Day 13

Breakfast: Blueberry banana smoothie with soymilk, chia seeds, and hemp seeds. – If you haven’t noticed, I enjoy this smoothie quite a bit.  Although smoothies are incredibly flexible, I’ll include a recipe today.

Lunch: Red pepper, carrots, brown rice crackers, hummus, an apple, and almonds.

Dinner/Snack:  Celery sticks and almond butter, apple, and banana oatmeal almond cookies.  What I love most about these cookies is that you can tell people you can eat cookies even if you’re on a detox diet.

Banana-Blueberry Smoothie

Ingredients

• 1 banana
• 1/4 -1/2 cup soymilk (depending on what consistency you’d like.  Add more for a thinner consistency and less for a thicker, more icy-like consistency.)
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup frozen blueberries (or any variety of frozen berries/fruit)
• 1 tablespoon shelled hemp seeds
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds

Preparation

1. Blend banana and soymilk until smooth in a blender.
2. Then add berries, blend until smooth.
3. Finally, add the hemp and chia seeds and blend until smooth.
4. Enjoy a delicious ice cold smoothie.

Banana Oatmeal Almond Cookies recipe adapted from here. (These are sugar-free, dairy-free, and wheat-free, and gluten-free)

Ingredients

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 3 ripe bananas
• 1/3 cup coconut flakes
• 1/4 cup melted coconut oil
• 2/3 cup almond meal (or oat flour)
• 1 teaspoon almond extract (vanilla or coconut would be great too)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup toasted, sliced almonds

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with silpat or parchment paper.
2. Mix together dry ingredients: oats, almond meal, coconut flakes, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt.
3. Mash bananas, then mix with coconut oil and almond extract.
4. Mix the banana mixture into the dry mixture.
5. Fold in the toasted almonds.
6. Drop the mixture by the tablespoon on the baking sheets.
7. Bake the cookies 12-14 minutes.
8. Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheet.

I BAKED Chocolate Chip Cookies

And I didn’t bake just any chocolate chip cookies.  I baked BAKED’s chocolate chip cookies.  They were everything a chocolate chip cookies should be, thick, soft and chewy in the middle, caramelized and crispy around the edges, and studded with chocolate chips.  I brought these to a “calculus study session” and they were all gone by the time my friends and I hadn’t even started “studying calculus.”  In our defense, how could you study derivative and integrals when there is an entire container of freshly baked cookies within your reach?

Answer:  It’s impossible to focus on the derivative of anything except that of the rate at which the cookie will be entering your mouth.  See?  Calculus can be useful in real life.

On a graph of f’(x), displaying the derivative of my stomach’s contentedness and fullness level, I found the value that corresponds to a relative maximum on the graph of f.  In other words, these cookies made me (and my stomach) very happy and full.  Now, if only calculus were as easy as baking and eating chocolate chip cookies…

Chocolate Chip Cookies from BAKED New Frontiers in Baking  (makes 24)

Ingredients (Matt and Renato recommend to use the best quality ingredients you can find, I recommend the same.  In something as simple as a chocolate chip cookie, it’s important to use great quality ingredients that will elevated your chocolate chip cookies from just simple, to outstanding.)

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour (I used white whole wheat)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, soft but cool
• 1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 2/3 cups (16 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

Preparation

1. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda together.
2. Beat the butter and sugars together until smooth and creamy in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated.  The mixture will look light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla and beat for 5 seconds.
3. Add half the flour mixture and mix for 15 seconds.  Add the remaining flour mixture and beat until just incorporated.
4. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, fold in the chocolate chips.
5. Cover the bowl tightly and put in the refrigerator for 6 hours or overnight.
6. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and line two baking sheets.
7. Use an ice cream scoop with a release mechanism (or not) to scoop out dough in 2 tablespoon size balls. Use your hands to shape the dough into perfect balls and place them on the prepared baking sheets (I found that I had to press them down a bit or else they didn’t spread as much as I wanted them to), about 1 inch apart.  Bake for 12-14 minutes, rotating the pans once during the cooking time, until the edges of the cookies are golden brown and the tops just start to darken.
8. Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes.  Use a spatula to transfer the individual cookies to the rack to cool completely (or you could transfer them to your mouth instead).

These cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Maple Pecan BACON Cookies

Everybody has been going on a bacon craze.  I’ve seen it in cookies, in brownies, in chocolate bars, and even perfumes.  So, I decided it was about time I conformed and gave into the craze.  I’ve never really been one to do so, but this is bacon in baked goods we’re talking about here!  The more and more I started to use bacon, the more and more drippings I realized I was having to drain – which is really a waste, considering if it were socially acceptable I would probably drink the stuff.

This is why you would never ever want to throw away your bacon fat, look at all those little speckles of flavor!

