Adventures in Math: Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies

How to Make: Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies
Time Factor: 40 mins
Wow Factor (1-10): 8
Music to Bake By: Lyle Lovett's She Makes Me Feel Good

One night while I was simultaneously texting, surfing, IMing and watching Top Chef: Just Desserts, I stumbled upon a blog called 101 Cookbooks. Heidi Swanson has healthy recipes along with stunning, thoughtful photos of the kind that could not possibly be taken by a woman with young children. (These are the illusions we Moms cling to. If she does have children, I don't want to know about it.) Anyway, she had a recipe for Mesquite Chocolate Chip cookies that she deleted from her site to put into her cookbook. It sounded like exactly the right amount of weird that I like - and thankfully our trusty friend Google found the recipe posted on several other blogs. Thanks Googs!


Mesquite flour sounded like it would have a BBQ flavor, but I was happy to discover it did not. Also happy to discover it wasn't that hard to find - spotted it in two local supermarkets near me. What is hard to find is the right word to describe it - earthy is the best I can do. What was also hard was dividing this recipe into a small batch. I wanted to bake a third of the original version which resulted in many, many calculations and overthinking and absurd sounding portions. Weirdly, it worked. Don't ask how. Just benefit from my insanity. Oh right, and turn your kitchen scale to grams because there is no way to divide so many cups and ounces into thirds properly. By the way, these were the first cookies I've ever made that I can honestly say came out looking somewhat professional. Was it the mesquite? The math? Try it yourself and decide!


Without further ado I bring you a small batch of Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies:

1. 

   The star of the show: mesquite!

   Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and line your baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat mat. In a bowl, whisk together 53 grams of mesquite flour and 110 grams of white flour. So far, easy. But then it starts getting weird. How to divide a teaspoon? The best I could come up with is two 1/8 teaspoons + a half 1/8 teaspoon of baking powder and add the same two 1/8 teaspoons + a half 1/8 teaspoon baking soda and then add 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt. Whisk it all together and don't stress. It will be fine.
   
2. Time to bring out the big guns: your KitchenAid, if you have one. I got mine for "free" with Thank You points from Mastercard. I'm having a bit of a love affair with mine right now. Let's not tell Colin, shall we? So either with the KitchenAid or a hand mixer or if you're a member of the Russian women's Olympic team then by hand, beat 73 grams of butter until soft.  This seems like as good of a time as any to tell you I messed up with the sugar. The recipe calls for natural cane sugar

   

   Have you seen sexier butter? I think not.
   

   and I accidentally bought something that was not that. So I used white sugar and all was well. Do not stress. I will tell you when to stress. This is not that time. Add 133 grams of natural cane sugar or white and beat until creamy.  Add either 2 small eggs (or 1 large egg), one at a time until incorporated. Why not throw in the five 1/8 teaspoons of vanilla extract at this point too? Go ahead and get crazy.
   
3. Important tip: lower the mixing speed on your mixer so you do not get a face full of flour before adding the dry ingredients to the wet, in three batches.
   

   

   Minor disaster: the small egg had a harder shell than anticipated and didn't crack properly. Luckily, part of the egg slid into the crack between the oven and the counter, so that was nice. Let's not tell Colin that either, shall we?

   
   
4. You might want to turn off the electronics at this time and start hand mixing in the 77 grams of rolled oats as well as the 110 grams of chocolate chips. Then take an ice cream scoop - I used a number 20 for this one - and scoop even rounds (about 2 tablespoons) onto the cookie sheet. In the home stretch...
   
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes. If anything, you're supposed to underbake them, which is very hard for a child who comes from a home where everything is burnt.  Burnt = cooked. Underbaked = salmonella. But I followed the recipe as told and, I'm telling you, they looked - and tasted - pretty darn good. Of course, you'll have to wait for Colin's rating to find out the real scoop.

Ice cream scoops make evenly sized cookies.

Would you pay $2 for these? How about $.75?