Satisfying My Sweet Tooth
I think a good baker knows why each ingredient goes in the recipe. The purpose of the baking soda and the vanilla. The importance of the dry and wet ingredient ratio. I however am not a good baker. I am pretty sure eggs hold things together. And it’s common sense that there’s got to be both dry and wet ingredients. That’s all I’ve got.
I can follow a recipe like a champ as long as I’m not distracted and actually pay attention which is about 50% of the time. I recently found a cookbook and we’ve been eating very well… I’m becoming a straight-up Rachael Ray in the kitchen. Alright… that’s an exaggeration. Rachael Ray is to me like Gru is to the Minions… without the goal of becoming an internationally recognized master criminal of course.
Recipes are good for me and good for my family. But sometimes I go off the tracks.
Today I have been craving cookies or muffins or cupcakes or SOMETHING like that. I prefer organic food. I don’t eat processed food or refined sugar or gluten or dairy or blah blah blah… making it very difficult to just go grab something at the store. So alas… I got home from work, stripped out of my very cute outfit, put on sweats and my trusty Las Vegas hoodie and planned on throwing together some cookies. Or cookie bars. Or muffin cupcakes. Or I guess we’ll just see what happens!!
This has become a challenge. I am not going to look at a recipe for any guidelines; not on how much flour to use or what temperature to bake at or how long they should be in the oven. This could be a wasteful mistake or an incredibly satisfying success.
I remember mixing wet and dry ingredients separate and then combining. I think it’s possibly been years since I’ve made cookies! Oven is preheating to 350 degrees. How am I doing so far?
Wet ingredients… let’s go with half of a ripe mashed banana for sweetness. One egg. Vanilla… every cookie has vanilla, right? Let’s go with a teaspoon. *My son is currently making a sad face at the ingredients on the counter. I think he got excited that I was making cookies… then quickly became quite disappointed.* What other wet ingredients go in cookies? I feel like I am missing something. Oil? Let’s go with a tablespoon of coconut oil.
Dry ingredients… 1/4 cup chopped dried apples and 1/4ish cup chopped dried cherries…. hmmmm…. moving those to the wet ingredient bowl. That took way too long chopping this stuff. If this concoction isn’t dang amazing, the chopping time itself will deter me from doing this again. 2/3 cups coconut flour. Almost dropped a tablespoon of baking soda… changed my mind… going with a 1/2 tsp. What does baking soda do? I know I’ve known this before. One Tablespoon coconut sugar. 1/4 cup coconut flakes. A pinch of Himalayan salt… maybe a dash. Why the heck do we put salt in our sweet cookies?
After mixing the dry and the wet… I am finding it too dry. I added one egg white. Why an egg white, you ask? I don’t know. Now it feels like I’m making fancy cookies.
My batch made 15 cute little round dough balls. Into the oven… let’s start with 10 minutes. Ooooh this is exciting!!
Timer goes off. You know how Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies flatten and spread and become soft and gooey and irresistible? That’s not happening. The little round balls are still little round balls. Five more minutes.
The five minutes pass and they are still little round balls. I bet I should have added more coconut oil. They are beginning to brown on the top, so they’re as done as they’re going to get.
So how did they turn out? Drumroll please…
Not bad! The banana and the dried cherries definitely carry the flavor. They are like round, dry muffins. Well, that sounds appealing. Do I plan to replicate the recipe for the church potluck in a couple of weeks? No. Will I ever make them again? Most likely not. Was this super fun and random and is my sweet tooth satisfied? Yes. Will I do some random made-up recipe again? Absolutely.
The best part of my baking experiment? The hubby made dinner because I was busy baking. Yessssss.
