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.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Pecans

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Pecans

that don't taste gluten-free

adapted from King Arthur Flour by My Little Blue Heron

Blue Heron Kitchen has been on extended leave. As soon as I figure out how the Heron can move over to my new domain, this site will remain intact, but Blue Heron will migrate to its new nest. In due course, Blue Heron Kitchen will be christened, My Little Blue Heron. 

My Little Blue Heron will feature gluten, dairy-free and low FODMAP diet-friendly recipe that don't taste chalky or gritty or wrong. Gluten and dairy-free cookery has come out, and I'm excited to share recipes for artisinal breads that have crust(!), cookies that don't have grit, recipes that aren't dominated by coconut oil, and a vegan parmesan cheese that may not taste like "Reggiano", but the nutritional value and texture will have you sprinkling it on your pizza, pasta dishes and on your salads. I'll share some of my new Japanese recipes. Japanese cuisine is so welcoming to those who are gluten and dairy free. (And it's not all about Tamari. Kikkoman and other soy sauce companies are producing gluten-free soy sauce. And if you stay away from soy, coconut aminos are your friends.) There are alternatives to alternatives, and I'm going to share as much as I know with you. 

It's beginning to look a lot like gridlock alert days. I'll begin with some holiday-friendly recipes. You can't make enough cookies around this time of year...cookies for giving, swapping or slinging, here's a great chocolate chip cookie recipe that gluteneers will love, too.

Get in the kitchen, get baking, take care of yourself and others.  

peace and love,

jane

I bucked convention and converted these from drop to rolled cookies. I made these with butter (the only dairy I incorporate into my cooking), but you can use a non-dairy substitute. If you use one that is salted, omit additional salt. When you roll your own cookies, you can bake as many or as few as you'd like .. on demand. If you don't own a kitchen scale, please get one (already.) Here's a great one. (I own three, and it's my fave.) Weighing ingredients will bring consistent results! 

Xanthan gum is expensive. (I think it's part of we got em by the GF balls conspiracy.) I buy Bob's Red Mill by the bag. As almost always, vitacost.com offers great prices (and variety!)

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

227 g. (1/2 lb.) unsalted butter, room temperature

213 g. (1 c.) brown sugar (If you're measuring it, pack it firmly.)

100 g. (1/2 c.) granulated sugar

1/2 tsp. powdered vanilla (Authentic Foods .. here's the link .. and yes, you can use 2 tsp. regular 

         vanilla extract, but beware: many vanilla extracts contain GRAIN alcohol and aren't GF.)

1 1/2 tsp Kosher salt

2 eggs, size large, room temperature

347 g. Multi-purpose GF flour of your choice*. IMPORTANT: If your flour has xanthan gum in it,                 omit the xanthan gum.

2 tsp. xanthan gum (See above: if your GF flour blend has xanthan gum, omit this.)

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. aluminum free baking powder

340 g. (2 cups) chocolate chips (GF .. and if you're dairy-free, the same.)

175 g. (1 1/2 c.) chopped pecans

Procedure:

1. Whisk together the flour blend, xanthan gum (if adding), baking powder, baking soda and salt and 

     set aside.

2. In the bowl of your Kitchen Aid or electric mixer, beat butter and sugars until fluffy. Add vanilla 

    powder (or extract) and beat until incorporated.

3. Add eggs, scraping down the bowl as needed. Make sure all ingredients are well combined.

4. Add dry mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture until blended. 

5. Dump in the chocolate chips and pecans, blending until just incorporated.

6. Using parchment paper or plastic wrap, separate into 3 portions. Roll each into a log about 10"-12"      long, depending on how big a cookie you want. Place the logs on a small cookie sheet and                  refrigerate until firm .. a few hours, or overnight. You can freeze the logs and slice and    

     bake them frozen. Just add additional bake-time.

7. Preheat oven to 350º F.  and line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

8. Slice cookies approximately 1/4"-1/2" desired thickness and place on sheets approximately 1"             apart (they don't spread, but they need their personal space.)

