Cooking With Kids: Whole-Grain Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Happy Friday Blog Fans! My friend Tina, who is running her first-ever marathon in Phoenix, Arizona this weekend (go Tina!) has a tradition of Cookie Friday. Every Friday, she treats herself to a big cookie. In keeping with her tradition, I thought today would be a great day to show you the adventure I had this week with my kids in the kitchen making Whole-Grain Chocolate Chunk Cookies.
I found this recipe in last Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine.
I was attracted by this headline:
and this picture
As Tina would say, Holy Yum!
Turns out, this recipe is from a new book coming out on January 15th. It’s called The Cleaner Plate Club.
And from the looks of the recipes featured in this magazine spread, the authors of The Cleaner Plate Club and I are preaching similar messages, such as:
- Replace your microwave popcorn with the real thing
- Try kale chips
- Try substituting white flour with whole wheat pastry flour
I want to meet the two Moms who wrote The Cleaner Plate Club (Beth Bader and Ali Benjamin). I think they would be fans of NuVal and ABBG, don’t you?
So, Wednesday – just before dinnertime – as 15 inches of snow was barreling down on us in eastern Massachusetts, I gathered my children, for some cookie-baking.
We rounded up the ingredients. Amazingly, we had everything in house – except we did not have chocolate chunks. But our dark chocolate chips worked just fine!
For the exact ingredients and directions, click on the recipe here.
This recipe has some great trade ups from traditional chocolate chip cookie recipes. For example:
- Instead of Unbleached All Purpose Flour (NuVal Score of 67), this recipe calls for Whole-Wheat Pastry Flour (NuVal score of 91 for Bob’s Red Mill – my favorite!)
- The Quick-Cooking Oats (not typically found in a chocolate chip cookie recipe) score a 57on the NuVal scale
- Typically you would see about 1 stick of butter in a chocoalte chip cookie recipe. This only called for 2 Tablespoons! (Land O’Lakes unsalted sweet butter scores a 2 on the NuVal scale)
- Typically, you wold not see peanut butter in a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, so adding Teddie Smooth Unsalted, with a NuVal score of 49, packs in some nutrition
- For the most part, dark chocolate scores higher than milk chocolate on the NuVal scale. These Ghiradelli chips that we used score an 8, while the Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips only score a 3.
I always say that it doesn’t matter what you make – what’s important is that you get your kids into the kitchen to teach them some basic cooking skills.
Like measuring dry ingredients:
and sticky ingredients
Thank goodness for my old friend, the Pampered Chef All Measure Cup for measuring out the Teddie Smooth!
And stirring is good exercise when you’re all cooped up inside during a Blizzard!
The recipe does warn you – the batter is very thick!
And we used our Pampered Chef Large Scoop to form 30 cookies. I love it when recipes are right on! This really makes exactly 30 cookies!
We used placed them on parchment-lined cookie sheets and baked them at 375 degrees for exactly 12 minutes. Perfect! In fact, 11 minutes may have been even better. I’m still learning how to use my new oven.
The smelled so good. But we had dinner to eat (Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore) before we could dig in. Let’s just say, my kids ate their dinner very quickly that night!
The Verdict?
I highly, highly recommend this recipe! If you are tired of some of the same-old, same-ole chocolate chip cookie recipes, why not trade up for some more nutritious ingredients and see what your kids think? My kids loved them and I think they took pride in them because they made them. I brought some in to my colleage Rob at work (and he would tell me if they stunk – he is all about taste) and he gave them the two-thumbs up. Bring them to your next school function, and you can be known as a Hip Healthy Mom. I am really looking forward to this new cookbook!
Posted by: Melissa 13 comments
Posted in: Cookies, Cooking with Kids
Tags: Cookies, Cooking with Kids
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 9:10 am
These cookies look so yummy and healthy! Whole wheat pastry flour is the best- I used some to make mama peas dough balls on our snow day. Love that you got your kids involved, my mom used to bake with me all the time
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 9:21 am
They look fantastic, love the Teddie’s peanut Butter in it
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 10:30 am
These cookies look great. I’m not a kid, but, I am always looking for healthy cookies to bake for myself. Thanks for the receipe and exchange ingredients ( My child is grown and bakes her own cookies)
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 11:42 am
Thanks for the recipe review Melissa – I still have last Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine – now I can save it from the recycle bin :0
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
I will be making that slow cooker chicken cacciatore recipe this week-end.
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
These look delicious…were they super dry without much butter!? I have been meaning to ask- I buy teddies natural pb w flaxseed, what’s the nuval score for that?!
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Meghan -
Amazingly, these cookies were moist, even with the small amount of butter. I think that the canola oil and peanut butter helped!
I have been thinking about them all day and I can’t wait to get home to have a cookie for dessert tonight!
Melissa
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Meghan -
On your question about Teddie Natural Peanut Butter with Flaxseed. We have not scored that product yet. At NuVal, our goal is to score everything – and we’re making progress. When I first arrived at NuVal in 2008, we had scored only a few thousand products. Today, we’ve scored over 90,000. But, it takes time to score it all and we have not yet scored the Teddie with Flaxseed. I too, am wondering how it will score!
Melissa
on Jan 14th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Melissa these look so good! I’m glad that article caught your eye
on Jan 15th, 2011 at 11:07 am
That is so mouth watering. I love the chocolate chips and how your cookies look like. I will surely make some of this for my kids snacks tomorrow.
on Jan 16th, 2011 at 8:50 am
HOLY YUM is right!
on Jan 17th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I should also do this with my kids since they always ask me to bake cookies for them. Maybe its time to make their own cookies. Thanks for sharing.
on Jan 20th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Thank you for this post! I am glad you liked the cookies. Believe me, my husband’s favorite experience while I was writing recipes was the dessert section! Many thanks and kind regards for the nice posts about our book.