Crispy outside Chewy inside Chocolate cookies and Palm Shortening

Not super healthy but hey, we all want a little chocolate time and again and these are probably the best chocolate cookies we've ever had!

I didn't have butter so I had to search for a cookie that used shortening or substitute it when the recipe called for butter. Though I don't seem to use it that often, I keep the organic Spectrum shortening made from Palm oil on hand for just in case moments.

I based these on a recipe from The Enlightened Cook with only a few modifications. I changed the sugar to brown sugar for the texture and cut back on it a bit, as I always do, but you could try 1 full cup if you like your cookies sweeter.

The cookies came out crispy on the outside outside (if you allow them to set and cool and don't devour them all while hot, which is easy since the batch makes a lot!) and chewy on the inside, they even pull when you tear them in half. For us, they are the perfect cookie with great texture and flavor.

Crispy outside Chewy inside Chocolate cookies:

3/4 cup dark brown sugar or Succanat
1/3 cup spectrum organic palm shortening
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large organic egg
1/3 cup unsweetened Fair Trade cocoa powder
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon non alum baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Cream sugar and shortening until light and fluffy. Add egg and mix until incorporated. Add vanilla and cocoa and mix well. Then just dump or gracefully add all the dry ingredients right on top of the wet mix in the order listed. I like whole wheat flour with chocolate recipes, it adds another dimension and more depth of flavor. Mix it all until blended just a minute or two, do not over mix it.

Using a smaller ice cream scooper make cookie rounds on a nonstick cookie sheet. I use a silpat. They will spread, no need to push them down. You will have slightly thicker cookies if you refrigerate the dough first or if the shortening is colder and they are a prettier cookie that way too (see the single above recently made in a new batch) but none less delicious either way.

Bake 9-11 minutes and cool on cookie tray a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack or your mouth. Makes 31 cookies. Note: storing in an airtight container will keep the chewy texture but you'll lose the crispy exterior.

About Shortening:
Shortening is solid at room temperature and is traditionally lard or hydrogenated oils like Crisco. Nowadays, most of us don't like the idea of using lard which we know is a saturated fat. Saturated fats have been accused of clogging arteries and leading to cardiovascular disease. We all know that Crisco is full of trans-fats and is not good for us so we need to avoid that fake fat.

Palm oil is naturally solid at room temperature making it a perfect substitute for traditional shortening. Extracted from the palm fruit, organic palm oil shortening is a whipped white/clear shortening with no flavor so it works well for cooking (though unlike butter, adds little flavor) in baked goods, and it has a high melting point so can be used for sauteing and even deep frying. Organic Palm Shortening is non-hydrogenated and trans-fat free. Palm oil is a mixture of monounsaturated and saturated fatty acids and is made up of short- and medium-chain fatty acids where lard is made up of all long-chain fatty acids. It is a source of antioxidants and MCT (medium chain trigylcerides) known to speed up the metabolism.

Palm shortening is prevalent in Europe and would be the most popular oil in the world but for the high soybean use in the U.S. The only real problem with palm oil is in its harvesting. Many companies will plow down forests instead of working the land sustainably. Choose a brand like Spectrum or another that works with nature, is organic, and fosters stronger communities and schools where the palm oil is harvested.

Have some on hand for those just-in-case moments and to use whenever. It has a very long shelf life (even well past the date stamped on there) and is a good pantry item to stock.

Chocolates - Be Thoughtful on Valentine's and Every Day

Cacao is a lucrative crop for the big companies and harvested by small communities that have very little and need the work. Because of that, they have no trouble clearing acres of rainforest or seriously trimming the upper trees to grow cacao just so they can feed their family on the meager wage they receive from the big companies. As you can imagine, the birds and animals living in that area lose a home and many die in this process. This not good for the future of our planet (don't get me started on carbon emissions that occur when trees die, and how we lose the carbon eaters - the trees - when we cut them down.)

Ironically, full-sun cacao trees are actually more susceptible to disease and insects (well, the birds left) so harmful chemical pesticides must be used, and of course those drain into the adjacent rainforest nearby. Some of these chemicals do end up in the resulting chocolate that we consume as well.

