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Vegan Barley Flour Cookies

Madhuram — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:27:52 +0000

Barley flour is quite a new addition in my kitchen pantry. This cookie recipe is my first experiment with barley flour and I’m happy to tell that it’s a huge success. Unlike whole wheat, barley flour did not impart a raw smell and taste in the cookies. It’s finely ground so there is no grittiness too. I found Bob’s Red Mill Whole Barley flour in the organic aisle of the grocery store. Like any other whole grain flour, barley flour too should be stored in the freezer. Be sure to bring it to room temperature before baking. Barley flour is less glutenous, so if you want to experiment with it start with cookie recipes first. Since cookies need very less or no rising at all, substituting upto half the quantity of all purpose flour in a cookie recipe should be fine.

The following cookie recipe uses only barley flour and we couldn’t tell it at all. Be sure to use whole grain barley flour. Some grocery stores carry a pure white color flour under the name barley flour but it’s not whole grain. It’s made from pearled barley.

Ingredients

Peanut Butter 1/4 cup

Margarine 1/4 cup

Brown Sugar 1/3 cup

Granulated Sugar 1/3 cup

Vanilla Extract 1/2 teaspoon

EnerG Egg Replacer 1 and 1/2 teaspoons

Water, lukewarm 3 tablespoons

Whole Barley Flour 3/4 cup

Baking Soda 1/2 teaspoon

Salt 1/4 teaspoon

Rolled Oats 1/2 cup

Rice Krispies 1/2 cup

Walnuts 1/2 cup

Carob Chips 1/4 cup

Dried Cranberries 1/4 cup

Water 1 teaspoon

Yield: 20 cookies

Procedure1 Preheat the oven at 375F (190C). Grease with non stick spray or line baking sheets with parchment paper.

2 In a large mixing bowl add peanut butter, margarine and sugars. Beat together well until smooth and creamy.

3 In a blender (I used the small jar of my Magic Bullet), blend together the egg replacer and warm water until it’s frothy.

4 To the creamed sugar mixture add the egg replacer liquid and vanilla. Beat once again until it’s combined well.

5 To this add the barley flour, baking soda and salt and stir well.

6 Add remaining ingredients and mix well.

7 Spoon the batter onto a cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. I took mine out after 11 minutes.

8 Leave the cookies on the sheet for 5 minutes. Then transfer it to a cooling rack for the cookies to cool completely. Transfer the cooled cookies to an airtight container.

Taste These barley flour cookies taste very much like chocolate chip cookies. It was qutie crisp after an hour of baking but became chewy the next day. It still gets a light crunchiness from the Rice Krispies cereal. We didn’t feel any difference in taste due to the use of barley flour. I was surprised that it tasted just like cookies made out of all purpose flour.

I’m not a peanut butter fan, but I used it to just finish it off. So I was very happy because the presence of peanut butter was not at all felt from the 2nd day onwards.

I bought very little amount of carob chips and used it in this recipe instead of chocolate chips to make it completely vegan. When tasted it by itself, I found that there was a slight difference in taste when compared to chocolate chips. I didn’t like it that much. But I literally couldn’t feel any difference (maybe a little or it was just psychological) when I tasted the cookies and my son didn’t find it. The original recipe had called for 1/2 cup of chocolate chips, since I was using carob chips I used only 1/4 cup of it and I used 1/4 cup of dried cranberries. However I’m not sure if I would substitute carob chips for chocolate chips in a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Maybe it would be too much. I think the better bet is to try other dairy free vegan chocolate chips instead.

My Notes1 For the margarine I used Fleischman’s Non Hydrogenated no salt added margarine.

2 The original recipe mentions to use cornflakes. I used Rice Krispies because I had only that in hand.

3 Similarly you could use all nuts, or all chocolate chips or any dried fruits etc. Just be sure to keep the measurements same though.

4 At first I thought the quantity of sugar was more in the recipe with 1/3 cup each of brown sugar and granulated sugar, but it was perfect when we tasted the cookies. Maybe it would have been even sweeter, had I used 1/2 cup of chocolate chips and raisins instead of cranberries.

5 The cookies don’t spread like the usual chocolate chip cookies. So I think if you flatten it with a fork you may get crispier cookies but you would have to adjust the baking time. Also I overlooked the 1 teaspoon of water in the recipe. Maybe if I had added that the cookies would have spread a little bit.

6 I have mentioned this a couple of times, but writing it once again. If using a dark coated non stick pan, stay alert and take the sheet out of the oven 2-3 minutes earlier because the bottoms burn quite quickly. The same thing happened in this recipe too. Even after being careful and lining the cookie sheet with parchment paper the bottom of the cookies went black. Maybe double lining the sheet would help. I’m going to try it the next time.

These vegan barley flour cookies go to my Whole Grain (Eggless) Baking Event – Barley.

Vegan Chocolate, Oatmeal and Peanut Butter Muffins

Madhuram — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:03:45 +0000

I have a big jar of peanut butter at home and wanted to finish it before it expires in a couple of months. We are not a “peanut-butter-family” but for my son who likes it on breads and rotis. I have never baked with peanut butter so far, so I thought I will give it a try. I came across a lot of baking recipes using peanut butter in Esther Brody’s “1500 Best Bars, Cakes, Cookies, Muffins and More”. The following recipe for oatmeal peanut butter muffins is inspired from 3 recipes in that book.

tab:Ingredients]

All Purpose Flour 1 cup

Quick Cooking Oats) 2/3 cup

Cocoa Powder 1/3 cup

Sugar 3/4 cup

Baking Powder 1 tablespoon

Peanut Butter (I used creamy) 1/2 cup

Rice Milk 1 cup

Yield: 9 regular size muffins

Procedure1 Preheat the oven at 400F/200C for 15 minutes. Grease with little
cooking spray or line the muffin tins with paper liners and set aside.

