Cooking With Kids: Soft Wheat Toll House Cookies
One thing about summer – I tend to do a lot less Cooking With Kids! We’re swimming a lot, the kids are at camp, meals are quick and easy and it’s just too darn hot. So, when we finally had a cloudy and stormy day this week, I got this incredible urge to bake. Lucky for me, the kids were happy to pitch in.
We found that we had some Nestle Toll House Morsels in the cupboard and all of the ingredients to make Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. I made that recipe so many times as a child, I think I know all of the ingredients and measurements by heart. To me, making Toll House Cookies is one of those things that should be on the Childhood Bucket List of every boy and girl. However, we decided to experiment a little by substituting one of the two and one-quarter cups of white flour (NuVal score of 67 for King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour) with Bob’s Red Mill whole wheat pastry flour (NuVal score of 91).
The cookies came out even more soft and scrumptious than ever!
Now, there are many other ingredients in the Toll House recipe that we could have experimented with. For example, we could substitute a higher scoring fat for the two sticks of butter that the recipe calls for. Or we could have experimented with lowering the amount of brown and white sugar in this recipe. However, as I’ve said in my Cooking With Kids posts before, first let’s just teach our kids to cook. We took some baby steps by substituting some of the white flour with soft wheat pastry flour. As the kids get more confident in their cooking, we’ll try more experiments.
Instead, we focused on “collaboration.” When my kids ask me what that means, I refer them to my Three Summer Rules:
- No Whining
- No Fighting
- No Complaining
Collaboration, I tell them, is Summer Rule Number Two.
Kids Following My Summer Rule Number Two
At this point in the recipe they were combining the dry and “wet” ingredients. One added the dry ingredients to the batter bowl, while the other mixed. Without whining, fighting or complaining. Believe me, this doesn’t happen every day!
Once the batter was ready, we had another test of the kids’ collaboration skills. I like nice uniform cookies, so I gave them my handy-dandy Pampered Chef Small Scoop to form the cookies.
Since my five-year-old daughter is not strong enough to squeeze the scoop and release the dough, it was easy to divide the labor and to keep the kids from breaking Summer Rule Number Two. My daughter loaded the Scooper and leveled it. My son squeezed the dough out onto the cookie sheet.
Isn’t his spacing impressive?
The thing that amazed me the most was that my kids did this all by themselves. I cleaned the kitchen while they scooped and spaced. It’s hard to believe! We’ve come a long way in the kitchen.
By the time we got to the oven part of the cooking baking process, the sun had come out, and the kids headed out to play on their swing set. That was fine with me, because I got to play with one of my other favorite baking tools: my Pampered Chef Stackable Cooling Racks. Love them!
I must say that I love my partially Whole Wheat version of the Toll House Cookies even more than the Original recipe! Next time, we will try a complete substitution on the flour. And then who knows what we’ll do next. The possibilities are endless.
Question of the Day
What is one of your favorite recipes from childhood?
Blogaversary Contest Winner
Today, I celebrate by Blogaversary – one year as NuVal’s Mommy Blogger! In honor of this special day, my loyal readers voted for their favorite ABBG post. And the winner is – drumroll, please – School Lunch, 1988 and Today! Whoa, that 80′s hair was so out of control. And those big sweatshirts did nothing for us! Congratulations to Meda, one of the voters for that post! Thank you to everyone for playing along all week! Have a wonderful weekend!
Posted by: Melissa 6 comments
Posted in: Cooking with Kids
on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 7:49 am
Your kiddos are adorable! I have to say chocolate chip cookies were my favorite thing to make as a kid, too…such “sweet” memories I have baking with my grandmother.
on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 9:53 am
I really had no favorite, liked them all …still do!
on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 10:13 am
I need to start using whole wheat when I bake with me nieces.I’m a total sucker for homemade cookies.My favorite are probably oatmeal and choc chip:-)cc
on Jul 23rd, 2010 at 5:38 pm
toll house cookies take me back to childhood! your kids are so cute melissa
have a good weekend!
on Jul 26th, 2010 at 8:30 am
Nice alternative. Favorite recipe as a kid- wreath cookies at Xmas time
on Jan 24th, 2012 at 9:18 am
My Aunt Ruth’s gingerbread men, but I do not have the recipe.
My Grandma made awesome cream filled puff pastry. Very high in everything bad. Grandma lived to be 99 and 9 months..Hmmmmmmmm?