Since it's all about the money-making crop, conditions for workers are not safe. Their wage is well under the poverty level. Even more shocking, slave labor is sadly not uncommon. The Ivory Coast (where most cocoa is grown) is notorious for using children slaves working in uncomfortable conditions under the hot sun harvesting chocolate for yes, even U.S. owned companies. According to Treehugger: (linked below and picture courtesy)

International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Nestlé in Federal District Court on behalf of a class of children who were trafficked from Mali into the Ivory Coast and forced to work twelve to fourteen hours a day with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent beatings. What was Nestlé's response to court questioning? "We are only buyers of a product.”

Fair-trade chocolate offers the workers a fair wage so they don't need to destroy forest. A fair wage allows communities to flourish with schools, clean water, and food. Shade Grown and Bird Friendly is not just for coffee, look for that in chocolate too. This means that the upper trees are trimmed very little allowing the canopy for nesting birds and other wildlife. Just 50 of us buying one bar of Fair Trade Chocolate each week instead of other chocolates will help maintain an acre of wild lush forest and jungle.

In our family, if it's not organic or fair trade, we just can't enjoy it. It is easy to pass on the Hershey's kiss and snack bar at the bank counter when you know what's behind it and what you are saying you support by taking one. Even my kids don't ask for one because they have a deeper understanding and appreciation for how one little motion, our act, has an impact on the lives of others and our planet. Well, maybe they don't have a true understanding but they know it's not something we do and that we make choices like that to better the planet and that's good enough for me!

We all know that chocolate, dark chocolate, contains three times the potent (flavanoids) antioxidants that fight aging and disease than that of green tea and twice that of red wine. Plus chocolate helps calm stress by relaxing blood vessels and improving blood flow. It makes us feel good since chocolate contains phenylethylamines. Fair Trade Organic Chocolate supports your health, our environment, the lives of others, and makes us feel even better.

Resources:
Chocolate to Save Forests?, National Geographic
The Bitter Truth about Chocolate, Treehugger
Chocolate Buying Guide, The Green Guide

Chocolate Brownies

More baking today - we needed chocolate bad and decided brownies would meet our craving. But I didn't want to deal with melting chocolate so I looked for a recipe that used Cocoa Powder instead. I made these courtesy of Alton Brown with some modifications. Love that there was only 1/2 cup of flour in the recipe but I goofed and only put in 1/4 cup. It's almost like a flourless torte. And we made two 8x8 trays with the batter so we doubled the servings or halved the calories for one brownie but they were not very thick. I also cut the sugar considerably by not packing the brown sugar and only using 1/2 cup of Sucanat instead of a full cup of regular white granulated sugar, this cut the calories too and made it a very chocolatey decadent brownie.

Preheat oven to 300F

Beat together with a whisk:

4 organic large Eggs
1 cup of organic Brown Sugar (not tightly packed)
1/2 cup of Sucanat (this compliments the brown sugar nicely)
Beat this together for 5 minutes until it doubles in size and gets lighter in color.

Melt & Mix together:
1 stick of organic Butter
1/2 cup of Coconut Oil
1 cup of fair trade Cocoa Powder (not dutched)

Once that cools add 2 Teaspoons Vanilla.

Slowly stream the melted butter mixture into the egg mixture with the whisk beating at medium/low (you don't want to get chocolate all over the kitchen!)

Just as the the mixture comes together sprinkle into it:
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (I actually used salt flakes from the Murray River in New Zealand) and mix briefly to incorporate or simply fold into the batter.

Pour batter into 2 buttered and floured 8x8 baking dishes or better yet, into one 9x13 baking pan. The recipe said to bake for 45 minutes (mine were done in 40 minutes since I had split the batter up) until almost done (toothpick will come out with some parts sticking to it.) The recipe is particular to cool them in the pan completely before cutting or they may fall apart. Of course we couldn't wait and the picture above are just hot out of the oven - they held together fine and were very moist and flavorful.

Since I had split it into 2 pans, I got 18 (9 per pan) decent size brownies. By cutting back on the sugar and putting the batter into two pans, we decreased the calories considerably but still got the chocolate punch.

These are cloud-like chocolate pillows more than fudgey brownies but still very moist and rich; and the chocolate was spot on. The kids loved them and didn't miss the flour or sugar that was cut out.