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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Chocolate-Cranberry Otameal Cookies

The more practiced I get with oil-free baking, the more of a feel I get for which ingredients (and how much) make good substitutions. Take the "Chocolate-Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies" (Page 431), for instance. In the past if I saw a recipe that called for ½ cup margarine, I would probably skip over it altogether, believing I wouldn't be able to make tasty cookies without the margarine. Now, I enjoy the challenge! The instructions in this recipe say to cream the margarine, sugar, and apple juice together. My work around for this was to take one large banana (you want at least half a cup, maybe a little more), the sugar, and ½ cup of applesauce and blend them in my Vitamix blender (any blender would work). I followed the rest of the directions as written at this point, increasing the amount of flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour) just a tad as the dough didn't seem quite sticky enough. These cookies were delicious, and although still a rich food that should be reserved for special occasions, I felt that they were made much healthier by my adaptations.

Keeping it "McDougall Friendly" checklist:

  • Omit the margarine and apple juice, following my instructions above for using  bananas and applesauce instead, blending with the sugar.
  • Use whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose (white) flour.

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