A cookie that is good for you....!!!

Browsing through various baking sites, with a huge craving for cookies, I stumbled upon one intriguing good for you cookie, on a very good baking site, http://www.verybestbaking.com/. Nestle's own website....where else to find the prefect chocolate cookie. With the bikini season right around the corner, I figured I would give it a try.

Chocolate-Oat Cookies

Adapted from verybestbaking.com

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flout
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 large egg whites
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup chopped nuts

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate morsels

When making cookies you first want to cream the butter and sugar. Then you want to add the egg whites one at a time, the applesauce and then the flour mixed with baking soda and salt. Once that is combined, add your filling to the cookie, in this case chocolate, nuts and oats. Stir it well together and your cookie batter is all set!
I like my cookies not too big, so I placed around 2 tablespoon of batter on a baking pan, lined with parchment paper. Don't worry about getting them round and flat, they will flatten out by them selves.
Bake at 375 degree for around 9-13 minutes, depending if you like your cookie chewy or crunchy. I found that I like to bake them 10 minutes. But this you need to try out for your selves, because it all depends on the size of your cookies and your oven.
This batch will make around 40-50 cookies, but the good thing is that they freeze very well and in my opinion tastes even better frozen!

Spinach Quiche

After living a year in France right after high school, I not only learned French, had the greatest time, but I also learned to make Quiche. I have now adapted to recipe to a low fat version, but the basics are still the same.
For the dough I take 1/2 stick butter, 1 cup flour and 4 tbsp cottage cheese (fat free works fine) If you have a food processor, you can take the cold butter and flour and quickly pulse it to a coarse grind. If not just cut the butter in smaller piece and mix with the flour. Add the cottage cheese and knead until combined. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for around 30 minutes. A cold dough is much easier to roll out...

While you waiting for the dough to be cold, start preparing the filling. Today I am making a spinach quiche, one of my favorites! Dice up a small onion, 2 cloves garlic, crushed and saute them in a bit of olive oil. Take 2 packages of frozen leaf spinach, defrost them and add them to the pan. I prefer using leaf of cut spinach, I find that chopped spinach does not give quite the right texture or flavor. Let it saute for around 10 min, so most of the water has evaporated. Season the mixture with a bit of salt/pepper and nutmeg. Spinach and nutmeg goes very well together, but add only a bit, since nutmeg has a very fragrant flavor.

Once you have place the dough in your favorite baking pan, blind bake it for around 10 min at 350 degrees. Pour the spinach filling to the crust. Whisk together 3-4 eggs and 1/2 cup milk and season with salt and pepper. On top of the spinach add some shredded cheese, for this one I used some cottage cheese and sharp cheddar. Then you want to gently pour in the egg mixture. Bake for around 40/45 minutes at 350 degrees, until the eggs mixture has set and the quiche is golden brown.

Bon Appetit!!

Birthday Cake a la Danois

Once again a birthday is celebrated in my home. This time the birthday child really likes strawberry, so I needed to make a festive cake with lots of strawberries!
For the cake I whipped together 4 egg and 100 g sugar, once it is fluffy and white, gently fold in 100 g flour mixed with 1/2 tsp. baking powder. Pour the batter into a jelly roll pan and bake at 390 degrees for around 20 min.
While it is baking you want to prepare the vanilla custard, that will be the first layer of your cake. I made on batch of my standard custard, as I made for the Strawberry Pie earlier. Let the cake and custard cool to room temperature. Then spread out the custard on the cake in a even layer. Add on slice strawberries to cover the complete cake.
For the final touch I used whipped cream to create the Danish flag! You can of course adapt this to any flag you like... Add a few blueberries to the top right corner and you have the Stars and Stripes.

Easy Chocolate Roll

Jelly Rolls are a really easy cake to bake and something you can whip up in a flash, if you all of a sudden get unexpected guests. I decided to make a chocolate version, since we in my household really like chocolate!
The batter is not only easy, it is also lowfat, since it does not contain any butter. Just take 3 eggs, 120 gr sugar, 30 g flour and 2 tsp dutch cacao powder. Beat the eggs and sugar until airy and almost white. Mixe the flour and cacao powder and gently stir it into the eggs mixture. Pour the batter in a jelly roll pan and bake for 12-15 minutes at 350 degree.

Let the cake cool for a few minutes and then flip it onto a sugar dusted parcement papir. When it has cooled complately you can add the filling.

You can add your favorite filling, for this roll I whipped up some heavy cream with a small splash of vanilla. You want to coat the cake evenly, but leaving 1/2 inch of the sides free, becuase the filling will be pushed out a bit when you roll it.

Roll it firmly together, but without pushing all of the filling out the sides. I refrigerated this cake for around 1 hour before serving, just to get it completely set and nice cold.

Served with a few sliced up strawberries; it's the perfect dessert.