Whisked Away Wednesday: Eggless Whole Wheat Cookies

These cookies came about thanks to a late night crisis. I told my employees I would bring them "healthy" cookies... it was 11:00 at night and I had NO eggs, NO chocolate chips, raisins, add-ins of any kind, NO white flour and only a bit of sugar. I really needed to go shopping, but pulling 10-12 hour days at work made that a bit tough. But, against all odds, these cookies came out awesome! I was so excited when I pulled them out of the oven as basically, I had just thrown some stuff into a bowl, stirred, and hoped for the best. These are definitely going on my favorites list, and I have already made them twice this week (at the request of my coworkers!). They are a crisp, filling cookie, that I don't feel too bad about eating for breakfast. I am sure they would be great (and even more nutritionally balanced) if you threw in some raisins or nuts. I am making them again tonight and am going to sub in high quality maple syrup for the honey. I will let you know how they turn out!

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoon fat free half and half

3/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup honey

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup oil (ya, I was out of butter too, but I bet they would be good with butter as well!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together all ingredients in a big bowl. Using an ice cream scoop or large spoon, place rounds of cookie dough two-inches apart on a parchment paper lined cooking sheet.

Press down a bit on the tops of the cookies. Cook in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

satisfying and tasty

Happy munching!

Whisked Away Wednesday: Pear Muffins

Happy Wednesday everyone! It's pear season! We had a breakfast potluck at work this week and I was in charge of bringing doughnuts. Now, I am fond of doughnuts, I even posted a quick doughnut recipe a while back. I don't, however, believe that they are the best way to start a busy day at work. I wanted to bring something that was sweet and indulgent, but not quite as unhealthy as a big ol' doughnut. I had some pears sitting in the fruit bowl, but when I googled pear bread and muffins, all the recipes I found called for shredding the pears before incorporating them into the batter. I wanted to use big hearty chunks of pear! I found this recipe for Peach Almond Bread on the Amanda's Cookin blog. I can't bring anything to work with nuts in it (allergies), so I modified the recipe and used pears instead of peaches. I also made it into muffins, not bread. The muffins turned out DELIGHTFUL! Seriously, my new favorite muffin! They are light and filled with the succulent flavor of pear mingling with vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger. You should probably just make these now... you've made it half way through the week right?? So you deserve them!

Pear Muffins

Based on a recipe for Peach Almond Bread from Amanda's Cookin

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

2 cups peeled, chopped pears, (about 2 medium pears)

Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit.

Sorry about this ugly picture... but that's what it looked like! Batter aint always pretty... but it makes some tasty muffins!

Beat together first six ingredients (I used my hand mixer.)

Mix together remaining ingredients and add to wet ingredient mixture (don't overmix, using a good old fashioned wooden spoon helps).

Line muffin pans with liners. The recipe ended up making an odd number of muffins (15), so I had to use two muffin pans. A little tip I learned is to fill the unused muffin tins with a bit of water so that the muffins cook evenly.

Divide batter between 15 muffin tins, filling about 3/4 of the way full.

Sprinkle with streusel topping (see below for recipe).

Cook for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown and firm.

Streusel Topping

5 tablespoons butter (don't use margarine!)

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix together flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over muffins before baking.

Nobody missed having doughnuts at all!

Have a great rest of your week!

Foodie Friday

Whisked Away Wednesday: GIANT Pumpkin Molasses Cookies

Like pumpkin? Like molasses? I happen to love both, so these cookies are like a dream come true for me, and to top it all off, they are pretty healthy (for a cookie). They are made with whole wheat flour and no butter! In the original recipe (which I found on theungourmet.com) flax seeds replace the egg. I didn't have any flax seeds so I used an egg instead. The cookies turned out light, fluffy, and soft on the inside, the raw sugar coating on the outside adds a beautiful sparkle and wonderfully sweet crunch. The flavors come together in a particularly lovely combo of pumpkin and rich molasses. Just the smell of them baking is worth giving the recipe a try, they filled my whole apartment with all the lovely spicy smells of Fall.

Recipe thanks to Kim from The Ungourmet Blog

Makes about 1 dozen really big cookies

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 cup canned pumpkin

1/4 cup molasses

1/3 cup canola oil

1 egg

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup raw sugar (for rolling)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Whisk all dry ingredients together except the sugar. In a seperate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, molasses, oil, egg and brown sugar. Combine wet and dry ingredients, mix well. Put the raw sugar in a small bowl.

Form about 2 tablespoons of dough into a ball and cover with raw sugar - the dough is sticky at this stage, so I just used an ice cream scoop and dropped scoops into the sugar, swirling to cover. Continue until you have used up all the dough.

Before placing the cookies in the oven, use a fork to press the cookies down to about 1/2 inch thick (like you do with peanut butter cookies).

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until slightly firm.

All sparkly with sugar... mmmmmmm.....

You should probably go make these... right about now...

you wont regret it, I promise!

Happy Baking!

Apple Pumpkin Pie Bites

Happy Wednesday! This recipe was definitely a learning experience. I wanted to make pumpkin hand pies. So I used the recipe for the filling off of the pumpkin pie can and I bought two refrigerated pie crusts (cause I still have never made a pie crust... i know, how lame of me... but I WILL do it some day....). I figured I would just cut circles out of the refrigerated pie crust, add the filling, and top with another circle of pie crust, easy peasy. The problem turned out to be that the pie filling I made was waaay too liquidy, and I ended up with A LOT of it. A BUNCH more than I needed!

I am solution oriented though, so I added some flour to thicken it up, and used the extra filling to make these bars from picky palate. At the last minute, I was inspired to dice up an apple and add it to the pies. I had an extra one left over after making this cake, so I ended up with pumpkin apple pocket pies! They are delightful, flaky little bites of fall. The apple adds a great texture and flavor to the creamy pumpkin filling. The crust is nice and flaky, I'm sure homemade would be better but Pillsbury worked for me. I have posted the recipe I used (the one that makes a ton of filling), if you don't want extra pumpkin pie filling, just halve the filling recipe and that will make about the right amount of filling for 12 pie bites.

Apple Pumpkin Pie Bites

Ingredients

Original Ingredients

Plus...

Last Minute Add-Ins

1 can pumpkin

1 12 oz can nonfat evaporated milk

3/4 cup white sugar

9 tablespoons flour

2 eggs

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 small apple, diced

2 refrigerated pie crust doughs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a small tart pan (you could also use a muffin pan or a muffin top pan) and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin, milk, sugar, flour, eggs, salt, and spices.

Set aside.

Roll out pie crusts, and using a three inch circle cookie cutter, cut out 12 circles from each crust (you will need to bundle up the scraps and re-roll them).

Place 12 of the crusts in the prepared tart pan.

Sprinkle on a few pieces of diced apple, cover with a scant tablespoon of pumpkin filling. Brush the edges of each bottom crust with a bit of water and top with another circle of crust.

Pinch the two crust edges together (make sure they seal or else you will get filling seeping out the sides). Sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar. Bake at 350 for 20-25 min or until lightly golden brown.

Frosting

Ingredients

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1-2 tablespoons milk

Whisk together sugar and milk making sure to break up any lumps. Drizzle over mini-pies before serving.

Yay Fall!!