Chocolate Chip Cookies with Everything (grain-free)

Our favourite cookie just got better! We love chocolate chip cookies with everything--moist and chewy, with chocolate, nuts, coconut, and raisins. In fact, this flexible recipe can take all the add-ins you desire. I published the original version years ago when this blog was first getting going five years ago: recipe here and photo here.

On that note, this blog now has 501 posts! Wow! This blogging thing started as a casual hobby. It's still a hobby since the blog is ad-free and I've never made any money from it, but 500 posts means it's no longer a casual endeavour. I love writing here and sharing recipe ideas. Blogging has been personally valuable since my cooking and photography have improved. But also blogging has been rewarding as others have been able to use and share ideas here, too. I would love to hear about any ideas from Simply Cooked that have been valuable to you.

I have been wheat-free and mostly grain-free for the last two years and this has influenced the things you see here on Simply Cooked. This doesn't mean that I can't enjoy baking, though. Here are some usually grain-filled items that I have tackled and transformed into grain-free versions:

Mushroom Paprikash (with Grain-Free Dumplings)

During my undergraduate degree, I spent a semester in Budapest, Hungary. It was my first time away from home. I lived in a little apartment that had an adjoining door to a mirror-image little apartment next door, where my landlady lived. She was a single lady, exactly double my age (and I was exactly twenty years old). We became good friends, not least because I used the washing machine at the back of her kitchen. And because she welcomed me into her church, family, and kitchen.

Each of our apartments was very small, about three hundred square feet. I had my cheery yellow kitchen, a small bathroom, and a bed-sitting room with a single bed and a desk. Her apartment was identical, except that her kitchen was red and her main room was set up as a sitting room with a monstrously large (considering the size of the room) L-shaped sofa and dark wood wall-to-wall cabinets. She used to convert part of the sofa into her bed every night and then put it away again in the morning.

Feta and Eggplant Meatballs

This is the tastiest meal I have ever made.

When I served these meatballs to my husband he took a picture before beginning. Then he took a bite, put his fork back down again, and moaned. "Ooonh, my!" Pause. "Wow, that is amazing." Pause. Gentle, low intake of breath. Then a little sigh.

Beef Chilli

This is the dinner meal that is on rotation at my house more than any other. We eat it year-round; though I know some people who think chilli is a winter dish. Allow me to explain.

best of 2010: innovative meals with vegetables

2010 was a great year for simply cooked! This blog has featured a host of recipes that used vegetables in tasty and inventive ways. Consider these ideas, clockwise from top left:

--Sweet potato spread to slather on crackers or to scoop up with veggies: a clever way to eat more vegetables and avoid unhealthy processed food spreads
--Spicy cucumber salad with toasted almonds: the mundane cucumber is raised to new heights in this salad with a great mouthfeel from the nuts and red onions
--Veggie pancakes that will turn on the drooling from any reluctant eater
--Baked sweet potato falafel with homemade hummus, pitas, and spring greens: a complete vegetarian mezze platter
--Pumpkin and peach salad with lemongrass dressing, a creation that won the Paperchef September 2010 competition
--Vietnamese summer rolls, made with pork, crunchy carrots, spring onions and zingy lime and soy sauce

And there are lots of things to look forward to in 2011. I plan to focus on a few areas:

--more tasty meals with vegetables: as always my primary desire is to inspire you to love veggies as much as I do
--healthy baking ideas, avoiding highly processed ingredients, especially white flour and white sugar
--making mealtimes simple and easy for us, busy people that we are, by providing shortcuts (such as how to make a stew into a quick weeknight meal)
--ideas about health and food from around the web through my weekend links series

What are your food goals for this coming year? And how can I help?

bacon-fried greens

I have two main dinner strategies when time is tight and inspiration is waning:

1. The "all in one" strategy: Make a hearty salad-ish dish, warm or cold, with lots of veggies and maybe a bit of meat (for example, the peach and pumpkin salad or aubergine with black eyed beans).

2. The "side as main" strategy: Make a big amount of my current favourite side dish and make it into a meal by adding a piece of meat or fish on the side (for example, veggie pancakes or a warm black cabbage salad).

chocolate snacking cake

When you read a recipe title like that, what can you do but start to bake? This is the easiest cake I know how to make, so much so that sometime Ant requests it 35 minutes before he wants to eat it. (It takes 30 minutes to bake.)

