This review is going to be pretty food science heavy.  I do not actually have a Food Science degree- I have a degree in Elementary and Special Education, but I have friends (waves hi to the Cornabys people) who have literally written the book and taught the college courses on food science, and they have taught me pretty much everything I know about food.  This recipe has a LOT going on in it, and it all works out to a really good cookie!

First, there is a reason why there is pudding in the cookie dough.  If you go to the cookie aisle of the grocery store, and look for the packaged soft baked cookies- Chips Ahoy used to have one, but I don’t buy a lot of packaged cookies, so I couldn’t tell you if they are still on the market- the ingredient that makes those cookies soft and chewy is Modified Food Starch.  Now, go and take a look at a package of instant pudding and take a look at the ingredient list.  I know you have a box lying around in your pantry somewhere, so go look, I’ll wait….okay, so one of the main ingredients in instant pudding is Modified Food Starch (and sugar, and flavorings).  Modified Food Starch is an instant thickener.  You can thicken things without cooking them.  It’s really wonderful stuff.  It ALSO holds onto moisture, so when you add it to baked goods, it keeps them soft and chewy and moist.  When you see cake mixes that say “Pudding in the Mix” They haven’t really added pudding, they’ve added Modified Food Starch.  It makes the cake extra moist.  For a long time, Modified Food Starch wasn’t made for household use, it was a secret kept by food companies.  Many years ago, before Cornabys was called Cornabys, they started making a Modified Food Starch that was for the household consumer.  It’s called Ultra Gel, and you can use it EXACTLY like pudding in your baked goods to get them soft and chewy.  If you think you might make this cookie, then by all means go buy a cheap box of instant pudding, and throw it in.  If however, you love the results, and want to try it in your cakes, breads, pancakes, muffins or any other baked good you can think of, then you really want to invest in Ultra Gel.  Use about a teaspoon per cup of flour in your basic recipe and see what happens!

The second cool thing going on with this cookie recipe is that it uses applesauce.  Frequently, applesauce is used to replace or reduce your fat in a baked goods recipe.  I like using applesauce instead of oil in my zucchini bread, and it comes out great every time.  There is still butter in this cookie, however, so the applesauce is actually doing more than just reducing the fat.  It’s adding moisture.  This is exactly the kind of moisture the Modified Food Starch needs to keep the cookies soft!  If you have a fairly dry recipe, and want to add Ultra Gel to soften things up, then consider adding a little bit of extra liquid- applesauce, water, milk, juice, etc.  Just a Tablespoon or two will make sure that there’s something moist for it to work with.

Lastly, we need to talk flour.  Up until now, I haven’t talked about the kind of flour I use in my cookie recipes, but the time has come to reveal that I never cook with plain old bleached white flour.  That’s because it’s been so processed that there’s nothing in it anymore that makes it a real food, other than starch.  I don’t cook with all whole wheat flour, however, because the texture comes out so dense and heavy that it really affects the results in a baked good.  Instead, I use unbleached white flour mixed with whole wheat flour-about half and half.  I’ve done it for years and years and have never regretted it.  The results always come out well, and at least there’s an ATTEMPT at nutrition in a cookie.  Any of these recipes, if it has flour, it has the white flour/ wheat flour mix.  Since this recipe actually calls for both white and wheat flour, I just used my standard mix, I didn’t measure the two flours out separately.

Whew!  *steps down from the lecture podium* There you go, that is everything you need to know about this cookie, except for the most important thing.  They taste really good, are soft and chewy and you should go make them!

(ed notes:  Didn’t she do a good job?)

 Soft Pudding Cookies

1 cup all purpose flour

1 ¼ cups wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ cup softened butter

½ cup applesauce

¾ cups packed brown sugar

¼ cup white sugar

1 (3.4 oz) pkg instant pudding (I used vanilla)

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups chocolate chips

1 cup nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.  Sift together dry ingredients and set aside.  Cream together butter, applesauce, and sugars.  Add pudding mix and beat until well blended.  Stir in eggs and vanilla until smooth.  Add dry ingredients, then chocolate chips and nuts.  Drop cookies by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake for 9-11 minutes until edges are golden brown.

To celebrate we’re hooking up with Mrs. Mix-It the Cooking Underwriter for a Fruitivia give away.  She has an awesome recipe for gluten free scones too.

Come on over and check it out!

Jana

Quinoa Pancakes

I made quinoa for the first time a couple of weeks ago.  For such an ancient grain, it suddenly seems to be the new hot food item.  I see recipes for quinoa popping up all the time on the internet.  It only took a few thousand years for it to become popular!  My original intention was to make quinoa for a salad recipe I found on www.ourbestbites.com.  I followed the cooking instructions on the box of quinoa I bought at the grocery store.  I quickly realized that I was going to have a problem.  The salad recipe called for two cups quinoa, and the box instructions made more than that.  A LOT more than that!  I was suddenly looking for a lot of ways to make quinoa!

