Chocolate Chip Cookies with Mesquite Flour and Guajillo Chile Butter - Gluten Free

Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Mesquite Flour and Guajillo Chile butter

Gluten Free

My Little Blue Heron

Mesquite “flour” from Peru, is from the pods that grow on the Mesquite tree. The beans are ground, rendering a fine, sweet, warm and “smoky” flour. It’s great for baking. Pairing well with chocolate, coffee and cinnamon, it’s gluten free, high in fiber and iron and everyone together: “Amazon sells it”. I love it (the flour). I paired it with arrowroot, my preference to tapioca; and combined Muscavado and brown sugars. You can sub coconut sugar and any other sugar you like. I wouldn’t use too much, if any white sugar in this recipe. I use very little white sugar. 

Chocolate chips are up to you. I recently bought Guittard organic bittersweet wafers and they rock my world. But they rock my wallet, too. If you want to cut down on sugar, try Pascha sugar free chocolate chips. They’re also expensive. It’s worth the extra for excellence. Use quality ingredients, and you’ll have fine results. 

If you’re not adding nuts, try some chopped up dark dried cherries – that’ll work nicely. Trader Joe’s sells them without added sugar.

I had been topping these off with coarse salt and Turbinado sugar. I stopped – too many tastes going on. But if you love salt/sweet/hot altogether, give it a whirl!

Be sure you don’t under-bake these. If they’re not completely baked, they won’t hold up (gluten-free’ll do that.)

Here’s to opening our borders for those who seek asylum, safety and freedom. Here’s to freeing detainees (children!) from our concentration camps. Finally, here’s to the swift removal of a truly sick man who wears the cufflinks of a president and to establishing some dignity, intellectualism and sanity (yes, there isa sanity clause) in America if it isn’t already too late.

To love, peace, good health and happiness for all beings. To chocolate chip cookies.

peace and love,

jane

मेत्ता

Mesquite Flour/Guajillo Chile Butter 

Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Ingredients:

84 g. toasted/cooled and chopped pecans (or walnuts)

113 g. Guajillo chile butter (see below – recipe will yield more than needed)

½ tsp. vanilla powder (or 2 tsp. pure vanilla extract)

100g. Muscavado sugar

50 g. light brown sugar

130 g. mesquite flour

45 g. arrowroot flour

1 tsp. kosher salt

¾ tsp. baking soda

1 egg, size large, room temperature

170 g. bittersweet (very dark to unsweetened) chocolate, coarsely chopped

Procedure:

To make the browned Guajillo Chile butter: 

Melt 226 g. (2 sticks or 18 Tbsp.) unsalted butter in a heavy bottomed saucepan with 2 Guajillo chiles. Skim foam and discard. Cook butter until ‘browned’. Optional: For real picante, add chipotle powder (to taste). For this recipe it’s not necessary to strain but if you’re using this for recipes that will reveal the butter, please strain through a fine mesh sieve. Set aside to cool.

Sift or whisk together mesquite and tapioca flours with salt and baking soda. Set aside.

MLBH truc: Mesquite flour will puff out like a cloud of confectioner’s sugar, but worse. When adding this to the batter, throw a dish towel over the mixer before you power up.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix together the cooled butter and sugars. 

Add the egg and mix on medium speed until lightened.

Dump in the dry ingredients and mix until combined. (see above MLBH truc!)

Add the chopped chocolate and nuts and mix until combined.

At this point, you can roll into logs (parchment or waxed paper) and refrigerate or freeze for slice and bake cookies. Or, you can proceed and bake these as drop cookies.

If batter is too soft, refrigerate until firm.

Preheat oven to 350º F. 

For drop cookies, use small cookie scoop and flatten to ½”, using fork tines, crisscross. 

Bake until browned, about 8-12 minutes.  Cool on racks before removing from parchment. Store in airtight tin or freeze.

Corn Muffins

Corn Muffins

Adapted by Blue Heron Kitchen

from Carole Walter’s Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More

This post is dedicated to my friends and former neighbors who live in Long Beach, NY
This blog began because of Bernadette Martin, the Manager of the Kennedy Plaza Farmer's Market

(Back in business on the 21st of November!)

These people were some of the hardest hit and most direly effected by the recent Superstorm Sandy.
 I encourage you to help in anyway you can. 
Click HERE to visit the official site of Long Beach. On the right hand side, you will find a link where you can donate directly to help rebuild the magical "City by the Sea".
Below is a link to the National Red Cross for further donations.

After Sandy hit hard, the following week, we were slammed with a Nor’easter that dumped as much as nine inches of snow on some of us here on the east coast. Compared to others, who lost power for weeks, their homes, belongings, cars and some, their lives, I was fortunate to have only lost power for several days. After replenishing all the spoilt food items, with the new threat of power outages, I pulled out my new butter, new eggs; and I got to work, baking several batches of corn things. 

