Lisa on January 7th, 2013

When it comes to cookies, why settle for a tiny chip when you can have a big chunk instead? Besides, when you make chocolate chunk cookies, you can make them as dark-chocolate-y as you want. I used 85% dark for this batch; if I had had some 90% dark on hand, I would have used that instead. [...]

Continue reading about New Year, New Classic Cookies

Lisa on August 17th, 2012

Whole-grain baked goods are, by nature, drier than baked goods made with refined flour. Sometimes this is a good thing — biscotti and crackers are supposed to be crunchy and dry, meant to be dunked into coffee or spread with savory soft cheese — but usually you want baked goods to be moist and perhaps [...]

Continue reading about One Brownie to Rule Them All

Lisa on May 15th, 2012

Sometimes a little advance effort has a big pay-off. That’s most certainly the case with breakfast — the last thing most of us want to do first thing in the morning is spend a lot of time preparing/scrounging for something to eat. Specifically, something that will taste good, be healthy, and be satisfying enough to [...]

Continue reading about Treating Yourself to Breakfast

What’s a grain, a flour, and a sweetener? Hint: it used to be a popular foodstuff in the U.S. back in the pioneer days, and it’s still popular in African and Indian dishes. You can make beer out of it, too. It has more fiber (and iron) than and nearly as much protein as soy [...]

Continue reading about A Grain Too Useful to Ignore — Especially for Breakfast!

Lisa on January 20th, 2012

Peanuts make my favorite butter and almonds and chestnuts make my favorite flours, but macadamias make my favorite nuts + chocolate combination. In this case, the final result was muffins. (Or — if you frost the muffins with melted chocolate and butter and pop them into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to harden your [...]

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Lisa on January 13th, 2012

Lemons are lovely, especially when you pair them with oats and almonds and eggs and call them breakfast. Baked goods (or leftover pancakes) are my favorite things to have for weekday breakfasts since they require zero work first thing in the morning. Fifteen minutes of effort once or twice a week can provide you with [...]

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Lisa on November 2nd, 2011

Imagine chocolate crinkle cookies. Now think about Russian teacakes — you know, those cute little balls covered with powdered sugar that are the mainstay of holiday cookie swaps. Then let your mind flit over to oatmeal-raisin cookies. What do you get when you put them all together? Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls. Or, if you [...]

Continue reading about Unleashing Your Inner Cookie Monster

Lisa on September 30th, 2011

I don’t know why — perhaps the recent chill in the air? — but lately I’ve had a hankering for pancakes. The hankering became downright want yesterday when I realized I still had baby bananas sitting in my fruit bowl. Hmmm…I could put those on top of pancakes, I thought. No, wait — better yet, [...]

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Lisa on August 26th, 2011

Mesquite: it’s for more than just burning. And providing shade if you’re in the Arizona desert. Turns out that the pods the tree bears are edible (just as the wood is burnable), so if you let the pods dry out and grind them up, you have flour. A fragrant, fine flour that will make you [...]

Continue reading about Cookies Do Too Grow On Trees!

Lisa on February 11th, 2011

There are many ways to make a cookie great: use a natural sweetener like sucanat that contributes flavor as well as sweetness to your cookie, use a variety of whole-grain/whole-food flours like sorghum flour or teff flour or peanut flour that will likewise add dimension of their own to your cookie, and use a rich-tasting, [...]

Continue reading about Making Cookies Crunchier…and Chocolaty-er!