Fortunately, Pinterest saved the day.  As I said, there are lots of quinoa recipes popping up, and I caught sight of a pancake recipe.  Quinoa pancakes!   This could be good!  I found one online, and made the recipe on a Saturday morning.  I should mention that my family loves pancakes, but they have pancake issues.  For years I have only made pancakes that were whole wheat, so they have gotten spoiled.  Whenever they have pancakes made with cheap pancake mix, they hate them.  Their pancake standards are pretty darn high.

I am happy to report that the quinoa pancakes met their expectations and then some!  These pancakes had teeth!  They had the rich texture of the quinoa that made them filling and wholesome.  As a bonus, the recipe called for bananas, and the banana flavor worked fabulously.  The batch made more than enough pancakes for my family and left enough that we had pancakes for a few days after.  Because there is brown sugar and banana in the batter, I found that syrup wasn’t necessary.  I would top it with an extra burst of fruit flavor- like Cornaby’s Fruitivia.  That wouldn’t add extra sugar, and up the nutritional content of the pancake even more!  This recipe is a keeper!

Thanks to www.macheesmo.com for a great recipe!

Quinoa Pancakes

2 cups flour (I use a mixture of unbleached and whole wheat)

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 Tbl brown sugar

1 cup cooked quinoa

1 ripe banana, mushed (optional)

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

½ cup buttermilk

4 Tbl melted butter

Stir together dry ingredients.  In a separate bowl, mash the banana then add milk and eggs.  Stir in the quinoa.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.  Stir to combine, then add melted butter.  Thin with milk if necessary.  Cook on the griddle and serve with a pouch of Fruitivia!

Peanut Butter Kisses, Peanut Butter Blossoms, it doesn’t matter how you title it, it’s a classic cookie- peanut butter with a Hershey’s Kiss pressed into the center.  Everyone has one of these recipes.  Over Christmas, Hersheys had a Cookie Exchange Contest.  If you won, you got a pack that contained everything you needed to host your own cookie exchange party- including Hersheys very own cookie recipes and ingredients to make them.  All you needed to do was host the party, then get pictures and blog about the event.  I thought it would be perfect for The Great Cookie experiment- testing out official Hersheys recipes and seeing how they turned out!  Except I didn’t win.  I DID get some consolation recipe cards, and lo and behold, this recipe was one of them.  Because, like I said before, it’s a classic.

Being a classic recipe, you would think that I wouldn’t mess it up, but I did.  Kind of.  The recipe calls for shortening or margarine.  I really prefer cooking with butter, and I figured that if it listed margarine as an option, then butter would probably be okay too.   I should have stuck to shortening or margarine.  The texture of a cookie changes when you change the fat you use.   They tasted exactly like they were supposed to, but I thought the cookies spread a bit more on the pan than I wanted them to.  I want the cookie to stay puffier so that it looks cute with the Hersheys kiss in the middle.  Overall, this is a minor picky aesthetic thing.  (Editors note: Fat type always makes a huge difference in cookies.  If you like the buttery flavor, you can combine part butter and part shortening to get better poof, or use the butter and then bake the cookies in muffin tins to force the shape to be more cuplike.)  Make the cookies.  Everyone wants you to, because if it’s not part of your next cookie buffet, people WILL miss it.

Peanut Butter Kisses

1 pkg Hersheys Kisses

1 ¾ cup flour

½ tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

½ cup shortening or margarine- not butter

½ cup peanut butter

1 egg

2 Tbl milk

1 tsp vanilla

Cream sugars, shortening and peanut butter.  Add egg, milk, vanilla, and beat well.  Add flour, salt and baking soda.  Roll into balls, then roll into sugar.  Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  Take out and press a Kiss in the center while the cookie is still hot.  Let cool.

Recognizing this problem my sister Denny created the pintrest challenge in which we must actually TRY some of the cool things we find on pintresta nd then report on them somewhere.  I tried a few thigns.  I took pictures and I couldn’t figure out where to report on them.  I already have this blog and I have two other blogs which already get neglected.  I am very sure I don’t need yet another one.

Soo…for Denny and the pintrest challenge this week I made stove cleaner.  It’s not the only thing I did, but it’s the one we’ll talk about today.

The idea came from One Good Thing and is a stove cleaner made of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide.  Somehow I’ve been living under a rock and didn’t realize that this combination is awesome.  As we will see in the pictures my stove is still not perfectly clean, but picture the first was after the stove had been cleaned with some commercial stuff, but before my paste of baking soda and peroxide.  The mixture is baking soda and then just enough peroxide to make a nice paste which I smeared on and let sit before scrubbing off with a wet rag.  The last picture is the current result.  It’s still not perfect, not by far, but so much better.  I expect another good past soak and it’ll look like new.

