Friday, November 3, 2006

A Quest


Yesterday I received the December issue of Eating Well magazine. I've really grown to love this magazine. I like their approach to food and the recipes I've tried from them have all been winners. Last night I was paging through the issue when a familiar face crossed my vision. It was none other than Cookie Madness author Anna! When I saw that she was a finalist in a cookie contest, I knew it would be a good one. And I ask you, how could Blueberry and White Chocolate Chunk Ginger Cookies really be bad? So today I took Zander grocery shopping and we were on a quest. I needed wheat germ and crystallized ginger to make this cookie. And I needed to make this cookie.

I found the wheat germ easily, but I was back and forth at this grocery store looking for the crystallized ginger. I decided it was no where to be found, and needed to go to a reliable source for the off-beaten ingredient. I headed to a local store, Cathy's Country Store, and easily found the ginger, as well as a basket-full of other things I've been meaning to pick up. I'm going to put in a little plug for Cathy, because they have great stuff at reasonable prices. They have bulk flours, sugars, spices, seeds, as well as special dietary things like sugar substitutes and lots of natural foods. And their prices are fantastic. Do check out their website, as they have a lot of hard-to find ingredients like nutritional yeast and sucanat among many many others.

Back to the cookies. The dough came together extremely quick. It took longer to get the ingredients out than it took to mix them together. At the last minute I decided to leave out the crystallized ginger. I just couldn't convince myself that the kids would enjoy getting a bite of that. They baked up quickly, and really couldn't cool fast enough. And the result? These are a great cookie! The crystallized ginger I'm sure perfectly compliments the blueberries and white chocolate, so I will be adding it next time. If I need to, I'll just make two batches, one with the ginger, and one without. These are kind of like a hearty oatmeal cookie- but the blueberries and white chocolate play off each other perfectly. These cookies get an enthusiastic thumbs up from Andy, who wants me to add some slivered almonds next time. They will be repeated here very soon. With the addition of wheat germ, and using canola oil for the fat, if you close your eyes, you can pretend your eating something healthy and good for you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I will definitely be making these! I've never used crystallized ginger, but I know EXACTLY where to get it. Wheat germ...love, dried blueberries...love, white chocolate...mmm! The entire cookie is good AND it used canola oil...healthy (well, better than butter or margarine!). Thanks for sharing!

Erika W. said...

You definitely won't be disappointed. I will say though, these cookies are much better later when completely cool. I sampled them warm out of the oven, and they were good, but they are much better after they've had time on the cooling rack.

Hmm... think I need another one!