Baking with Lorna Sass (2007 James Beard Award Winner!)
Smart Bran Whole Wheat Raisin Cookies
Photo from Nature’s Path
Let’s face it, many of us cooks pride ourselves on knowing how to make something healthy taste good, even if we’re not super health-conscious eaters. After all, its much easier to make something with loads of fat and sugar taste good, since as we know by now, “fat is flavor!”, than it is to make something with brown rice and kale taste good (at least to most people’s palates). Maybe its a pride thing, maybe its a desire to at least know how to make something healthy for that stray vegan friend who might happen to drop by, but I always like to have a few healthy food tricks up my sleeve. The thing is, all of my healthy recipes are savory, never sweet. For some reason, every recipe I have tried for vegan, low-fat, or low-sugar desserts has disappointed and I refuse to subject my friends to foods I wouldn’t eat myself.
So when I met up with Lorna Sass last Friday for a recipe testing session, and she told me we were baking vegan cookies and muffins, I was thrilled. For her most recent book, “Whole Grains: Every Day, Every Way,” Lorna won a 2007 James Beard Award in the Healthy Focus category. Additionally, it was chosen as 1 of the 20 best cookbooks published in 2006 by Leite’s Culinaria and named as a notable cookbook of 2006 by the New York Times. Clearly, if anyone could teach me how to make nutritious baked goods taste great, it was her. And so I left there armed with two new recipes that are guaranteed to please vegans and die-hard butter lovers alike. Enjoy!
Note: The cookies and muffins we baked both use Smart Bran cereal (by Nature’s Path) as a primary ingredient, but honestly, since the cereal in the recipe becomes very soft once soaked in the apple juice, I would suggest playing around and substituting your favorite high fiber cereals here, such as Go Lean or Optimum (two of my faves, for sure). The muffins, I can assure you, were impossibly moist and teeming with dried cranberries. As for the Smart Bran cookies, they were soft, chewy, and full of macadamia nuts and raisins. These trump those ubiquitous oatmeal raisin’s by far. Neither are cloying, but both the cookies and the muffins will satisfy the sweet tooths of the health-conscious and the not. : )
Smart Bran Whole Wheat Raisin Cookies
By Lorna Sass, for Nature’s Path
Yield: Makes about 2 dozen cookies
1/2 c. vegetable oil, plus 1 tsp. for preparing cookie sheets
2 c. SmartBran® Cereal
1 -1/4 c. apple juice
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. whole wheat flour (spelt flour also works nicely here)
1/3 to1/2 c. packed dark brown sugar
2 -1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4 c. raisins
3/4 c. chopped walnuts
1. Brush two cookie sheets lightly with oil. Place racks in center and preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a bowl, combine the cereal, apple juice, and vanilla. Set aside to soften for 15 minutes.
3. In a large bowl, combine the flour, 1/3 cup brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt.
4. Stir the oil into the cereal mixture. Pour the cereal mixture on top of the dry ingredients. Add the raisins and walnuts. Stir to combine. Taste batter. Stir in more sugar, if you wish.
5. Using your hands, shape bits of dough into balls about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Place about an inch apart on the 2 oiled cookie sheets. (If dough is moist and sticky, drop heaping table spoons directly onto sheets.) With your fingers or the back of a spoon, flatten dough into rough circles with a 2-inch diameter.
6. Bake for 9 minutes. Rotate the pans back to front and bottom shelf to top. Continue baking until the bottoms are golden, 8 to 10 minutes more. Transfer cookies to a cooling rack. When cool, store in a tightly sealed container for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 4 months.
Smart Bran Fruit & Flax Muffins
photo from Nature’s Path
Smart Bran Fruit & Flax Muffins
By Lorna Sass, for Nature’s Path
Yield: 12 Muffins
1 1/4 c. SmartBran™ cereal
1 3/4 c. unsweetened apple juice
5 tbs. Nature’s Path Flax Plus™ Flaxseed Meal** (or substitute: freshly ground whole flax seeds)
1 c. wholewheat flour (again, 2 cups of spelt flour works well as a substitute for both flours) 1 c. unbleached white flour
1 tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground allspice or cardamom
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1/3 c. vegetable oil (plus more for greasing muffin tins)
1/3 c. maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. dried cranberries, blueberries or raisins (I used dried cranberries with great success)
1. Set rack in center and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, stir SmartBran™ into 1 cup juice and set aside for 15 minutes to soften.
3. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt.
4. Grease 12 standard muffin tins with oil.
5. In a medium bowl, beat flax meal with remaining 3/4 cup apple juice for 1 minute. Blend in oil, maple syrup, and vanilla. SmartBran™ with unabsorbed juice and beat for 30 seconds. Pour liquid into dry ingredients. Add cranberries. Stir until just blended; do not over mix.
6. Divide batter among muffins tins. Bake for 7 minutes. Rotate muffins tins front to back. Continue baking until muffins spring back to a gentle touch and a cake tester inserted into the centers comes out clean, 8 to 10 minutes longer.
7. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes. Run a knife along the edges and unmold. When cool, store in a tightly sealed container for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 4 months.
