Recipe Time!

If there's one thing you should know about me it's that I *love* to bake. It must be the scientist-geek in me coming out. A lot of times I'll find recipes that I'm just not in love with, tinker with them and try them out on unsuspecting people. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't... and one of my favorite things to do is take a ridiculously unhealthy recipe and make it just a little healthier.

This is one of those times.

It all started when I couldn't decide which I'd rather eat -- oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies... so I decided to combine them. I think the results were pretty darned good -- what do you all think?

Please note: as I had to explain this to the hubby... this is much more on the side of an oatmeal cookie with chocolate chips in it than a chocolate chip cookie.

Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip Cookies

*1/2 c unbleached, all purpose flour

*1 c whole wheat flour

*1/2 t baking soda

*1/2 t salt (can even cut down to 1/4 or even omit if on a sodium restricted diet)

*1/2 c butter, softened

*1 c dark brown sugar

*1/2 c sugar

*1/2 c unsweetened, all-natural applesauce (bonus points if it's enriched with Vit. C)

*2 t vanilla extract

*2 eggs

*3 c rolled oats

*1 c chopped pecans (can omit this)

*1/2 c dark chocolate chips

*1/2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips (you can play with the ratio here)

#1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees

#2 Whisk together the flours, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.

#3 Cream the butter and both sugars in a mixer until smooth and fluffy. Add in the applesauce and vanilla and mix to combine. Beat in eggs one at a time until just incorporated. Lower the speed to low on your stand mixer and slowly add in the dry ingredient mixture. Mix until just blended. With a wooden spoon or spatula, mix in the oats, pecans and chocolate chips by hand.

#4 Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls (or small tablespoonfuls) on to ungreased cookie sheets.

#5 Bake for 12 minutes or until the tops are slightly golden. Let cookies sit for five minutes on cookie sheets, then cool on wire racks.

Makes around 48 medium-sized cookies.

These aren't necessarily "healthy" cookies, but they're not too bad on the cookie/snack scale. A good indulgence once-in-a-while that has a nice balance of nutrition (in iron and fiber) and sweetness. As approximations (going off of the nutritional labels on the back of my ingredients), you're looking at the following nutritional info for TWO cookies, assuming you made 48 total:

216 cal, 11 g fat (5 g sat. fat), 71 mg sodium, 26 g carbs (2.5 g fiber, 14 g sugar), 3.5 g protein, and 7 mg potassium...

Obviously this is going to adjust more/less based off the number of cookies you actually make. Remember, though, that a lot of baking is variable... You can cut out the salt and cut the sodium down to 32 mg per serving (or cut it down to 1/4 and you'll have 51 mg sodium)... You can cut the number of chocolate chips in half and save yourself 23 cal, 1.5 g fat (1 g sat), 3 g carbs (2.7 g sugar)... though I like the sweetness the chips add... or you can eliminate the pecans (something the husband would vote for, since he's not fond of nuts and they're not integral to the recipe) and save yourself 36 cal, 3.5 g fat (.333 sat), .67 g carb per serving.

Personally, I think these are delicious cookies... not overwhelmingly sweet (especially with half dark chocolate)... moist and chewy... plus, using whole wheat flour and rolled oats gives you a nice helping of whole grains to go with the healthy unsaturated fats that the pecans give you.

So, what do ya think?

Someone explain this to me...

Ok, I'll admit it... I have the soul of an engineer. I'm very artistic in my own way, but my true heart and soul belong to logic, reasoning, mathematics and science. Forget art class, I wanted Physics.

I'm weird, so sue me.

Anyway, I've never understood the whole "family recipe" thing... as in "this stays in the family and you can NEVER, NEVER EVER give it out to anyone... ever. Period." To me, there simply is no rational to it and it feels selfish (I have something that's mine, all mine, and I won't share it with you... nahny nahny boo boo). Why am I discussing this?

Well, I was baking anise biscuits with my cousin... it was my grandmother's recipe that we've spent two Christmases perfecting. Why? Well, her measurements aren't really 6 cups of flour, it's 6 cups of flour more or less. It isn't 8 oz of juice, it's a "glass of juice." It took us a while to discover her glasses were 10 oz, not 8. A handful, well... her hands are bigger than mine! A "demitasse cup of baking powder" but we can't find her demitasse cups... ACK.

Cooking might be an art, but baking is definitely a science (which is probably why I prefer baking). If you add too much liquid, your cookies won't set... too much flour and they'll be dry rocks.

Anyway, we think we've hit on the correct amounts of everything (perhaps a bit more anise next year) and I laughed about how I wanted to take grandma's recipe card and scan it to put it on the internet... just so people could see what we were working with. She was scandalized -- put Grandma's recipe on the INTERNET so EVERYONE could see it? Holy jeez, you would have thought I was proposing putting nuclear secrets on the internet. This shock and adamant refusal started a discussion as to WHY it's taboo to share her biscuit or butter cookie recipe (which, oddly enough, doesn't include butter... go figure)... All we ever got to is because "it's a family thing."

Yeah, I'm sorry, not good enough. Sentimentality doesn't trump logic, which to me is "If someone appreciates something of yours enough to ask for the recipe, use what you learned in kindergarten and share." It's the right thing to do. I share every single recipe I have -- from my mother's tomato sauce to my eggplant parmesan, lasagna and chicken salad recipes -- when people ask. My best friend shared her grandmother's tea cakes recipe with me when I told her how much I liked them.

So what if people make them for their family or make it to bring to parties? The rational was: "If you give out the recipe, everyone will bring the same thing." What? With Food TV, AllRecipes.com, Epicurious and the thousands of websites and blogs devoted to recipes... everyone will bring my grandmother's anise biscuits to the same party? Not rational. Not logical.

So come on, blogosphere... are you like that? Do you not share "secret" family recipes? Why? How about the other coin -- why do you share? I share because it makes me feel good that someone liked what I made (same reason why I sew stuff for people... I like the appreciation). I can understand not sharing a recipe you make money off of (like if you owned a bakery!), but if you're not profitting from it... uh....

Help me out here, give me your reasons!

Jen