My man doesn't have much of a sweet tooth, but he does have a weakness for cookies. Rather than have him pick up a package of cookies filled with white flour and unnecessary ingredients, I thought I'd bake some with whole wheat flour instead.
Now, I'm not a baker. Ovens and I have never been able to work that well together. Ever. I've set off smoke detectors more times than I will ever admit to. I've made biscuits that Chris just couldn't handle eating more than the customary "They're fine honey" one.
Rather than tell the oven "It's not you, it's me" and move on to store-bought pastries and no-bake cookies I've continually vowed to improve the skill (or lack thereof) and try new recipes. I recently had a crack in that resolve when I messed up a batch of no-bake cookies. Yep, no-bake cookies. Something so simple you could use a microwave for and don't even have to use a stove. Still, I want to improve. Besides, it can only go up from here.
Since Chris likes raisins, I found a recipe for soft raisin cookies. After gathering all the ingredients I got to work. I had one store bought egg left and decided that it was older than our hen's eggs and should use it for baking. We had bought them for Chris to make breakfast for friends at the elk hunting camp he went to a few weeks back. With our girls only laying a few a day we needed enough to feed five or more people.
When I added our hen's egg I was surprised at how much paler and runnier the store egg was compared to it.
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| The egg on the left is a store bought egg and the one on the right are from our happy backyard hens. |
I normally can't resist the urge to eat all the cookie dough eat a bit of raw cookie dough but the fact that this doughy goodness was full of gluten that wouldn't make me a happy camper made it easier to restrain myself. There was no tasting. Just a lot of drooling.
It took a bit of time and patience to get all the dough on the cookie sheets but it was well worth it. I didn't burn them and the house smelled wonderful when Chris got home from work. I gave him a smaller cookie to keep him away from them long enough to take a picture of all of them together (minus the sacrificial distraction cookie of course).
We ended up with just short (two less) of seven dozen cookies. My sugar canister is temporarily housing half the goodies until I can find a cookie jar. I'm hoping to find a glass one similar to my sugar canister at a thrift store.
I'm happy I made them. Chris ate a ton of them right away and took some to work. My turbulent relationship with the oven may have taken a turn for the better. I think I'll try some sugar cookies now. I may need a lot of practice before Christmas.
