dinner with Julie

(Lower-Fat) Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve had a preoccupation with chocolate chip cookies lately. I think I’ve been missing them. It’s been far too long.

This fixation led to near-constant daydreaming this week about David Leite’s quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie in the New York Times last year, and how he had come to the conclusion that refrigerating the dough for 24-36 hours before baking it improved their flavour and texture. More to the point was the fact that I hadn’t gotten around to trying them myself yet. I was mid-thought when I sat down to check out some of my favourite food blogs, and found Shauna had created a gluten-free version of the very same. A clear sign if ever one was presented to me.

But when I got to my mixing bowl this afternoon, printed-out recipe and softened pound of butter in hand, I couldn’t bring myself to start with a cup and a quarter of it.

And then – duh – this is not what I’m all about, is it? I sometimes forget. (Too often lately it seems.) Yes, it’s easy to make delicious cookies out of the better half of a pound of butter and twice as much sugar; easier even to eat far too many of them. I can make low fat versions of stuff like this that are pretty fantastic. I wonder if time spent in the fridge would improve them too?

So I made a batch of my old standbys, which I haven’t made in ages. I always add a bit of Roger’s Golden Syrup, honey or corn syrup to my cookie dough (the low-fat kind, anyway), to add a bit of moisture and to speed up the browning action. (Syrups brown more quickly than sugar.) People tend to want their cookies to be beautifully golden all the way through, and by doing so overbake them in order to get there, and then when they cool down and firm up, they aren’t chewy anymore. You almost need to underbake chocolate chip cookies, much like brownies. (Which has been running a close second to cookies in my brain’s porn channel lineup.)

And since I am currently in a maple mood (my breakfast of choice this past month has been homemade or Highwood Crossing granola with frozen wild blueberries and plain Bles-Wold yogurt, sprinkled with a little of Manon’s maple sugar), as I made the dough I pondered a maple version, made using maple syrup instead, and white chocolate chunks. And maybe pecans. Or toasted walnuts. That’s it – Maple Walnut White Chocolate Chunk Cookies. They wouldn’t have quite filled the proper void tonight, but I am so making them tomorrow. Hell, I might not even get through tonight without mixing up a batch.

Meanwhile, here’s a low fat chocolate chip cookie recipe. (Of course to be considered low fat in Canada a product must contain 3 grams of fat or less per serving, but these contain considerably less fat than a traditional recipe – only 1/4 cup, as opposed to a cup or so. And just look at them! Low-er fat.)

I baked half the dough tonight, and saved half for tomorrow night or Monday – I’ll let you know the results of the aging process then. In theory it should work with any dough.

Much-Lower-Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies

The biggest problem people run into when baking chewy chocolate chip cookies is overbaking – if they are golden all over when they come out of the oven, they won’t be chewy once they cool down. Because they firm up as they cool, make sure they are golden and set around the edges, but still very soft in the middle, if you want chewy cookies.

1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
2 Tbsp. golden syrup, honey or maple syrup
2 tsp. vanilla or maple extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325°F.

In a large bowl, beat butter and brown sugar until well combined — the mixture will have the consistency of wet sand. Add egg, corn syrup and vanilla and beat until smooth.

Add the flour, baking soda and salt (stir them together first only if you want to) to the butter-sugar mixture and stir by hand until almost combined; add chocolate chips and stir just until blended. It may seem dry at this point – I always find it easiest to get in there with my hands toward the end.

Drop spoonfuls of dough (or roll rough walnut-sized balls) about 2” apart on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Flatten each a little with your hand, just to give them a head start. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until pale golden and set around the edges but still soft in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Makes 20 cookies.

Per Cookie: 155 calories, 5 g fat (3 g saturated fat, 1.4 g monounsaturated fat, 0.5 g polyunsaturated fat), 25.5g carbohydrates, 17.6 mg cholesterol, 2 g protein, 1 g fiber. 29% calories from fat

So. Does this lightened recipe in lieu of going whole hog (or cow, as the case may be – we’re talking butter, aren’t we?) mean I’m back on the weight-loss wagon? I’m sorry to have dropped the subject so abruptly. I could offer up a dozen reasons why, but all sound annoyingly like excuses. And none are any different from the impediments any of us face on a day to day basis. And when I think about it, although I have been pointing myself in far too many directions these days and not keeping on top of anything well, that’s not really the reason the subject (and our “Book Club”) has been backburnered. I think I just took that particular line of my brain off the hook, although I haven’t been able to shut off that annoying beeeep beeeep beeeeep reminder that it’s still there, waiting for me to pick up already. And is it me, or time just blasting by these days? Particularly in this state of global uncertainty, a debilitated economy and complete dismantling and simultaneous reconstruction of popular media. As Shaggy would say – Zoiks.

Part of me thinks no one wants to hear it. I don’t want to bore those who have no concerns about their weight with my ramble. I know I’m getting a little tired of the subject myself – of it occupying such a significant portion of my brain, all the time, for as long as I can remember. (As I may have mentioned, the first time I joined Weight Watchers, with my Mom, I was in the single-digits.) But I don’t really feel much better for ignoring it – it’s not quite the holiday I think my subconscious was hoping for.

