Red Grapeseed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars Recipe

If you’re familiar with the White Lily brand, you probably know it’s a Southern company, famous for flour that is used in biscuits. It’s been a very long time since they’ve introduced a new product, so they invited a bunch of mostly baking bloggers (and me!)  to come visit wheat fields outside of Spokane to learn about their latest venture—wheat flours with tracability and blends with red and white grape seed flour.

Red and white grape seed flour from Whole Vine is blended with flour from Shepherd’s Grain and sold in 2 pound resealable bags. It’s designed to be an optimal blend, offering cup for cup replacement of all purpose flour. Plans are to offer it nationwide. Although the flour is a blend, each bag has a traceability code allowing you to see and learn more about a farmer whose wheat is in the specific bag.

To produce the flour, White Lily partnered with Shepherd’s Grain, a cooperative that has roots in an 1888 farmstead farm. The goal of the company is to provide long term sustainability in agriculture. All the grower members of the cooperative are "no till” farmers who rely on the diversity of crop rotation, cover straw and soil science to try and imitate nature rather than fight with it. As a result they have fewer issues with rain erosion of topsoil, and concentrate on returning value to the land.

I didn't know much about tilling so I asked a scientist about it and this is what I learned: Tilling dates back to 1790 when Jethro Tull advocated it in a book on farming. Initially plowing prairie led to yield gains, making nutrients more available but it also has serious negative consequences. Tilling leads to sterilization of soil, and 33% of organic matter is lost in the first two years after tilling. It also leads to greater needs for fertilizers, creating a viscious cycle. In changing over to this older way of farming, growers do need to invest in different types of seeding equipment. Bottom line? Healthy soil requires less inputs which is more economically and environmentally sustainable.

Within Shepherd’s Grain most of the 42 growers have farms that are an average of 4K acres. Shepherds Grain also includes a seed company and a research company. Shepherd’s Grain is focused on quality and consistency of grain, rather than quantity. They want to reconnect farmers and food, so you know where your food is coming from, that's why there is a traceability code on each bag. The research company is very focused on the infrastructure of the soil and the diverse, dynamic habitat it creates. They are also trying to find a correlation between human nutrition and the micronutrients in grain. Apparently there is very little known about the terroir of grain, which impacts flavor significantly.

After trying a number of baked goods using the white and red grape flour, I adapted a recipe I found on Best Ever Cookie Collection and used the red grape flour which has a slightly sweet flavor profile and less gluten than regular 100% wheat flour. These flours are easy to work with, and add just hint of color. They are particularly good in dense desserts and crackers.

Note: For the fruit I used plum amazin's but you could use dried cranberries or any other dried fruit bits

Red Grapeseed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Makes 16 squares

1 1/2 cups White Lily Wheat and Red Grape Seed flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon granulated salt

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips, I used Guittard extra dark

1/2 cup bits of dried fruit, optional

1/2 cup chopped walnuts 

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.Grease a 8x8-inch pan with cooking spray.Beat together the oil and sugar until well combined.Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add the flour, baking powder and salt, stirring until well combined. Stir in chocolate chips, dried fruit and nuts.

Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown and a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool completely before cutting into bars.

Enjoy! 

Disclaimer: My thanks to White Lily for inviting me to learn more about their flour and about Shepherd's Grain, and also for providing me with flour to use in recipes. I was not compensated monetarily for this or any other post on Cooking with Amy. 

Easy Almond Cookies Recipe

This is the easiest almond cookie recipe ever. And I bet you could use an easy cookie recipe about now. It requires only a few ingredients and you prepare the dough in the food processor so making them takes maybe 10 minutes and there's barely any clean up. They are a variation of almond macaroons, rich and chewy with just a little crunch from the almond on top. The secret is a hint of almond extract, and to really processing the ingredients until they make a very easy to work with dough.

I was recently sent some almonds from the Almond Board and I was looking for a good way to use them. There are lots of similar recipes to this one, but the comments on Epicurious led me to make a crucial change in the recipe. I cut the sugar in half. I also made slightly larger cookies than the recipe calls for and skipped dusting them in confectioners sugar. It might seem odd to add almond extract to almond cookies, but without it they can be a little bland. Because they are such dense little bites, they won't crumble making them good for travel or shipping. They are gluten free and have no added oil or butter.

While no one eats cookies for health purposes, these are pretty healthy. Lots of research has been done on almonds and they are a true nutritional powerhouse very high in manganese, vitamin E and magnesium and eating them lowers cholesterol and reduces the risk of heart attack. So eat them in good health!

Easy Almond Cookies
Makes 14 cookies, but recipe can easily be multiplied
adapted from a recipe published in Gourmet magazine, 1997

Ingredients

1 cup blanched almonds, whole or slivered
1/3 cup sugar
Pinch salt
1 egg white
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
14 whole almonds

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor combine the almonds, sugar and salt. Process until very finely ground. Add the egg white and almond extract and pulse until the dough comes together. Roll the dough into 14 evenly sized balls, and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Press one almond into the center of each cookie, pressing down slightly.

Bake for 10 minutes or until just starting to show a hint of gold. Let cookies cool on the pan, then transfer to an airtight container.

Enjoy!