There is not enough that I can say that would do justice to how good these chocolate crinkle cookies were. Crunchy exterior and almost a cake like interior and the perfect treat for any chocolate lover. Take my word for it and bake them today.
I have never had these cookies elsewhere but the texture of these always intrigued me and after I saw a few of my favorite IG accounts posting about them, I had to try them out.
I got the recipe off the America’s Test Kitchen Step By Step Holiday Baking Magazine. Its on their website as well and if cooking is your love their site is a good place to search for recipes. I tried a bunch of the magazine’s recipes during christmas- besides the chocolate crinkle cookies I tried their rosemary and olive bread and the british scones. All were great and made our christmas meals special. You can see pictures of the food on my instagram account.
While the cookies are relatively straight forward to make, they are a few points for a successful crinkle cookie that America’s Test Kitchen tells to keep in mind:
One is the use of both baking powder and baking soda.
Two, bake from dough that has been left at room temperature for ten minutes and not straight out of the refrigerator.
Three, using unsweetened chocolate keeps the cookies from being overly sweet
Four, roll dough in both granulated and confectioners’ sugar. The granulated sugar acts as a barrier that keeps the confectioners sugar from dissolving into the cookie while baking; thus resulting in crinkle tops with a black and white top.
Posting about a green smoothies book or a detox just before Christmas might not seem right, but you would surely appreciate this information post all the holiday binging and while making your 2016 new year resolutions that revolve on healthier eating.
The first thing you notice when you look at the Green Smoothies book is how clean it is- in its photography, recipe writing and overall look. Given that it is for someone who aims for clean eating, its a good first impression.
Before receiving this book, V and I had invested in a Vitamix (we narrowed on this one and love it) and had been drinking a green smoothie everyday. We had the WholeFood book that came with the Vitamix, and I had been trying the recipes in that book alternating with a glowing green smoothie recipe that V had given me. While the WholeFood smoothie book has a great variety of smoothie recipes, all of them are not green or vegan or necessarily good if weight loss is your prime concern.
The recipes in Green Smoothies by Fern Green are all raw and full of vitamins and minerals. After each recipe the author highlights the benefits of the smoothie. I really liked the notes on the benefits, so when I drank a particular smoothie I knew whether it was immunizing, skin enhancing, detoxifying, blood nourishing, fat flushing or muscle and bone building. There are a total of 66 recipes in the book.
Impressed with all that the author had to say and the nutrients each smoothie of the 7-day detox would bring to my diet, I decided to give the detox try and tried 14 different recipes in the book over a span of a week. Some were less palatable, but not too bad that I had to struggle with them. Most of them tasted nice. And I liked the fact that I knew what each juice or smoothie was doing to my body.
If your goal is to include more smoothies in your life, or to strive for cleaner eating, or to include more nutrients in your diet I would highly recommend this book. The book releases on December 29th, 2015 and you can order it through Amazon by following this link.
I am sharing one of my favorite recipes from the book and the detox. The Beetroot Beauty. This was my breakfast on Day 6, and has half the recommended daily intake of vitamin C, while being fat flushing, detoxifying and skin cleansing.
A fat flushing, detoxifying and skin cleansing juice.
Author: adapted from the book Green Smoothies
Recipe type: Juice, raw, vegan
Serves: 1
Ingredients
1 pomegranate
2 beets
a bunch of red grapes
a squeeze of lemon
Instructions
Cut and deseed the pomegranate and juice it. Juice the rest of the ingredients except the lemon.
Squeeze in the lemon and stir. our juice is ready.
If you do not have a juicer, blend all the ingredients except the lemon juice in a blender. Once blended strain the mixture into a glass using either a very fine tea stainer or using nut milk bags. Add the juice to the strained juice. And drink
Amidst packing at my parents’ place and cleaning the refrigerator- attempting to use left over sour cream and a batch of blueberries, and flipping through the recipes July’s Indian issue of Good Housekeeping, this moistand flavorful Blueberry and Sour Cream Loaf was made.
When I told a friend of mine that I was posting the recipe for this loaf on the blog today, the question arose what is the difference between a sweet loaf and a cake. While I answered the doubt to the best of my knowledge, I wondered what the web had to say about it and did a quick google search to find the exact difference.
The most obvious difference is the tin used to make the baked good in question. Loaf cakes are always baked in a loaf pan, whereas cakes in other square or round tins. And even though both cakes and loaf cakes share similar ingredients, the ratio of flour, fat, sugar and the mixing methods are different and make a difference in the final product.
While quick breads (like banana bread, scones and muffins) are made by combining the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry ingredients in the other and then mixing the two till just combined with few lumps, cakes are made by creaming the butter and sugar together (or by folding whipped egg whites into flour, sugar, yolks mixture- the chiffon method), lending a finer crumb to cakes. Thus, cakes are generally lighter than loafs and other quick breads. Kind of like the difference between a muffin and a cupcake, a cupcake being a mini cake and a muffin being a type of quick bread.
book is how clean it is- in its photography, recipe writing and overall look. Given that it is for someone who aims for clean eating, its a good first impression.
and love it) and had been drinking a green smoothie everyday. We had the WholeFood book that came with the Vitamix