9. Bake time depends on your oven, where in the oven you've placed them, if they're cold, room             temperature or frozen, how thick you've sliced them, and like that. But figure about 10 minutes,           more or less. They're ready when they're golden brown.
10. Cool on cookie sheets for a few minutes before removing from parchment. Cool on racks.

Yield will vary, but figure about 3 dozen.
These will keep for a couple of days, but they're best eaten the day they're baked.
They freeze magnificently.

*A simple GF blend (make sure you use SUPERFINE rice flours for baking. Both white and brown superfine rice flours are sold by Authentic Foods. Vitacost.com is your best and least expensive resource for these (and so many other ingredients. Vitacost.com produces their own house brands that are great and are less expensive than Authentic Foods.): 

6 c. superfine brown rice flour, 2 cups corn or potato starch (I like one of each, but either will do), and 1 cup of tapioca starch. Whisk together, combine them WELL; and keep in a tightly lidded container. I suggest you buy Cambro containers for flour mixtures. They will do you a solid for storing flour mixtures and later on, dough mixtures! I have them in many sizes.

If you want to buy a GF flour blend, here are a couple of good quality blends:
Authentic Foods

Cup4Cup (pricey but good - very 'soft' blend, but there are now different varieties .. check it out!)

Better Batter (has xanthan gum)

Chocolate "Gold Coast" Globs

After a foot of snow blanketed Colorado last week, shutting down businesses and schools and with the arrival of snow and sleet, accented by a few cracks of thunder in New York City today, I suggest: Soyez prêtes! ('Be prepared!'). 


In kitchenese: mis en place (pronounced: meeze ehn plahsuh) 


So, when it comes to the baking of these fantastic globs that fall somewhere between a brownie a cookie and a "chunky", the situation is that everything you're going to need is pre-measured and ready, like you had an imaginary apprentice doing all the dirty work while you were in make-up getting ready for the shoot.* 

*You can't tell me that you never forgot something like the sugar or,say, doubled the butter and not everything else (as I just did - I'm serious).


Stay warm and dry. Eat a little chocolate. And wherever you go, "soyez prêtes"! 

Chocolate “Gold Coast” Globs

Adapted from Judy Rosenberg’s Baking book by Blue Heron Kitchen

Here’s another great recipe that I’ve added a couple of my own twists to that originates from Judy Rosenberg’s All-Butter (etc.) Baking Book. I’ve learned from her publicist that she’s about to come out with a new book soon. I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

It is CRITICAL that you allow for the chocolate and butter mixture to cool sufficiently or else you will wind up cooking your eggs.

Use excellent quality chocolate. It matters. I use Scharffen berger unsweetened chocolate and Jacques Torres’ dark chocolate discs, chopped, for my ‘chocolate chips’. These links are suggestions. You can purchase Scharffen berger chocolate in better stores, such as Fairway Markets and Jacques Torres has his own stores in NYC - in DUMBO, Chelsea Market and other locations too. Look for these products and discover your own chocolate treasures in your own necks of woods. Or go online and order through Amazon.

I have used both walnuts and pecans, but you can stick to one. If you love one and hate the other, knock yourself out. Today, I burned my walnuts, so my cookies had only pecans and they were pretty great.

Always toast and cool your nuts before you bake. Toast them at 350º F. for about 6-8 minutes, until you can just smell them. Watch them carefully. If they burn, they’re toast. You can play around and try a combination of chopped chocolate, nuts and even some dried fruit.

The globs freeze very well. So, if you’re starting to panic about Thanksgiving, you can bake these now and freeze them between sheets of parchment or wax paper (I love wax paper) in plastic containers, tins or freezer bags. (For anyone with a chocolate kupf, they’re stupid good frozen.)

Ingredients:

5 oz. semisweet chocolate (Scharffen berger or another good quality chocolate)

3 oz. unsweetened chocolate (same as above)

4 oz. 83%, European style butter, at room temperature (Plugra brand is a good one)

¾ c. all-purpose, unbleached flour (King Arthur or Bob’s Red Mill are fine examples)

1 tsp. baking powder (I use Rumford - sans aluminum!)

