Lilia's Best Multigrain Cookies Ever Ever

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite authors, K.J. Charles, had a terrific blog post about the difficulties authors have today managing the pressure to share details about their real lives for the sake of curious fans. I write with a pen name, and since one of the main rationales for that pen name was to keep my authorship of gay tentacle porn off the radar of my kids' schools, I have not had much temptation or opportunity to overshare, though I admit to prostituting my incredibly cute, dare-I-say "Boo-esque," pet Corgeranian anywhere I think his adorable wittle face might my help my career. In fact I'll do that right now:





Isn't he precious?

Anyhoo, one really shocking, tabloid-worthy RL factoid that I have kept deeply under wraps until now is that I am really into baking, specifically baking with whole grains.  Yeah, I know, it's bad: cupcakes, cookies, quick breads, fruit crumbles--I make them all.

Except pies--I have "personal issues" with pie crusts, as in mine suck.

Generally, my family is pretty "supportive" of "Mom's whole grain thing," meaning if they ever want to eat another goddamn cookie in this house again, let alone bring three dozen top-sellers to their school bake sale, they'd better keep their traps shut about my refusal to cook with insipid, nutritionally castrated refined flours. But even my junk-food inhaling teenager would agree that my Multigrain Chocolate Chips are the best cookies he's ever eaten.  So I thought in the interest of promoting the scrumptiousness and health benefits of whole grains as well as my own coolness, I would share the recipe.

If you've ever made a chocolate chip cookie, you will realize that 100% of the innovation of this recipe is in the combination of grains, specifically the use of Spelt, Kamut, and Teff flours. Spelt and Kamut are older varieties of wheat, both far superior for most non-bread baking than regular whole wheat. Teff is a gorgeous Ethiopian grain that is used for their famous flat bread, injera. It is also a supergrain like quinoa or amaranth thanks to its kick-ass nutritional profile. All three are available from Bob's Red Mill. I buy them by the case from Amazon (You can click each name for the buy links).

So here's the recipe: 

Ingredients:
1 cup spelt flour
½ cup teff flour
½ cup kamut flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
2 sticks of butter (softened)
1 cup Brown Sugar
½ cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips or to taste

Instructions:
Prepare cookie sheets—use parchment if possible, otherwise grease lightly.

Bowl 1--Dry Mix
1 cup spelt flour
½ cup teff flour
½ cup kamut flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt

Mix together thoroughly

Bowl 2—I use a stand mixer

2 sticks of softened butter
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar

Beat together until light, then add:

2 eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla

Mix lightly until blended—don’t overbeat.

Add flour mixture, mix gently until blended.
Add 1 cup chocolate chips or to taste


Place spoonfuls of dough approximately 2 inches apart on cookie sheets.

Bake 10 minutes—then check frequently.   

DO NOT OVERBAKE—I find this recipe more forgiving then the regular one, but almost the only thing you can do to ruin chocolate chip cookies is to overbake them—SO DON’T DO IT. This is what they should look like:  

A few final notes:
"USE PARCHMENT."  It's annoyingly expensive, but you can reuse it (just wipe it off), which I do since I am really cheap and make tons of cookies. But you should just trust me on this. Parchment makes better cookies. Much better. Just use it. 

"1 cup chocolate chips or to taste."  Confession: I like but don't looooove chocolate, so I go very light on the chocolate chips (I use ordinary Nestle chips--Ghirardelli are oddly hard). Yes, my kids whine, and when they make the cookies themselves they can use as many chips as they want.  (Me smiling sweetly). Since you, dear reader, are making your own cookies, you can use the whole damn bag if that's your preference.

Here's one final photo--aren't they gorgeous? (Another super-juicy Lilia factoid: that's my wedding china they're sitting on.)

Yikes, now I want one. Seriously, I recommend these cookies. Everyone loves them. I could probably say more but those photos made me hungry--like, I have to have a cookie. NOW.

Time to yell at my son to get off the damn X-box and put the butter out.