Your guess is as good as mine.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I’ve been baking for holiday potlucks and gatherings. I enjoy the surprise and sense of offering of gatherings where everyone brings something of their own to share. These cookies are easy, attractive, and not as bad for you (if bad means refined flour and sugar, high cholesterol and fat, no nutritional value other than calories) as they could be. I try to use all organic ingredients (except the baking soda and the spirits); the butter and eggs are available locally; I choose fair trade, as well as organic, cocoa.
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsps baking soda
pinch of salt
3/4 cup butter (at about room temperature — no more than 65F; do not melt or microwave)
1 cup sucanat (evaporated cane juice)
splash of brandy or other spirits
1 egg (beaten)
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Cream butter in large bowl; beat in sucanat and then brandy; mix in egg until smooth. Gradually mix dry ingredients into butter mixture. Chill dough well. When dough is chilled enough to shape without it sticking to your hands, roll dough into small balls. Put on cookie sheet and press down slightly. Bake at 325-350F for 8-10 minutes. Makes 4-5 dozen small cookies.
Variations: Replace butter with vegetable shortening and egg with egg replacer for vegan cookies. Add a tablespoon or two of ground cinnamon to the dry mixture and replace the brandy with kahlua for the taste of Abuelita (Mexican hot chocolate). Replace brandy with peppermint schnapps for cocoa-mint cookies. Add a teaspoon or two of dried ginger for cocoa-ginger snaps.
I admit it. A couple of years ago, when a friend was waxing poetic about the virtues of pressure cooking, I was skeptical. Shortly after the second or third conversation on the topic in a short space of time, I came across Lorna Sass’s “Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure” at the Lantern (used bookshop). Seeing it as a sign, I bought the book and a pressure cooker (an Aeternum — pricey, but sturdy and easy to use).
What I like best about the pressure cooker is that it cuts the cooking time of beans or soup from 1-3 hours to 20-35 minutes. Kitcheree (indian rice and lentils) cooks in 15 minutes. I’d estimate that in the two and half years I’ve had my cooker, I have saved over 200 hours of cooking with gas time. Not sure how much cooking gas I’ll have to save before I’ve made up for the energy to manufacture and ship the pot to me, but I should cross that at some point in the life of the pot. Even better is that I can come home after a full day at work and cook dishes with dried beans or slow to cook grains without staying up all night.
Once you put the cooking ingredients in the pot, get it up to pressure, turn down the flame, and set the timer, there is no need to watch the pot. So today, for lunch, with only about five or ten minutes of prep time, I have rice (with saffron and amaranth made in the rice cooker) and pot beans (coco rubico from the Dupont Farm market, seasoned with celery, onion, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, dried chiles brought back from Tucson, and dried bay leaf, epazote, and mexican oregano from my own garden). Start to finish about a half hour (I did presoak the beans). Able to continue working except for the minor prep time. Wonderfully content to have nourishing, delicious food to warm and inspire my day. I do better work (I do work better) when I eat well.
