Is It Possible To Make A Healthy Cookie That Doesn't Suck?

You're all probably thinking that my answer is an unequivocal yes here, but the jury's still out. Fool around with whole-wheat flour for a few days and you, too, will learn that there's a trade off for making things brown. Whole-wheat flour is more dense and will turn even the most delicate of cookie recipes into a scone-like consistency. And I don't mean that in a good way.

My first experiment was an adaptation of a vegan recipe. Vegans, however, don't eat chocolate, since it generally has milk in it, so they supplant chocolate chips with carob chips. That's going too far, even for me, so I used the recipe with real chocolate chips. Three cups of whole-wheat flour (this seemed like a lot; I should have known better) goes into a mixing bowl with a teaspoon of baking powder. Wet ingredients, which included unsweetened applesauce (one cup), agave nectar (one cup), and vanilla extract (two teaspoons) were mixed separately and then integrated into the dry. I used my hands to create the dough and used my hands again to incorporate one cup of chocolate chips and one cup of chopped walnuts.

Wheat flour prevents cookies from spreading, so if you don't spread them by hand (and stupidly, I didn't), what you get is a brown exterior and a play-doughy, undercooked interior. I know that this is more the dough, which seemed too chewy even when I dropped it onto the cookie sheet. I threw the whole batch away.

Pluses of this baking disaster? The batter contains no eggs, which means that you can eat it without fear of contracting salmonella. Also, the dearth of creamable wet ingredients makes this a stand mixer-free recipe, so if you have no dishwasher (yours truly), you'll have fewer things to wash.

Minuses: even if you are a dough-eater, like me, you wouldn't want to eat this gummy concoction. And the cookies were inedible. Truly.

Round two. I decided to adapt the recipe on the back of the Toll House package for healthier purposes. Instead of a combination of white and brown sugars, I used dark agave nectar. Agave nectar is roughly twice as sweet as regular sugar. You have to cream the butter together (yes, in a stand mixer) with butter. Recipe calls for two sticks (otherwise known as 16 tablespoons), so I used 16 tablespoons of Smart Balance, a low-cholesterol butter substitute that very much resembles butter. Smart Balance is salted so I skipped the teaspoon of salt with the dry ingredients. I'm not sure whether or not that was wise. I don't think, however, that salt has anything to do with the leavening properties of baking powder.

Because the agave nectar isn't granulated like sugar, the butter and nectar don't cream together quite right. Oh well. I add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and two eggs anyway. To that, I slowly beat in the dry ingredients that I have mixed on the side: a one-to-one ratio of wheat flour to white flour (two and a quarter cups total) and one teaspoon of baking powder. The dough that forms looks and tastes more like a normal cookie dough. I add the chocolate chips (one cup) and walnuts (one cup) by hand.

I notice, after a few minutes in a 375 degree oven that, once again, the cookies aren't spreading. I guess a cup and an eighth of wheat flour goes a long way. I decided to pull the cookies out and flatten them with the back of a spoon. This worked a little better, but the chips on top got all mangled so that, by the end, they looked more like chocolate chunk cookies than the pictures on the front of the Toll House bag.

They are still a bit doughy on the inside but a vast improvement over my previous attempt at veganism. And by my rough calculations, they come to a paltry 120 calories a pop, worth it if they're yummy and completely not worth it if they suck.

I think my conclusion is this: if you're looking to make pastry healthier, don't. Either eat them or don't, both at your own peril. But making bad cookies is way worse than not making cookies at all.

Burger And Beer Nite

When my personal trainer learned of my plans to participate in Burger and Beer Night on the upper west side, the first things she said to me was, "don't eat the French fries."  As if holding back on the fries would in any way mitigate the fat and calories consumed by the burger and beer.  Anyway, she would be proud.  By the time my burger arrived at Community Food and Juice, the hand-cut, skin-on fries were of little concern.  