½ - ¾ tsp. kosher salt (depending on how much salt you want with your chocolate)

2 eggs, size large, at room temperature

2 tsp. pure vanilla extract (I use Baldwin’s vanilla – always)

1 Tbsp. instant espresso powder

¾ cup granulated sugar

¾ c. semisweet chocolate ‘chips’ (or chopped excellent quality, such as Jacques Torres discs)

1/3 c. chopped pecans (first, toasted and cooled)

1/3 c. chopped walnuts (first, toasted and cooled)

Procedure:

Here is where the mis en place brings you great satisfaction.

Carefully measure out all of the ingredients for this recipe.

You’ll just dump one thing in after another and this recipe will feel like you ripped off the box top of like, a box of Ghiradelli Ultimate Fudge Brownies.

1.                     Put the semi and unsweetened chocolates and butter in a stainless bowl, large enough to accommodate them; and set it atop a barely simmering pot of hot water. Take care that NO steam or hot water gets jiggy with the chocolate/butter mixture. Stir and melt. Remove to COOL.

2          Preheat oven to 325º F. and line 3 baking sheets or ½ size sheet pans or jelly roll pans with parchment paper. If you don’t have parchment paper (you should get some), grease the sheets with melted butter or brush them lightly with vegetable oil. Set aside.

3.         In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

4.         Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs, vanilla and coffee powder until blended.

5.         Add granulated sugar and blend until thick. 1-2 minutes.

6.         Add the cooled , melted chocolate/butter mixture and blend another minute or two. Scrape down the bowl as necessary. (If you have a silicone beater blade, this won’t be necessary!)

7.         Add the flour mixture, mixing on low speed, until just incorporated. No more than that, please. Fold in the chocolate ‘chips’ and nuts by hand or with the mixer, on low speed.

8.         Drop the dough by rounded spoonfuls (I use a small measured scoop), leaving a couple of inches between, onto the prepared sheets.

9. Bake, rotating the sheets,  between the racks, turning them too, about 10-13 minutes, until they rise slightly and form a thin crust. Immediately remove the cookies from the sheets (you can leave them on the parchment) and cool on a rack.       

Yield: 24-36 cookies, depending on how globular you go                 

Cranberry Bread (with ginger!)

Cranberry Bread

Blue Heron Kitchen

            After comparing at least six cranberry bread recipes, I left one out for reference.  That one was Bernard Clayton, Jr.’s Complete Book of Breads.  I’m always happy that I own this book. The original is out of print, but you can get used copies for $.01. Not a bad price.

            Orange is a natural with Cranberries, which are also called Mossberries (I learned that from Bernard). Use organic Valencias (at room temperature, you’ll get a good squeeze out of them). If you don’t have fresh oranges on hand, use store bought OJ. But for gmo’sake, buy organic. Bob’s Red Mill whole-wheat pastry flour is great. If you want to go all out whole wheat, get yourself a five-pound bag of King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat. It’s my new favorite flour. Just be sure that when you measure out, you scoop and level with a light touch. Don’t pack it in. European style butter (83% butterfat makes a difference. It trumps American butter in every way. Look for Plugra or Cabot brand.  In the New York Metro area, find them at Fairway or better markets.  You can use French butter, but it’s a fortune. Save it for the sablés.)  Be confident in your butter. If it’s not fresh, it will ruin your baking. Ask yourself this: would I spread this on toast I’m serving to my convalescing best friend? If the answer is “no”, throw it out. (Truc: freeze butter.  Keep it away from other things in the fridge. Or, pretend you’re European and just leave it on the counter. Nobody’s dead in Europe from leaving his or her butter out.) 

