Reduce the sugar and get a more tantalizingly sweet cookie. Who would have guessed? This is what I discovered when I used an organic Demerara cane sugar and replaced half of the usual amount with some agave nectar. Add pecans, and what’s not to like?
Barley & Oat Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Pecans and Agave
makes 36 cookies
1 cup unsalted organic butter
3/4 cup organic Demerara cane sugar (try Florida Crystals)
1/2 cup agave nectar
2 cage free eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups barley flour
1 1/2 cups oat flour
1/4 cup ground organic flax seed meal
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks (try E.Guittard 61% chocolate wafers)
1 cup pecans, roasted until fragrant then cooled
1. Mix the usual cookie way: cream butter, sugar and agave nectar. Add eggs and vanilla. In separate bowl, whisk flours and leavening — this step is important with oat flour, as it tends to clump. Add flour mixture to creamed butter and sugar mixture, mix to combine. Stir in chocolate chunks and pecans.
2. Get out your plastic wrap. Aim to make 3 logs with your dough. The dough is somewhat loose, so when you put some on the plastic wrap use the plastic to help you squeeze and roll the dough into a 10-12 inch long, couple inch in diameter, log. (It doesn’t have to be exact, you’re just getting yourself set up for easy “slice and bake” later.) Transfer dough logs into the refrigerator.
3. When you want to bake the cookies, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet pan with a silpat liner or with a sheet of baking parchment paper. Unwrap chilled dough log and slice every inch or so, trying to get 12 cookies out of each roll. Put the dough slices on the lined sheet pan, approximately 9 per pan. (Put remaining dough back in the refrigerator until its turn to bake.)
4. Bake for 10–12 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned. Let cool on sheet pan for 5 minutes, then move cookies to a cooling rack.
Amy’s Kitchen Coach Tips
- Seek out a Demerara that is organic and unrefined, like Florida Crystals. The crystal size is larger than your usual sugar, even unrefined ones, and it works great in this cookie. If you’re like me, you’ll love how the larger crystals stay in tact and give you a crunch of sweetness in the cookie.)
- When you’re torn between “nuts” or “no nuts”, get some of each by portioning one or two rolls of dough into their plastic wrap logs before you add nuts to the remaining dough. Everybody’s happy.
