Whole Wheat Cookies for a Washington Autumn

A walk in the nearby woods and My Italian Smörgåsbord's post about baking Holiday Tea Cookies with a small child were the inspiration for the crunchy treats my youngest grandson and I made on Saturday with local flour (my only variation was to replace all of the all-purpose flour with white whole wheat flour and since the flour was whole grain and therefore thirstier than regular flour, I had to wet my hands once or twice to make the dough come together). Thank you, Barbara, for the recipe which calls for two of my favorite baking ingredients, olive oil and honey!

And for those of you who might wonder, no, we didn't meet any bear along the trail but we could have, right?

Related post: Baking With Locally Grown Grains

Spicy Olive Oil "Cookies"

As I was waiting at Charles de Gaulle Airport last spring for my flight back home, I picked up a copy of Elle à Table (a handsome French food magazine with beautiful photos and excellent recipes) and happened about an article on Youssef Gardam, written by Clotilde Dusoulier from Chocolate & Zucchini .

Gardam is the young French entrepreneur of Moroccan descent credited with having propelled Moroccan olive oil onto the world culinary stage. His oils can be found in the best European grocery stores under the label Les Terroirs de Volubilis and, from what I understand, are also now available in the United States.

He produces three different olive oils: the fruité vert, made with green olives (sharp and spicy, delicious with salads or fish), the fruité mûr, made with olives picked when they turn purple (less pungent, perfect on pasta or vegetables) and the fruité noir, made with very ripe olives (very fragrant, ideal for pastry and delicate dishes). I would love to try all three but I have yet to see any of them in the grocery stores around where I live.

So for now I use Trader Joe's Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil (the one that's sold with a little pour spout attached to the neck of the bottle). I love its flavor and consistency. I am sure it is not in the league of Gardam's oils but, hey, we like it and we don't need to mortgage the house to enjoy it.

Clotilde came up with a recipe which uses either fruité mûr or fruité noir. I made it with TJ's oil and the cookies (also flavored with white wine and orange zest) turned out excellent. At least so said the Man who devoured them with gusto, feeling especially virtuous because they didn't contain any butter or egg.

They were certainly flavorful with just the right amount of crunchiness but since I am not a huge fan of anything sweet, I decided to develop a recipe for spicy savory cookies we would both enjoy with "apéritif" (the French word for a drink before lunch or dinner). I pretty much followed Clotilde's recipe but skipped the sugar and added salt, freshly grated parmesan cheese, cracked black pepper and smoked Spanish paprika. The resulting "cookies" are just spicy enough with a hint of smokiness (I'm using the word "cookie" for lack of a better one: in French, I would call them "croquants" as Clotilde does because they are deliciously crunchy when you bite into them or "sablés", the French word for shortbread, because they crumble very nicely in the mouth). They go very well with pre-dinner drinks. But I must warn you: they are quite addictive. It is hard to keep from reaching for another one... Ingredients: (I can't tell you for how many cookies because I forgot to count them. But I had enough for two half-sheet pans and each pan must have contained 25, give or take. Clotilde makes them twice as thick and gets 25, so that sounds about right) 160 g unbleached all-purpose flour 90 g high-extraction flour (Clotilde uses "farine bise" a grade of flour which doesn't exist in this country. I used La Milanaise's organic sifted bread flour which contains more bran and germ than "farine bise" and is therefore more nutritious. It is hard to find here however. If you don't have access to it or another high-extraction flour, replace the 90 g high-extraction flour by 55 g all-purpose flour and 35 g whole wheat flour. You might also try substituting it by 90 g whole-wheat pastry flour but I can't guarantee the result as I haven't tested it. Let me know if you give it a shot) 5 g aluminum-free baking powder 80 g freshly grated aged Parmesan cheese 80 g dry white wine 80 g fruity extra-virgin olive oil 5 g smoked Spanish paprika 1 g cracked black pepper 4 g salt Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 356ºF/180º C and place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet (my oven is small and I used two half-sheet pans)
2. In a bowl, mix the flours, the baking powder, the grated Parmesan cheese, the salt and the spices
3. Make a well in the middle and pour in the oil and the wine
4. Mix with a fork then knead briefly until the dough is smooth (don't overknead)
5. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to a 0.5 cm-/0.2 inch disk (Clotilde rolls her dough out to a 2 cm-thickness, i.e. almost 0.8 inch, but I prefer thinner cookies)
6. With a sharp knife, cut out squares or diamonds 3 cm (1.2 inch) wide and place them on the prepared sheet-pans, taking care to leave some space between them
7. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 300ºF/150ºC and bake another 15 minutes, until the cookies are golden
8. Repeat with the other batch as necessary
9. Cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!

Lime-coconut macaroons

Here is a recipe adapted from Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Traditions from Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. I don't have a sweet tooth, so I am not often tempted to bake cookies but these cried out to me.
First of all, two egg whites that begged to be used were sitting in the fridge. Then my spring cleaning of the kitchen cupboard had unearthed coconut flakes that I wasn't sure to find another use for. More importantly, one of my dearest friends from France is arriving tomorrow and I know she loves cookies. So does the Man, and these are cholesterol-free, which means he can indulge to his heart's content. Also, I had two limes in the fruit bowl and I don't believe there is any flavor/fragrance combination (save for the aroma of fresh bread of course) that appeals to me more winningly than the alliance of lime and coconut.
The proportions however only yielded 15 cookies, half of what the authors say they got. Maybe I made them taller?
The resulting cookies actually look a lot like what we call in France "rochers de noix de coco", literally, "coconut rocks", presumably because they look like they could be climbed by miniature alpinists.

Ingredients:

• 2 large egg whites (they amounted to 69 g)
• 100 g cristallized sugar (next time, I am strongly tempted to use half that amount because I find these cookies way too sweet but I am not the one to judge. We'll see what the Man and my friend say)
• 70 g unsweetened coconut flakes (the authors used shredded unsweetened coconut but I didn't have any)
• 22 g pastry flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour which is all I had)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• grated zest of two limes

Method:

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 300 degrees F/149 C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. In a heavy saucepan, combine the egg whites, sugar, coconut and flour
3. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan, about 10 minutes
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the salt, vanilla and zest
5. Immediately begin shaping the cookies. Scoop up a heaping teaspoonful of the mixture and drop onto the prepared baking sheet
6. Repeat until the mixture is used, leaving nearly 1 1/2 inches between the cookies
7. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the coconut has turned opaque and the cookies are very lightly browned on the bottom
8. Lift the cookies, still on the parchment, onto a rack to cool and firm. Then peel them off the paper and let them cool completely, so they crisp up a little.
9. Store, once cooled, into a well-sealed container.