Thursday, January 20, 2005

Cookie Beans

Some background: As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are encouraged to have a year's supply of food stored. The reason for this is in case of emergency whether natural disaster or job loss, we would have food. We store things like wheat, beans, oil, powdered milk, etc. I have about a 1 month's supply. One of my New Year's resolutions was to learn how to cook with these basic ingredients.

What I did: I had read that you can substitute cooked, mashed, white beans for shortening, and I've been dying to try it out. So I did. I used this recipe and substituted 1 cup of cooked, mashed white beans for the 1 cup of shortening. Then I refrigerated the dough for a while (I don't know if this was necessary or not, one of the recipes I saw did this). Then I cooked them same as usual.

The result: cookies, sort of. The cookies didn't spread much, which I guess you would expect since they had no shortening. They were more like cookie balls. The texture is a little heavier, more like pumpkin cookies. The taste was slightly different (don't worry, they don't taste like beans). They were also more filling than normal.

The verdict: I think I'd only make cookies this way again if I had to. Although, now I can call them reduced fat. Also, cooking the beans took a while, about 3 hours.

What I'd do differently: Next time, I plan to use 1/2 cup beans and 1/2 cup shortening. I think that would make the cookies more like normal.

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