Pantry Clean Out Cookies

Sitting in the car at the post office the other day, freezing my bum off and wondering if Garnet Hill would send yet ANOTHER spring catalogue, I was doing my mental pantry/fridge inventory and figuring out what we had and what I would make. Then I remembered the cranberries. Cranberries! Hooray!

I got a massive bag of dried cranberries because I planned to make granola bars. Then I ended up making granola bars in my kitchen in New York, so didn't need the cranberries in Massachusetts. I remembered that they were still in the back of the bread bin along with pumpkin seeds and roasted almonds.

I like cranberries. As with raisins, I will happily stuff my face full of them. Like raisins, however, they are only Beetle Friendly in small doses (fruit fiber is very hard to digest) so if I eat too many I get what I affectionately call "preg belly" where I wander around looking perilously close to my due date for about a day. It's fairly uncomfortable, sometimes really freaking uncomfortable, and it does tend to make almost all of my clothes, even the big sleep shirts, too small. It also hurts to suck it in and be normal and social in public company, so I generally spend preg belly days on my back on the couch. You know, like an actual pregnant woman. It's sort of like a  science fiction movie or TV show when the heroine looks down and there's an alien baby in her stomach and it's growing at 300% the normal rate and it's full term in an hour or something and all of a sudden she's just . . . HUGE . . . it's like that. Except mine goes away on its own without an alien birth involved (not yet at any rate).

Fun story. This happened in Vienna one summer and I really didn't feel like sucking it in all day as I wandered around. So, since I was in another country, alone, where I knew no one and spoke no German, I decided to be pregnant for the day. Best decision of my life. It was so comfortable, and it meant I could enjoy the museums in peace and comfort. Plus, everyone was super nice to me, the young mother to be. They opened doors, smiled conspiratorially, etc. It was awesome.

POINT BEING. We had cranberries. I wasn't going to eat a whole bag. So.

PANTRY CLEAN OUT SEVEN GRAIN CRANBERRY OATMEAL COOKIES

This is liberally adapted from The Joy of Cooking's Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe. (I love you, Irma S. Rombauer.) I used what we had in the kitchen, and deliberately made them healthier and more granola-like, with agave instead of sugar, more spices, and a seven grain hot cereal mix for the oatmeal.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 generous tsp cinnamon

1 generous tsp nutmeg

2 sticks butter, softened

1 liquid cup dark agave

2 eggs

2 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup plus a few handfuls dried cranberries

2 cups 7 grain hot cereal (wheat, rye, oats, triticale, barley, brown rice, oat bran, flax seed)

1 1/2 cups steel cut (not rolled) oats

 

This is the froth part. I did the freaking for you. It's all good.

Combine flour, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg, in a small bowl.



In a mixer, beat butter and agave until pale. This will take longer than using regular sugar, don't worry, it will still be pretty liquid and there might be a froth at the top, you didn't ruin it, it calms down.

This is what happens after you add the flour.
See? Gorgeous and smooth and heavenly.

Beat in the eggs and the vanilla.

Add the flour in two batches, beating after each addition, and scraping down the sides of the bowl. Stir in the cranberries, then the 7 grain cereal, then the steel cut oats, combine pretty well after each one.
 

Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls on parchment lined baking sheets. They don't spread that much so you don't have to allow a ton of space. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, a little less if you want them really gooey.
 

They flattened a little
but this is pretty much how they came out.

REMEMBER that when you use agave, it cooks more liquid than normal sugar, so your cookies will be squishy even when you bake them for 15 minutes. They will firm up a bit when they cool. But they are done, don't freak. They cool really well on wire racks before you wrap them up.

 

BEETLE NOTES
 

Using agave as you know will give you a really mellow, molasses-y, earthy depth to the cookies. You can smell the difference in the mixing bowl, and definitely in the cookies when they are baking. They come out nice and golden brown too. If you use agave, remember that it is CRAZY SWEET and that unless you want to give yourself diabetes you should reduce whatever sugar is called for. Example. The original Joy of Cooking recipe uses 1/2 cup of white sugar and 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar. First, that's craycray. Second, when using agave, instead of 2 cups I used only 1. And I could even have gone a bit less. Just saying. Don't make 'em Cadbury Creme Egg style.

 

This is an easily adaptable one for any hot cereals, oat mixtures, dried fruit, or seeds you want to clean out of your pantry. Oat bran, wheat bran, museli, corn grits, farina, or plain ol' rolled oats. I named them Pantry Clean Out cookies for a reason. I found a half a box of quinoa flakes I am TOTALLY using the next time I make these. Which, according to Mum, is . . . as soon as possible.

Crunchy, nubbly, chewy, packed-with-omega-3 goodness.

She likes 'em super crunchy.

I deliberately burnt an entire sheet pan of them for Mum.

And preferably black on the bottom, which is perfect when I'm experimenting with cooking times.
"It's okAY that they are essentially carbon. I LIKE them that way!"

I may have mentioned that Mum is a librarian? Her fellow librarians have very kindly offered themselves as guinea pigs (or at least are nice enough to accept the baked goods I force upon them) so I packaged up a bunch of them today and we drove them over.

Introducing Beetle Bakery packaging.

 

I am rather proud of this.

We drove them over through THE SNOW incidentally. Becuase. It snowed. There was even a sanding machine involved. For God's sake, people.
But. On a freezing, sleeting day, I would want someone to bring me relatively healthy freshly baked cookies in a paper bag with a Warrior Beetle on it.

So. There you go.