Anyway, quick update, and I’ll keep them to the ends of my posts, so that they are easy to skip over if need be. Not much to report, really. You see how I’ve been eating. Still hopping around 204. Meh. Although only 5 lbs back up from when we were shooting in February (how could it be that long ago??) I feel much puffier. Could have something to do with my gym membership running out. Hopefully the coming of spring, coupled with a 90 pound dog, will get me moving again. More importantly, I have to start eating better. And less! (Yes, I realize exercise is important. It is. But people tend to overestimate how much they’ve burned with exercise, and more than make it up calorically. It doesn’t help that Big Food tries to put the blame for obesity rates on TV and computers, when it really has as much or more to do with the enormous quantities going in.)

Step 1: stick to two cookies, instead of putting away the entire sheet. (And I don’t mean into Tupperware.) Totally doable.

One Year Ago: Prosciutto-wrapped Prawns with Pesto
 Print Post

April 18 2009 | cookies & squares | 22 Comments »

Pizzas in a Wood-Fired Oven

So after taking over traffic duties at CBC this afternoon, and a Save the CBC rally, I went to a salon. Not the mani-pedi type, the Parisian intellectual type, only with a wood-fired pizza oven.

(From Wikipedia: A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horace’s definition of the aims of poetry, “either to please or to educate”.)

Did you get that? Stimulating people of quality. That’s me.

It’s late – I’m getting punchy. Brian not working so good. (Ha – good typo – from now on will have to refer to my brain as “Brian”. No Brian, no more cupcakes! Bad Brian!) My most common mistake is to type “busty” instead of “busy” when I’m in a rush – as in, “I’ve been really busty lately”, or “I know you’re busty, but…”

This is what you get when you sign on for a month of real-time blogging: not the toppest-notch writing that can be done when IQ levels are high and then subsequently groomed and accessorized until ready to post. Punchy 2am posts with typos is what you sometimes settle for.

So yes. It was an evening of wine and pizza and conversation at the home of someone I recently met at a Forage Farm Table Dinner, centered around a wood-fired pizza oven he built – by hand, mind you – and the very first brick he laid in his life was the one on the front right corner – in his back yard in Bowness.

How cool is this? So well insulated it could be 700 degrees inside and still have snow sitting on top. Pizzas cook in around 80 seconds (who needs a microwave?) and the next morning, after the coals are long gone, the residual heat still registers 300-350F, so they bake bread or shirred eggs in it for breakfast. Last Thanksgiving they did the turkey and all the trimmings in the wood-fired oven, then kept the entire dinner – enough for 12 – warm in it until it was time to sit down and eat.

There were 10 of us, only 3 of whom I had ever met. We cranked out thin-crust pizzas, taking turns creating them out of the buffet of toppings – roasted tomato sauce, artichokes, pulled pork, salamis, bacon, cheeses, basil, rocket, pine nuts, caramelized onions, roasted peppers, prosciutto, pears – and sliding them into the pizza oven to bubble and cook in less than a minute and a half. After we made 14 or so and devoured them all, with meaty red olives and prosecco and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, we retired to the living room where we drew numbers and each had to speak for 10 minutes on a subject that inspired us, or we were knowledgeable about, or that otherwise turned our crank. (Far better than Cranium, no?) I was last, which did not bode well for me, but we did have enough to talk about to keep us out until 1 am.

It really was a great evening. (Thanks Brian.)

And now… drum roll please… Free Stuff Fridays!

I’ve been requested to post the winners of previous FSF – sorry, I keep meaning to do this, but then forget (having given the stuff away back on Tuesday!) – I’m not trying to keep winners under wraps, honest. Maureen was the lucky winner of the new blender, and Gwendolyn won tea, and Katharine won the Corningware set, a bunch of you won copies of OSC, and over 20 are receiving sourdough starter.. Maria got a Candy Apple Apron.. am I forgetting anything in the past month or so? Sorry, I’ll start posting the winners. But if you win, I’ll email you on Tuesday or thereabouts.

I’ve been looking forward to this one. I was thinking awhile ago of the things I love to get. And one of them is Starbucks cards. There is nothing like having a loaded credit card full of free lattes in your wallet. So I called them up (or their PR firm, anyway), and told them about you all, and how great you are and how I love to give you stuff, and they generously shipped me SIX twenty-five dollar Starbucks cards, PLUS six 1-lb. bags of Pike Place Roast coffee beans to divvy out as I see fit.

!!!! (Thanks, Starbucks!)

So, I see fit to divvy them out two at a time, and spread the love. This week I’ll give away two $25 gift card and 1 lb. coffee combos, and if you don’t win one this time, there will be two more chances. Fair?

So since coffee is on the line here, why don’t we make that our topic of discussion? What’s your very favourite thing to have with a cuppa? (And if not coffee, tea then?)

One Year Ago: Roast Chicken with Lemon and Parmesan Risotto

April 18 2009 | eating out | 89 Comments »