When Megan asked me to write a guest post for Delicious Dishings, I was extremely nervous. You see, I’m not much of a baker. While I enjoy cooking a lot, baking is typically very intimidating for me. But in September, Megan organized a lovely weekend of baking at King Arthur Flour Company and ever since then, I can’t stop trying out recipes from King Arthur Flour’s Whole Grain Baking cookbook! I started out with whole wheat bread…moved onto wheat baguettes…and I finally decided to try my hand at something a little more sweet.
When my friends at We Are Not Martha invited me to a small party a few weeks ago, I decided this was the perfect occasion to try out a new recipe from the cookbook – Salted Cashew-Crunch Cookies.
First, I got together my ingredients:
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- ¾ cup sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats, ground for 30 seconds in a food processor
- 2 cups coarsely chopped cashews
- Extra-fine salt for topping
I first started out by preparing my rolled oats and cashews. I roughly chopped up the cashews on a cutting board and set the chopped nuts aside. I then put the two cups of rolled oats in a food processor and pulsed it for thirty seconds.
With all of my ingredients ready, I got to work on making the cookies. I preheated the oven at 350 degrees and lined two baking sheets with parchment paper. I first combined the butter, sugar, salt, baking powder, vanilla and egg in a bowl and beat the ingredients together.
I then beat in the ground oats.
And then slowly beat in the chopped cashews.
The texture of the dough was thick like granola. I took a tablespoonful of the dough, rolled it with my hands and placed it onto the baking sheet. In total, I rolled thirty balls of dough and sprinkled each ball of dough with a very light sprinkle of salt.
I then lightly greased the bottom of a drinking glass and used it to press the cookies down to about 3/8 inch thick.
I put both trays of cookies in the oven for about six minutes and then rotated the trays from the bottom and top racks of the oven. I let the cookies bake for another six minutes. The cookies weren’t quite golden brown so I shut the heat off the oven and left the trays in the oven for an additional three minutes. When the three minutes were up, I took the pans out of the oven and let the cookies cool right on the baking sheet.
I of course had to try a cookie as soon as it was cool enough and it had a nice crunchy texture with a slightest hint of salt. It was a crunchy cookie and not chewy at all because the recipe used absolutely no flour at all.
The next day, at the party, I gave the cookies another taste. I thought they were still pretty good but a tad dry. I think that the next time I make these cookies, I will take them out of the oven after the initial twelve minutes. I was definitely conservative in sprinkling salt on them and the cookies could have used a little more salt to truly get that salty crunchy taste.
Still, I’m proud of how the cookies turned out and I can’t wait to get back in the kitchen to see what else I can bake up! Thanks Megan for letting me share my latest adventures in baking with your readers!