Corn muffins make life better.

I've never loved corn muffins that have kernels of corn in them, so save your kernels for chowder.

Used to be the best place in town for my corn muffin was The Palace Diner on the corner of Main Street and the Long Island Expressway.

I had my Sunday run in the park/NY Times ritual and my regular booth and great waiter, "Klino".

He knew my 'usual': black coffee and a corn muffin, toasted with butter and orange marmalade on the side. (Okay, sometimes I had poached eggs.)

 Famous people ate at The Palace. Here's someone you might recognize who fell from grace, yet still knew a good corn muffin. Anthony Weiner seized a photo op with my son, while my son was secretly fuming that his feta cheese and onion omelet and onion roll were growing cold.

The Palace is gone. 

It's a Dim Sum Joint. (And it's pretty good .. but no muffins.)

This recipe is sweet and corn-crunchy. 

I like a corn muffin to taste more like corn than cake; and this one has a bold, corn flavor. It’ll shine at breakfast and also be a great addition to your savory bread-basket at dinner (you can reduce the sugar by 1/4 of a cup!)

I encourage you to use Bob’s Red Mill COARSE GRIND Corn Meal, mixed with regular or medium grind corn meal. It adds crunch, fiber and sweetness to these muffins. If you follow the above link to the site, it’s sold in four 24 oz. bags for $8.35. Pretty reasonable, and it keeps quite well. You can purchase it at Fairway Market or at any good independent market that carries Bob’s Red Mill’s line of products.

Always use whole milk when a recipe calls for ‘milk’. It’s also a good idea to use organic milk. It doesn’t come from cows treated with hormones or who have chomped on stuff that are all gmo’d.

When your refrigerated ingredients are at room temperature, they won’t ‘shock’ the daylights out of the rising agents. Bring them all down to room temperature – the milk, the eggs; and even the butter that you’re going to melt will melt faster if it’s out. (Anyone who lived without power for several days or more or who lives outside of this country knows that butter can be left out of the fridge and it will do you no harm – promise.)

These are great the day they’re made, for up to a few days. You can freeze them, so if you want corn muffins on your Thanksgiving Day table, you can start now!

Please remember to donate (click on this link to the Red Cross!). If you’re in the NY/NJ Metro area, you can donate clothes, food, time and money (whichever and whatever you can) to help those of us who have suffered and continue to suffer the damage that Sandy has incurred. Here is a link to the Huffington Post article: Hurricane Sandy: 10 Tips For Donating Smart

Stay warm, charged, gassed up and safe.

peace and love,

jane

Corn Muffins

Yield 24 Muffins (may be halved)

Ingredients:

12 Tbsp./6 oz. unsalted butter (I use Plugra, a higher fat content European style butter)

4 Tbsp. Canola Oil

2 C. Unbleached All Purpose Flour (Try King Arthur)

1 1/2 C. Stone Ground Yellow Cornmeal, spooned and leveled

1/2 C. Coarse Ground Yellow Cornmeal, spooned and leveled

1 C. Granulated Sugar (For a more savory muffin, use 3/4 c.)

2 Tbsp. Baking Powder (make sure it’s fresh!) (And YES, I do mean Tablespoons)

1 ½ tsp. kosher salt

4 eggs, size large, at room temperature

2 C. Whole Milk (preferably organic, at room temperature)

1 ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract (I use Baldwin’s from West Stockbridge!)

Procedure:

1.    Rack in oven to the middle of the oven. Preheat oven to 400º F.

2.    Brown your butter in a heavy saucepan, melting it over low heat. Skim the foam as it forms (it helps to tilt the saucepan toward you!) The butter is ready when it’s a golden brown and it has a nutty fragrance. This should take about five minutes or so. Be careful to not burn the butter!

3.    Pour the browned butter into a glass measuring cup and add the Canola oil.

4.    Spoon a generous ½ tsp. of this mixture into each muffin cup. Use a pastry brush or some waxed paper to spread it around the cup.

5.    In a large bowl (always use a larger bowl than you pull out, you’ll be glad), whisk together all dry ingredients.

6.    In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and vanilla extract.

7.     Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients (you can make a wish now) and pour in the wet ingredients, including the remaining butter/oil mixture. (If you’re doing this in two batches, be sure to reserve some butter/oil mixture for the second batch.

8.     Using a large rubber spatula, push the dry ingredients into the center from the sides of the bowl. Do Not Overmix. The batter will be loose and somewhat lumpy (like some body parts appear when you haven’t been exercising regularly.)

9.     Portion the batter into the muffin tin(s) using an ice cream scoop that has a ¼ c. capacity (or use a ¼ c. measuring cup, or wing it). The cups should be almost full.

10.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the muffins are golden brown and tops are spongy to the touch. If you’re baking on two racks, be sure to rotate your tins, top to bottom, front to back, half way through the bake.

11.  Place on rack to cool.