Saturday, January 24, 2009

Whole Wheat Makes It Sturdy, Agave Makes It Sweet

Having one overripe banana and one ready-to-expire egg (and an insatiable sweet tooth--sigh), and being rather tired of many failed attempts at making banana bread (a very simple recipe that apparently completely relies on white flour and white sugar? I never had a chance), yesterday I made banana cookies using this banana cut out cookie recipe from Hip Mama magazine: My favorite things about this recipe? I was able to sub in all white whole wheat flour and agave nectar (I use agave nectar at about 3/4 the amount of sugar I would use--do you think that's right?) and the recipe still worked--a little sturdier with the whole wheat, which you're fine with if you're already used to whole wheat, and a little thicker, but then again, I'm no whiz with the rolling pin, either, so we must leave open the possibility of human error.
I also really like that this makes a cut-out cookie that looks like a sugar cookie, blonde enough to ice and decorate, but with more flavor and a little healthier than a typical sugar cookie (I was a big fan of the banana taste--next time, should I use banana extract instead of vanilla?)

Because of course, the whole point of the sugar cookie is to ice and decorate it:

And in the process, I made this whole other crazy discovery that y'all probably already know all about. So Willow wanted to ice the cookies with strawberry jam (we don't often have jam and, like her mother, Will goes a little apeshit when something delicious is in the house), but I doubted the sticking power of strawberry jam to a cookie top, and anyway we still had some cream cheese left after making the half-birthday half-cake, so I shoved the rest of the cream cheese and the rest of the strawberry jam (sorry, Willow) into the food processor and pureed it all together, and when it was done, y'all--I had made a SCHMEAR!!!

There was an Einstein's Brothers just off campus of our undergrad, and even though my super-sarcastic best friend and I used to make massive fun of just the word "schmear"--"Go on, say it." "You say it." "I'll buy you a bag of iced animal cookies if you say it. " "Fine, but then you have to say "purse." Etc.--y'all, they are delicious.

So, two great food discoveries in as many days, and Matt is currently working like a dog around the house.

Yay, Saturday.

P.S. I fear that yesterday's affair did not end well for a certain pair of lovebirds:

P.P.S. There's also some leftover blueberry pie filling in the fridge--blueberry schmear, anyone?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to try that one (uh, the recipe, not the barbie love affair). Have been wanting to try agave; wonder if I can sub in honey if I forget to buy agave?

Would you believe I don't think I've ever had an Einstein Bros bagel and schmear in the, what, 3 years that they were in B-ton?

julie said...

I'm no baking whiz, but I usually sub honey, agave nectar, or brown rice syrup for refined white sugar, and the only weird thing I can really tell is that each thing has a different level of sweetness, so it's somewhat of a crapshoot (or a scientific mystery to put little homeschooled boys in charge of solving?) how much to sub in of what.