Quarantine Cookies

By Mark -

After several experiments, I now have a very good whole grain cookie recipe.  Why bother putting whole grains in cookies?  If you're looking for nutritional benefits, desserts aren't the right place for that!  This recipe came about as a way to use the ingredients I had at hand, which included whole wheat flour.  Instead of trying to disguise the whole wheat, I decided to embrace it and add complimentary flavors.  The result is a soft chewy cookie that tastes a bit like toffee with chocolate.

Recipe

1 stick (½ cup) butter
About 90 grams (a bit under ½ cup) vegetable shortening (see instructions below)
165 grams (¾ cup + 1 tablespoon) granulated sugar
165 grams (¾ cup) brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 ¼ teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons orange juice
300 grams (2 ½ cups) finely ground whole wheat flour
80 grams (1 cup) old fashioned rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
450 grams (2 ⅔ cups) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Put the butter in a small pan and melt it on medium high heat. Continue to cook it until there’s a good amount of brown sediment in the pan. The trick is to brown it as much as possible without burning it. If it burns even a little bit, you’ll need to start over. Once it’s done, transfer it to a bowl and refrigerate it until solid. Then allow it to soften at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Combine the solidified and softened browned butter with enough shortening to make a total of 180 grams. Add the eggs and sugar, then beat with an electric mixer until it starts to fluff up a bit. Add the remaining ingredients except the chocolate chips and beat well. Finally, add the chocolate chips and mix one more time.

Make 1 ½ tablespoon scoops of dough (using a #40 disher, if you have one). Bake for about 19 minutes, or until the cookies just start to brown on their bottoms. Allow them to cool on the cookies sheet after removing them from the oven.

History

This recipe is based on the Hilton DoubleTree recipe that was made public during the COVID-19 quarantine. The original recipe is at https://newsroom.hilton.com/static-doubletree-reveals-cookie-recipe.htm. Because flour was hard to find in stores, and because I have some hard red wheat in storage, I decided to modify the recipe to work with whole wheat flour ground at home. I used my grain mill’s pastry flour setting, but the recipe should work with any whole wheat flour that’s reasonably fresh.

I haven’t tried this recipe using all purpose flour, but it should work. I suspect you’d want to reduce the amount of flour and oats to match the original recipe.

Browned Butter, Shortening, and Orange Juice

The DoubleTree recipe calls for ½ pound of butter. In order to enhance the flavor, I decided to replace that with a mix of browned butter and shortening. The browned butter flavor goes really well with the whole wheat flour. Butter normally contains some water, but that’s removed in this recipe. So, I added the orange juice for both the water and flavor. (Orange also goes really well with whole wheat flour.) The result provides roughly the same amount of fat and water that you’d find in the butter in the original recipe.

Nuts

You may have noticed that I removed the nuts from the original recipe.  The browned butter and whole wheat flour provide their own nutty flavors, so actual nuts aren't needed.  You can still add some nuts if you want them.  I'm sure it would be good either way.

Cookie Size

The DoubleTree recipe calls for 3 tablespoon dough scoops, but I used a smaller disher and a shorter baking time simply because I wanted a smaller serving size. If you want to make 3 tablespoon scoops, use a #24 disher and don’t level it quite all the way.

Baking Temperature

I tried baking cookies from the same batch of dough at 300 and 350 degrees. The cookies flattened out a lot more (too much) at the higher temperature. The cookies don’t brown as much at the lower temperature, but they remain thicker and have a chewier texture. Because the butter was already browned, there’s nothing missing from the flavor despite the lack of browning at the lower temperature.

Epilogue

I was finally able to buy some regular white all-purpose flour a couple of days ago.  Costco has a 25 pound bag for $6, which is going to last me a while.  Did that stop me from making this recipe again with whole wheat flour?  Nope.

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