Have you ever wondered what you should do with all those bacon drippings?  I have, well, besides drinking them.  Don’t you dare let them drip down the drain – trust me, you want all that golden, meaty, smoked deliciosity.  Rather, pour them into a small bowl or ramekin or whatever type of small food-container you prefer to use and keep them in the fridge.  Then, as you cook with more and more bacon (because come on, it’s kind of irresistible) just keep adding the excess drippings to that little container, and before you know it you have half a cup of bacon fat and you don’t know what to do with it!

Wait, but I know what you can do with it!  You can make the most mind-blowingly bacon flavored cookies you will ever eat.  Lucky for you, I have just so happened tried making such cookies and I am more than pleased to report that they are as mind-blowingly bacon flavored as I imagined they would be.  Make these soon or forever hold your bacon fat.

Maple Pecan Bacon Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ cup bacon drippings
• 1 teaspoon maple extract
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• ¼ – ½ cup crumbled bacon – save the drippings from this for another use or add to your already existing drippings to make 1/2 cup (make sure you refrigerate until solid if you add it to the drippings you already have)
• ½ cup toasted chopped pecans

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet.
2. Mix together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
3. Cream together the bacon drippings and brown sugar.
4. Mix in egg and maple extract.
5. Mix in dry ingredients.
6. Mix in bacon and pecans.
7. Drop tablespoons of dough 1 inch apart pressing down to flatten out a bit.
8. Bake for 12 minutes then remove from oven, let cool on baking sheets a few minutes, and then transfer to a cooling rack.
9. Prepare to have your mind-blown by the flavor of bacon.

Daring Bakers Challenge: Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

Finally!  I accomplished a challenge without having to rebake, re-roll, or re-do anything.  I might even go so far as to say it went as smoothly as the royal icing I piped onto my sugar cookies.  The assignment was to decorate the cookies with something that was important to us this September.  At first I was stumped.  How do you decorate a sugar cookie with as depressing a subject as school and homework and projects?  It’s impossible, a sugar cookie cannot be depressing.

But as soon as I began decorating the cookies it turned out to be much more of a cathartic experience that I thought it would be.  My original plan was to make all my sugar cookies into hamburgers in honor of my senior exhibition that officially began this September.   But then I had leftover icing and leftover cookies so I let myself get creative – this is what resulted:

*Also, I would like to mention that I used natural food coloring derived from vegetables, NOT chemicals.  Although it was expensive it was worth every penny knowing that I’m not feeding myself, my family, or my friends chemicals.

The coarse sugar is meant to be a classy replacement for sesame seeds.

It looks like the burger is bleeding.

This one was inspired by a large amount of pink royal icing and the cookies at the supermarket with copious amounts of frosting and sprinkles.

This is the grade I hope to get in all my classes first semester. HA. Yeah, that's going to happen. Especially in AP Calculus.

Why? Because.

I love being a daring baker.

Thank you so much Mandy of What the Fruitcake.  If you want the recipe, check out her blog!

Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know there is all this hype about chewy gooey chocolate chip cookies.  I know you  must think the idea of a crunchy chocolate chip cookie that isn’t stale must be blasphemy.  But can you blame a girl for wanting a crunchy chocolate chip cookie for a change?  Compare taking a bite out of a chewy cookie compared to taking a bite out of a crunchy cookie.  The biting of the crunchy one is clearly more dramatic.

There will be loud crunching noises that vibrate in your ears so loudly that you imagine everyone within a 50 ft radius can hear you crunching away.  There will be crumbs flying in every direction willy nilly.  There will be much more drama in the consumption of a crunchy chocolate chip cookie.  When you reach the center you will not melt at it’s center which is unlike that of the gooey center of a chewy chocolate chip cookie.  Instead there will be cold, hard, determination to eat the rest of this deliciously crunchy cookie with undertones of caramel and toffee.  Crunchy cookies are not for the feeble.  They require a strong jaw and desire to crunch.

I recommend you make these when you are in a crunchy mood and crave some drama when you eat your chocolate chip cookie.

Classic Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick, 2 oz) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz) vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup (5 1/4 oz) granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup (5 5/8 0z) light or dark brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon espresso powder (optional)
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup (4 oz) barley flour
• 1 cup (4 oz) traditional whole wheat flour ( I used white whole wheat) – or just use 2 cups of whole wheat flour in place of one cup of barely flour and whole wheat flour
• 2 2/3 cups (16 oz) semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat to oven to 350 F.  Line two cookie or baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Beat the butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, salt, and espresso powder in a large bowl until smooth.
3. Beat in the vinegar, egg, baking soda, and baking powder.
4. Stir the in the barely flour and whole wheat flour, and then the chocolate chips.
5. The dough will appear oily, and because of the quantity of chocolate chips it won’t be completely cohesive – that’s okay.
6. Drop the dough by tablespoons full on the prepared baking sheets.
7. Bake the cookies, reversing the pans midway through(top to bottom, bottom to top), until they’re golden brown, 14 to 16 minutes.
8. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.