I used pecans and candied ginger in this loaf.  You can use one, both or neither. Try other nuts or other dried fruit. Toast your nuts first (most often in baked goods – it allows the oils to surface and alters the product and taste … really.) Spread them in a single layer and toast them in a preheated oven at 350º F. for about 8-10 minutes or until you can just begin to smell them. Be vigilant when you toast nuts. If you burn them, you’re really out of luck.  Cool them before you chop them. If you toast a larger quantity than is called for in the recipe, store them in a jar. They’re delicious.

Wash and dry the cranberries thoroughly, discarding any funky ones.  I never look forward to chopping them by hand because they’re unruly.  Put them in the food processor and give them about 8-10 quick pulses and you won’t have to go chasing escaped cranberries rolling all over your counter and floor.  Use a medium grate for the orange rind. Microplane Zester has a really high-end box grater.

This recipe uses almost one full bag of fresh cranberries. You’ll have some leftovers.  You can freeze them or throw them into your food processor or blender with a piece of fresh orange, rind and all, (about ¼ to ½  of one), some nuts, currents or raisins or dried cranberries and sweetener (Agave syrup or stevia) for a quick little relish.

Ingredients:

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour or King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat Flour

1 ¾ cups granulated sugar

1/4 tsp. orange oil, optional

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground ginger (if you’re adding candied ginger – if not, it’s your call)

2 tsp. pure vanilla extract (I use Baldwin’s. always)

2 tsp. kosher salt

4 oz. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and frozen for about 10 minutes (or longer)

1 ½ c. freshly squeezed orange juice (no need to strain – but remove any seeds)     (approximately 4-5 juicy oranges will render enough juice)

2 Tbsp. orange zest (zest of one large orange – just the rind, not the white pith)

2 eggs, size large, room temperature

1 cup chopped, toasted pecans

½ cup candied ginger, organic preferred

2 cups (approx. 8 oz.) fresh (or fresh/frozen) cranberries, coarsely chopped

Turbinado sugar for sprinkling on top of loaves (optional)

Procedure:

PREPARE:

Brush 2 large or 1 medium and a mélange of ‘other’ sized loaf pans with melted butter, vegetable oil, or a combination of the two. For an easier release, dust the pans with some flour. Be sure to give a good zetz (do it in the kitchen sink) to remove all flour that isn't lightly clinging to the butter or oil that you just used to prepare your loaf pans. You can do this step last once you see how much batter you have. But do have pans available and at hand so that you can get the batter into the oven asap. Once the dry meets the wet stuff, the rising agents will be activated. Think about how much you hate sitting in the waiting room or how great you looked when you boarded the flight.

1. Preheat oven to 350º F.
2. In the bowl of a food processor, coarsely chop the cranberries (or chop them by hand if you’re adventurous.) Set aside.
3. Chop the candied ginger into ½” pieces and mix with the chopped pecans. Set aside.
4. In a separate bowl mix orange zest into the measured out sugar. If you’re using the orange oil, add that too. Set aside.
5. In a large liquid measure cup, measure out the orange juice and crack the eggs directly into the orange juice. To this, add the vanilla extract. Whisk together. Set aside.
6. In the bowl of a Kitchen Aid mixer, or in a large mixing bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground ginger (if using) and sugar that has been infused with orange zest (and if you’re using it, orange oil).
7. With the paddle attachment (or using two knives or your fingers) add the very cold butter and mix until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.
8. Dump in the orange juice/egg/vanilla extract mixture and mix only until the ingredients are wet.
9. Add cranberries, nuts and candied ginger all together. Mix, either by hand or with the paddle attachment, folding in very quickly, until just incorporated. Less mixing means better cake.
10. Pour a little more than ½ way into each prepared pan.
11. Bake anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending upon the size of your loaf pan and the heat of your oven, until a wooden toothpick or a metal cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
12. Cool on rack before releasing from pans. You may have to run a sharp knife around the edges.
13. After releasing from pans, cool completely and wrap well.
14. Try to wait until the next day to eat these. The flavor will develop and improve.
15. These refrigerate and freeze well.

Happy autumn!

peace and love,

jane