Cookie remodel

Putting the healthy in delicious

By Kim Carlson

February 28, 2007

Can baked goods that taste delicious be good for you — or at least not bad for you? Apple cake must be good for you, right? And carrot cake, with its three cups of grated carrots, can’t help but be healthy — or if it isn’t, please don’t tell me.

But what about rich, decadent, iconic chocolate-chip cookies? Bad to the bone?

Not necessarily. Using a combination of barley and whole-wheat flours (and a secret ingredient: vinegar), pastry chef and writer Ellen Jackson created a recipe for Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies as part of a feature on eating more whole grains in the Oregonian.

Sure, there’s sugar and butter in the recipe, but there’s also 100 percent whole-grain flour, which practically evens out the good and the not-so-good. Right?

She also gives recipes for delicious-sounding Glazed Hermit Bars and Triple Ginger Pancakes, both made with whole grains.

Finally, the piece includes a helpful sidebar with tips for cooking with white whole-wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour, spelt flour, and brown-rice flour.

I hope this piece stays viewable on the paper’s fickle website for a while, so that when I do buy a couple of those flours, I can look up how to best use them. And if anyone makes those cookies before I do, can you tell me how they turned out?