot Cake Nightmare, I don’t ever know what size of pan to use so I keep about three around, just for safe measure! With this one I halved the recipe and greased a 9×13, and VOILA, it fit! Get your pan and grease it with butter and set it aside.

 Next melt your butter and chocolate chips in a bowl.

Whisk your eggs and vanilla together then temper into your chocolate, butter mixture.

Just a side note- the mixture will be greasy looking, thick and lumpy, but that is okay – don’t panic just keep going!

 Chop up your basil

Add all other ingredients and combine.

Scoop your mixture out into your greased pan. It will be thick and you will need to spread it in the pan.

Chef Brad says to bake for 50 minutes. However, because I did a half batch I cooked it for 35-40 minutes, so just keep an eye on your batch when you bake them.

Let them cool while you make your frosting.

Melt your butter and chocolate chips together

Now mix your cream cheese, vanilla, and Pero with your melted mixture until smooth.

Spread over your cooled brownies and taste them- let me know how you liked them!

So until next time…

*****SIDE NOTE: Just so you all know, I didn’t forget about, or give up on any of you! I’ve had some major computer problems, and unfortunately they happened after I put all my blog stuff on it. And of course I didn’t have it backed up anywhere. I’m going to try to do my best to add many more recipes, but with the holidays upon us, we will see how it all pans out. So please don’t give up on me yet!*****

Now I have been waiting to write this blog so that I could have a chance to cool down before I posted harsh words out in the universe for everyone to read…So where do I start? Well I guess i’ll start at the very beginning …(A very good place to start). I started like I always had, by gathering my ingredients.

I chose to use coconut oil, which is the little jar in the picture. I then mixed my eggs, sugar, coconut oil and butter. Seeing how this recipe made my blood boil, it has to start somewhere so here I go. While this first mishap is completely my fault, it still didn’t make for a great start!

I needed the oil to be in its liquid form. So after I heated it up and was removing it from the microwave, it slipped right out of my hands! SPLOOSH- EVERYWHERE!! All over the stove, the counter, my FAVORITE TABLE CLOTH!! (That’s going to be fun to wash out…If it ever does!) My hubby told me just to by a new one, and he is probably right but man I loved that table cloth! It also went down the front of the drawers, all over my shirt, oh and not to mention all over my camera!

So after cleaning that mess up, I finally got back to my cake. I got some more oil and held on to the container very tightly this time.

Next I mixed in salt, soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla, crushed pineapple, grated apples, coconut, mashed/cooked carrots, and Wonderflour.

Here is where it starts to get HAIRY… this cake mixture was basically overflowing in the mixing bowl, which is annoying! You have to keep stopping the mixture and scraping down the sides. Anyways, so now I am stuck with what to cook the batter in. All that Chef Brad tells you in the recipe is to grease a “large pan”. Well what the heck does that mean? So I tried a 9×13 but that was not going to work. At that point I should have known just to split the batter between pans, but I thought, “Hey Chef Brad did it why can’t I?”. Well lets just say Chef Brad must have GINORMOUS pans because after the 9X13 was too small, I thought maybe I should try a jelly roll pan. Low and behold…IT FIT! As I was placing it in the oven, the thought crossed my mind, “What if it expands? Nah maybe it will be like Texas sheet cake.” So I cooked it, and about 30 minutes later I smelt a nice burning of clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon…I jumped up thinking I over cooked the cake. WRONG!

It was over flowing into my oven. At that point I just threw my hands up and called an end to baking for the day! My kitchen smelt awful, I had congealed coconut oil everywhere still, no carrot cake for dinner that night, and I still had to clean out my oven!

Well I haven’t tried my hand again at the carrot cake, so I’m begging any of you to give it a try and pass on how it turned out.

So until Next time…

I have really enjoyed all of Chef Brad’s drink recipes, and this one is no different! This time we made Fresh Fruit Lemonade. You can make whatever flavor (or flavors) you wish, so I made peach strawberry lemonade and it was fantastic! Like always it is SUPER quick to make.

 Gather your ingredients…(All 3 – well in my case 4) but that will just depend on what fruit you choose to use.

First of all you will want to juice your lemons. You are going to need a full cup as well as the zest of two lemons. Two lemons didn’t give me enough juice, I had to do three. Just keep that in mind when buying your lemons.

You will also use 2 cups of puréed fruit. In my case I used 1 cup of strawberries and 1 cup of peaches. Place all of your ingredients into the pitcher, or blender if you need to puree them.

Pour into a pitcher and add some cold water and ice to fill.

Let it chill and serve!

Until Next Time…

As you know from my previous blogs, I have no problem with saying when I don’t like one of these recipes…Well, I DID NOT like these muffins at all and neither did my husband! (That was a big sign to me that something might be wrong because he eats ANYTHING!) I’m not trying to be negative, but I honestly thought they were extremely bland. My husband took one bite and then he tossed the rest of the muffin in the trash can, which is where the rest of batch landed as well. Usually I take the extras to work or send them with my husband to share with his coworkers, but not this time. I would highly suggest that you stick with the Master Muffin Formula. It was much much better all around, and they just tasted so much better. I guess that is why Chef Brad calls it his “Master Muffin Formula”. But just in case you want to give this muffin mix a try, here is how to begin…

 You guessed it! Gather your ingredients.

Mix your butter, eggs, and vanilla in the mixture.

Now add in your WonderFlour, Nutmeg, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and Salt.

Now gently add in your Buttermilk.

And your heaping cup of white sugar.

Scoop your batter into your greased tin.

Bake for 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

 Remove from the oven and give them a try (I would suggest a lot of butter and jam!)

So until next time…