Muuuch better

So there’s my cool thing for Monday.  I also made a homemade version of febreeze, but that’s another blog.

If you’d like to come and pin along I can be found at two places:

www.pintrest.com/cornabys (for food and Cornaby’s products and recipes)

www.pintrest.com/jenarey (for the complete randomness that is me as writer, cook, geek, mama and stuff that catches my eye).

What cool things have you done this week?

Jana

So for today it’s a Fruitivia Friday and I was looking for a dessert to health up with our favorite flavors.  I’ve made Black Bean Brownies before and thought that the addition of Fruitivia to this recipe would add additional fiber and a nice fruit undertone.  Both are true.    So here’s a healthy, pretty brownie.  In the 9×9 square pan it makes a thick, moist and chewy brownie which Bunneh loved.  I think I’d go for the 9×13 myself and have it be just as moist but a little thinner.  These would also make a great base for a trifle.  Mm…trifle.

Black Bean and Fruitivia Brownies

1 Family sized Brownie Mix (gluten free works well too)

1/4 cup Ultra Gel

1 can (15 oz) black beans

2 pouches Triple Berry Fusion Fruitivia

Open and rinse black beans before returning to the can.  Fill the can, with beans in it, with water.  Pour beans and water into a blender and grind well.  In a medium sized mixing bowl combine brownie mix and Ultra Gel, mix well.  Add bean mixture.  Fruitivia can either be added to this mix and stirred in, or squirted on top of the batter and ribboned through just before baking.  Bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.  This mixture will take a little longer than a standard mix to bake because of the additional moisture in the beans and Ultra Gel.

Serve unadorned, frosted, in trifle, with whipped cream…the possibilities are endless.    These brownies provide fiber, vitamin C, protein and antioxidants.  However, at around 3-4 grams of fiber per serving, assuming 9 servings, have a care with eating too many of these yummy treats, lest you spend slightly more time in the restroom than you want.

Jana

We have a Valentine’s Day tradition in my family where we have a formal dinner, the whole family. We break out the china, the crystal, cloth napkins, candles, the works. I make Fettuccine Alfredo, shrimp, warm crusty bread, salad greens and for dessert, I dip chocolate strawberries. Everyone has to dress up fancy, and we put on classical music to dine in style. This has been going on since my oldest was six years old and wanted to talk about jewels because regular conversation wasn’t fancy enough. She’s seventeen now, and it’s still a treasured event here.

I would absolutely make these shortbread cookies to go with those chocolate dipped strawberries. These are rich buttery cookies spread with raspberry jam, and drizzled with semisweet chocolate. The flavor combination is wonderful, and they look beautiful-perfect for a fancy dining event.

We need to talk about the “raspberry spread” here in the recipe. It calls for taking raspberry jam and thickening it with cornstarch, then spreading it on the cookie. I wouldn’t do that. Adding cornstarch will change the flavor of your jam. Instead, thicken it with Ultra Gel. You don’t have to cook it, just stir the Ultra Gel in, so it’s much easier, and doesn’t affect the flavor. I used a raspberry huckleberry jam that I made with Cornab’ys Jam in a Jiffy. It was a beautiful dark red, and the huckleberries added a nice flavor twist. You could also use any of the Cornaby’s jam flavors- especially seedless for a smoother texture. They also have brand new Fruitivia with flavors that are to DIE for. The Triple Berry Fusion would add a great burst of fruit flavor in your cookies. All of these options are lower in sugar as an added bonus!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I hope your traditions are just as special, and that these cookies can somehow be a part of it! They’re worth it!

Raspberry Shortbread Hearts

2 cups flour

6 Tbl sugar

2 Tbl cornstarch (Substitute 3 Tbl of Ultra Gel instead of the cornstarch. You’ll get a better taste, and a softer cookie)

1 cup butter

Raspberry Topping:

½ cup raspberry jam (see above options!)

2 ½ tsp cornstarch (3 ¼ tsp Ultra Gel)

Cornstarch method- Put ingredients in a saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and let cool.

Ultra Gel Method- Stir Ultra Gel into jam.