Even though Community Food and Juice lies smack in Columbia University territory, and even though school is out of session until Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and even though last night marked one of the coldest of the year, Community was packed.  Like many other restaurants aiming to beat the recession, Community has recently added a burger promotion to their menu: on Thursday nights, from 6-7 pm, you can get a farm-raised burger, fries, and a beer for a paltry $15.  We missed the bargain, which made it easier to consider the rest of the menu.  Comfort foods, from macaroni and cheese to panko-breaded chicken abound.  For the health-conscious, Community offers a selection of rice bowls and veggies.  

But we came for burgers, so burgers it was.  To start, we ordered a flatbread pizza topped with two cheeses and fat slices of duck bacon.  And then... the burgers.  Community serves their patties on glossy, buttered, brioche-like rolls.  Accoutrements include house-made sweet pickles, caramelized onions, white cheddar (which I skipped) and watercress.  I could have used a tomato, but 'tis not the season.  Anyway, the patty is full-flavored enough to enjoy in a minimalist manner.  

In lieu of beer, I enjoyed a bourbon apple cobbler, basically a strong marriage of bourbon and fresh cider, garnished with a slice of green apple.  Community places an emphasis of locally sourced and fresh foods, evidenced by their clever drink list.  Even the cranberry margarita comes with real cranberry juice, a departure from the burgundy stuff to which we've grown accustomed.  

For dessert, we sampled both the chocolate and butterscotch puddings, as well as the warm cookie plate.  Butterscotch pudding was tasty but watery and unset.  The dish's best feature was its accompanying toffee chips.  Chocolate pudding, on the other hand, was firm, rich, dark, and garnished with chocolate whipped cream and shaved chocolate.  We made a parfait from the remains.  Chocolate chip cookies were better than Toll House, served three to a plate, still warm. My trainer would be proud to hear that I was too full to do much damage; I didn't even finish dessert.

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Community Food and Juice

2893 Broadway

New York, NY 10025

212.665.2800

They're Not Going To Go All The Way

The Giants, that is. Is it criminal to expect a repeat performance in the game defined by the adage "Any Given Sunday"? Would it have been so completely bonkers to watch Eli Manning manning it up (pun intended) against the Eagles to finish what has certainly been an impressive season?

While the Giants were busy making their mistakes yesterday afternoon (stop passing up the middle already!), I was busy making some mistakes of my own. It might actually be impossible to watch American football in the company of food that is not fried, beige, and generally unhealthy. And any teetotaler will tell you that football season is the one exception to the "don't drink on Sundays" rule.

I ended up at a sports bar in Astoria. I had one criteria when choosing this particular bar: Buffalo wings. My friend, more moved by the game than by the game food, figured that Broadway Station, a pub located at the Broadway stop on the N train, would be big enough to guarantee a seat during a high-octane hometown game.

We did get a seat and we did get wings. They were small (strike one), breaded (strike two), and not nearly spicy enough (yerrrrrrrr out). Baby back ribs met with more success, fatty beef ribs falling off the bone and lacquered with sticky sweet BBQ sauce. The ribs came with vinegary cole slaw festooned with mustard seeds.

To continue my artery-clogging afternoon, I supplemented our meaty snacks with a plate of onion rings (bread battered, not the beer battered variety) and a Caesar salad. The lettuce itself was pretty unremarkable grocery store greenage, but the dressing was thick, tangy, and surely made with plenty of mayonnaise.

I washed this down with a Magic Hat No. 9--apricot-flavored hippie beer from Vermont--a Diet Coke, and a glass of water, because variety is the spice of life.

And by the way, the Giant's loss did not provoke better eating habits in the evening; for dinner, we watched 24 and ate Toll House cookies (from the tube) and a very mediocre Domino's pizza. This is why I love my country: none of the foods we invented will ever help perpetuate a long or healthy existence.

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Broadway Station
3009 Broadway
Astoria, NY 11106
718.545.5869