There are three main things I like about this easy cake. First, it calls for pantry staples that I always have. It doesn't require an egg, baking chocolate, or even milk. The chocolate flavour comes from cocoa and the liquid is water. Even so, it is tasty enough to fool guests into drooling praise as if it used speciality ingredients.

cookies with everything

After I posted the recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies with Everything last week, my dad decided to try them out. He also was kind enough to get Jeff to take a picture. He says that they turned out wonderfully. He used no coconut and substituted dried cranberries for the raisins. But that's the whole point of the Everything Cookie, you just throw in all the crunchy, squishy, textured items you have, along with a respectable amount of chocolate, and voila! (Even when I burnt them once we still ate them all because they are so tasty.) Thanks, Dad, for giving them the thumbs up.

chocolate chip cookies

Here is the recipe requested by my colleague! These are also Ant's favourite cookie. Yum, I will be making these and taking them to work next week to ease the pain of reintegration.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Everything
about 3 dozen cookies
(from 'Tis the Season: A Vegetarian Christmas Cookbook by Nanette Blanchard)

1/2 c butter, softened
3/4 c firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 T vanilla extract
1 c unbleached flour
1/4 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 t baking powder
1/2 c flaked coconut
1/2 c granola or rolled oats
3/4 c chopped pecans or other nuts
3/4 c currants, raisins, or sultanas
1 3/4 c semisweet chocolate chips or chunks

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer (or a strong arm) to cream together butter and brown sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and beat well.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder.
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients along with everything else. Stir until combined.
Cover and chill for 30 minutes.
Grease baking trays and preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
Drop by tablespoonfuls onto the baking trays and bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.
Cool on a wire rack.

Anything and everything can go into these cookies. The additions (chocolate, oats, coconut, etc) total 4 1/2 cups, so feel free to use whatever appeals to you. I would imagine that dried cranberries and white chocolate would be nice together. Use any nuts that you prefer; hazelnuts would be delicious.

chocolate cake for one & recipe books

Tonight I made this amazing chocolate cake for one in a mug--Ant's special dessert to celebrate the end of a hard work week. What a nice treat that only took moments to make!

Chocolate Cake for One
4 T flour
4 T sugar
2 T cocoa
1 egg
3 T milk
3 T oil (or half oil and half applesauce)
pinch salt

Grease the inside of a mug. Mix the dry ingredients in the mug. Combine the wet ingredients and then add them, mixing well.
Microwave on high for 3 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes before turning onto a plate.

Ant was very impressed and so was I! And so I wrote it into my new recipe book. I really love it--Mum and Dad bought it for me from Paperchase when they were here. I filled my first cooking notebook (the pink one) a few months ago and wasn't sure what to do next. But this lovely lemon book solves my problem!


The only difference for this new notebook is that I am only going to write in recipes after I make them. I ended up with a few too many in the old book that were inspiration but that I never made.

On Dad's suggestion, here are the top recipes from "Sarah's Kitchen, Volume 1".

Ginger Noodle Soup
Pumpkin Cheesecake
Beans and Bacon Casserole
Cuban Black Bean Soup
Mushroom Paprikash
Sonya's Minted Lamb Burgers
Bacon Fried Greens
French Onion Soup
Roasted Onion and Parsnip Tarte Tatin
Spicy Red Lentil Soup

first fruits

Well, today was an exciting day on which the fruits, er, vegetables, of my labour were tasted. I took the first snips of mixed salad leaves from the box I planted for our lamb burgers tonight. I have used Sonya's lamb burger recipe three times recently since she shared it with me. I was looking for a way to get into lamb, since it is so popular here and I have little experience with it.



Minted Lamb Burgers

0.5 kg lamb mince
1/2 cup crumbled (low fat) feta cheese
sliced green onions
2 tablespoons dried mint
1 teaspoon cumin or other spices (eg. garam malasa)
1 egg

Shape into six or eight burgers. Serve with mixed salad leaves, crumbled feta, and red onion marinated in balsamic vinegar. Yum, yum.