2 In a large bowl combine together the flour, oatmeal, cocoa powder, sugar and baking powder.

3 In a small sauce pan, over low heat, melt peanut butter in milk, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly.

4 Once the peanut butter mixture is cool, incorporate it into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

5 Spoon the batter into the prepared pan filling it to the top of each cup.

6 The above batter was enough for 9 muffins. So I filled the remaining 3 cups with water to ensure even baking of the muffins. I took out mine from the oven after 16 minutes, but I think 13-15 minutes should be perfect. I felt that in this recipe the smell of the muffins is an indicator of the doneness in addition to the toothpick test. I started smelling a burnt cocoa smell and that’s when I removed the muffins. So the tops were a bit crusty and it had turned slightly back. Either have a close watch or reduce the oven temperature to 350F and bake it accordingly.

TasteI’m not a fan of peanut butter. So far I have tasted only peanut butter cookies and nothing else baked using it. So I was not sure if I would like these peanut butter muffins. Surprisingly enough the flavor of peanut butter was not dominating. It had the perfect blend of chocolate and peanut butter. The sweetness was right for us not as sweet as the store bought muffins. So If you prefer it sweeter add some chocolate chips or increase the quantity of sugar to 1 cup. Since I was making a vegan version I did not add chocolate chips but I don’t regret it at all.

My Notes1 Use dairy/non dairy milk of your choice.

2 As mentioned in the Procedure, either adjust the oven temperature or the baking time to get perfect muffins.

Almond Butter Laddus

Madhuram — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:43:46 +0000

Earlier last week, I stumbled upon Rachna’s blog and found a an interesting recipe for preparing laddus using peanut butter. It’s such an easy recipe, with no cooking at all. Surprisingly I had all the ingredients at home and moreover it was my friend’s daughter’s birthday, so I went ahead and made it immediately.

First I tried it with peanut butter. One thing I forgot to notice was, the peanut butter had sodium in it, so the laddus were both sweet and salty. But we did like the taste.

Later I remembered about the almond butter which was lying in my pantry after using it for the almond butter bread. Immediately I checked the nutrition label and I saw 0gm Sodium. So I made the ladoos again with almond butter and it was absolutely delicious.

For my laddoos I used 1/2 a cup of almond butter, 1/4 a cup of regular icing sugar, 1/4 cup of khoya and a pinch of cardamom powder. Simply combine all the ingredients and shape it into balls. I got 13 small ladoos for this measurement.

This is my entry for Nupur’s Less is More MBP event. MBP was originally started by Coffee to give credit to fellow food blogger’s efforts.

Eggless Almond Butter Bread

Madhuram — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:39:59 +0000

In a recent episode of Paula Deen’s show in Food TV, I saw her preparing a very easy peanut butter bread. Since I’m not a big fan of peanut butter I thought of making the bread with almond butter instead. The taste was amazing and you won’t believe how easy it is to prepare.

Ingredients:
All purpose flour – 2 cups
Baking powder – 4 teaspoons
Salt – 1 teaspoon
Sugar – 1/3 cup
Toasted slivered almonds – 1/4 cup (optional)
Milk – 1.5 cups (I used 2% milk)
Almond Butter – 1/2 cup (I used Nature’s Promise Organic Almond Butter)

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Combine the dry ingredients and nuts. Add milk to the mix and stir well to avoid lumps.

3. Now add the almond butter.

4. Mix well and continuously stir them.

5. Pour into a 8×4x3 inch loaf pan.

6. Top the batter with some toasted almond slices.

7. Bake for approximately 50 minutes.

8. Have this for breadfast with or without jam. Enjoy!

My Notes:
1. I happened to check the reviews in the food network site after baking the bread while writing this post. The recipe was given only 3 stars and most of them had written that the bread was too dry and did not have enough peanut butter taste. So they had suggested reducing the amount of baking powder, increasing the quantity of peanut butter, reducing the baking time, or using organic peanut butter because it has more oil content. But I did not have any problem with my bread. The only change I made was using almond butter and added a couple of toasted almonds. The bread was very moist and sweet enough by itself. Jam was also not necessary. The almond butter did have a lot of oil in it, maybe that gave the moistness to the bread.

2. Adding toasted nuts in the batter gave a very nice crunch. But I wouldn’t top the bread with nuts the next time because they get toasted once again and some of the nuts became little bitter. Not topping the bread with almonds will also facilitate easy slicing of the bread.

3. Cool completely before slicing the bread, so that it does not crumble. I would even recommend to 2 to 3 hours of cooling.

4. Also check out the health benefits of almonds here.

Update: My friend Roma from Bangalore, India has tried another cool version of the Almond Bread. Since almond butter is not available in India she has used regular unsalted butter and has included powdered almonds and has got a very moist bread.

It’s award time again:

Dear Uma of Essence of Andhra has passed me the Nice Matters Award. Thank you very much for thinking of me Uma.

I would like to pass this to:

The Pritya duo
Shubha
Kumudha

“Nice Matters Award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world.”

Another friend Rupa of Random Musings has passed me the Good Chat Blog Award. Thank you very much Rupa.

I would like to pass this to:

DK
Mansi
Siri