I have been trying out these 'fruit-infused' cookie things for a while. I am usually not very happy with the cookies that are dished out by the standard coffee shops (stale, dry, overpoweringly sugary), or even Subway outlets (limp after being baked a while back and with a greasy aftertaste...).
With the mangoes fast disappearing at the end of the season, I just wanted to bake something with the fruit. And not the standard muck that they give at every confectionery (orange in colour, tasteless, and usually called Alphonso when it is not...).
So I started by trying out a cookie sans all these irritating things. Which did turn out better that I really expected ... But the Sugar, Egg, and Flour-less Cookies were another trip altogether...
Anyways.... Now that the ranting bit is done....
Guru dropped in for the second last time before he goes away for good to Singapore. So I thought that this was a good time to bake something for him and Shubha.
By the time all 'imagin-ing-about-the-food' had stopped swirling in my brain, time had flown and Guru was calling me, irritatedly, asking me when I would land up at his place. <rolling eyes>...
I did not want the standard compound chocolate in the cookies, so I got our some chocolate that some cocoa mass and cocoa butter instead of the hydrogenated fat. I also got out some orange peel.
This had to be done rapidly so I got out some Chitalebandhu Aamras (mango pulp) and squelched out a couple of bowls of the pulp.
Next a couple of cups of oat meal got dumped into my trusty old mixing bowl. (I made a mental note to ask someone to get me some nice steel bowls when they fly in :) )
The chocolate slab got chop-chopped ...
Then the walnut bits also joined the rest in the mixture...
Now, it was time to chop the candied orange peel....
I added a nub of ginger to add a delightful little zing in the cookie just when you were not expecting it... to offset the sweetish richness of the chocolate...
I chopped the ginger in to little bits...
... and then all of this went straight into the bowl.
I added a teaspoon of baking powder (but you can really bake these cookies without it...)
After a good stir, I added a cup of आटा/ataa (aka whole wheat flour) to add some more 'body' to the cookies...
Once the flour was incorporated into the mixture I poured in the mango pulp. This was meant to have a three fold effect--bind the mixture, add some sweetness and to add that little interesting flavour when you bite into the cookie...
After a good mix....
... I rolled out some baking parchment onto the racks and dropped lumps of the mixture.
Tada! All ready to bake in my preheated oven while I cleaned things up and got ready to get out of the house with the cookies...
And this if how the cookies looked straight out of the oven... Notice how the chocolate looks all gooey... The trick with chocolate (as opposed to compound chocolate) is that the chocolate stays gooey-ish even after the cookie is cooled since the chocolate is not actually tempered. Next I shall try making a nice batch of giant muffins with chocolate sunk into the centre. Should be interesting :)