Combine flour, sugar, and cornstarch. Mix well. Cut in butter until crumbly. Form into a ball and chill for one hour. Roll out dough to ¼ inch thickness. Using a 3 or 4 inch heart-shaped cookie cutter, cut heart shapes from the dough. Top with raspberry topping and bake at 375 for 8 minutes. Cool and drizzle with melted semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Annnyway…cheeseburgers aside one of my favorite things to slow cook is pork ribs.  I usually go with a barbecue kind of flavor, but this week I had a couple of bottles of cherry berry jam, a brand new invention at the plant, and needed something to do with them.  So I did an Asian style slow cooker pork rib, which we served up over a bed of brown rice and quinoa with peas.  It was fantastic for both adults and the kids.  This is also a gluten free recipe as long as you choose gluten free hoisin and soy sauces. 

Cherry Berry Slow Cooker Ribs

2 jars cherry berry spread

1 red onion, sliced

8-10 country style pork ribs

1 Tbl Ultra Gel

1 Tbl soy sauce

2 tsp hoisin sauce

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp garlic

1/2 tsp chinese five spice

1/2 tsp kosher salt

Layer one bottle of spread and onions in the bottom of a slow cooker.  Brown ribs in a non stick skillet and move to the cooker.  In skillet combine the second bottle of spread and all spices.  Warm through and pour over ribs.  Slow cook on low heat for 6-8 hours or medium heat for 4-6 hours.

We’ve got a brand new product called Fruitivia and I’ve decided to work on bringing it into recipes for it’s opening month.  So on Friday’s in February we’ll look at some healthy recipes staring Fruitivia.

Today’s recipe is a Fruitivia smoothie.  This is a take on the popular green smoothie, but with the Fruitivia added in to increase the fiber and antioxidants, while adding some great flavor and a little sweetening.  When it comes to smoothies, green or otherwise, I’m really the only one in my house that likes them.  The husband will humor me and drink most of one, but it’s generally not his meal of choice.  I think it’s something about the texture which just doesn’t do it for the men folk.  Smoothies are often breakfast for me on days when I’m working from home, or when I want something quick to take on the road to work.  These smoothies are also a good way to use over ripe bananas.  I put my over ripes into the freezer and then pull them out for smoothies and for banana bread or muffins.

So here’s my base recipe:

1 frozen banana

1 cup frozen or fresh berries

1 pouch fruitivia

1 cup milk (soy milk or rice milk work really well)

one handful fresh spinach

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp Ultra Gel

Combine all ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth.

I don’t add sugar or honey or anything to this mix, but you certainly could if you want more sweetness.  I prefer the sweet from the Fruitivia and the fruit, and you won’t taste the spinach at all.  It just adds a good iron source, fiber and vitamins!

So what’s your favorite smoothie combination?

Jana Brown

I just got an account on Pinterest, and I am seeing Whoopie Pies recipes pop up all the time!  Apparently these are the hot thing to be making and eating right now.  These are sandwich cookies that are soft and gooey and make me hungry just looking at the pictures.  I thought that Red Velvet Whoopie Pies would be festive at Christmas when I made them, but since I didn’t get the article posted at Christmas, I figured that they would work just as well for Valentine’s Day!

Except you don’t want to actually MAKE these for Valentine’s Day!  What looks luscious in the photograph doesn’t necessarily TASTE as good when it’s made.  A picture might be worth a thousand words, but it doesn’t translate to great flavor.  These cookies were bland.  They were definitely soft, but I expected the cookie to be rich and flavorful, and instead it was just kind of dull.  This is not good for something such a lovely rich shade of red.  The frosting was a marshmallow crème frosting that was nice and sweet, but it didn’t go with the cookie.  It was providing all of the flavor and needed a rich cookie to go with it.  Not to mention the marshmallow crème was maybe a little TOO sweet for what I was expecting.  Is that possible in a frosting?  It was in this case!

This recipe was funny because it doesn’t tell you how to shape the cookies.  Drop by Tablespoon?  Roll into balls?  Roll out and cut into shapes?  No clue.  I guessed and used my cookie scoop to portion it and rolled them into balls.  They turned out very rounded, so I would also squish them with a glass to flatten them a bit.  I think that rolling them out might work, too.  Especially if you want heart shaped patterns.

I’m sad to say that these just don’t work for me as any kind of a great cookie.  I would get the Duncan Hines Red Velvet Cake Mix, make them into cookies, and use a cream cheese frosting as the filling instead.  That would give you both the taste and the richness that are lacking in these.  These are not the Whoopie Pies you are looking for!

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

2 cups flour

2 Tbl cocoa

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

½ cup buttermilk

1 1oz bottle of red food coloring (2 Tbl)

Filling:

¼ cup soft butter

4 oz soft cream cheese

7 oz marshmallow crème

In a large bowl, beat butter on medium for 30 seconds.  Beat in brown sugar until fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  Add dry ingredients and buttermilk, beating just until combined.  Stir in food coloring.  Bake at 375 for 7-9 minutes for 1 inch cookies or 9-11 minutes for 2 inch cookies.  Cool completely.