Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

OK, I am a firm believer in using good old white flour when I'm making the sweet things. You see, the sweet things are meant to be made using the white flour, and it's not like it's health food, so why mess with it? You're just fooling yourself if you think using some wheat flour will make your cookies healthy.

These are not healthy cookies.

But they're good. really good. They don't try to fool you into eating grain or being sneakily healthy, they just show off good whole grains in a delicious way. Also, they're neither heavy nor dry. They're nutty and sweet and have a wholesome, although not at all healthy feeling. Wholesome and healthy are different. They taste like real food made in a real kitchen. That's my story.

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Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Kim Boyce, Good to the Grain

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt (or 1 tsp. table salt)
1/2 pound (1 cup/2 sticks) butter, cold [yes, cold]
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
8 oz. (1 cup) bittersweet chocolate chips or chopped chocolate [I used both]

Preheat oven to 350˚F and put racks in upper and lower thirds of the oven. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment or silicone liners.

Combine flour, powder, soda, and salt in a bowl. If you're a sifter, like I like to pretend to be, you'll have to dump the rest of the whole grain into the bowl after you sift. It's cool.

Chop butter into 1/2 inch pieces, about 8 pieces per stick and put them in your stand mixer with the sugars. Mix on medium until well combined, 2 minutes or so. It will take a bit for the butter to break down, but it surely will. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix until each one is well combined. Add vanilla and combine.

Add dry ingredients all at once and mix on low speed for 30 seconds. No more! It'll be almost combined. Add chocolate or chocolate chips and mix 30 more seconds. Stop there. Overworking the whole wheat will make them chewy and caky instead of flaky and wonderful.

Scoop out a scant 1/4 cup of dough (3 Tbsp or so) and round it out and place it on the cookie sheet. Only 6 will fit on the sheet. These are big ones, folks. I don't know if they'd turn out as good if they were smaller. If I ever try it, I'll let you know.

Cook for 14-18 minutes, rotating pans 1/2 way through. Pull them when the center is just barely lighter than the brown rest of the cookie. Mine were uniformly browned and I think I overcooked mine by maybe 1 minute and they're just a little on the crisp side. I would've like them just a bit better if they were a bit less crunchy. I could've avoided it. Don't be like me.

EDIT: I made a single pan and cooked them in the middle of the oven for 14 minutes and they were absolutely perfect. It looks like you'll just have to do your best with your oven and be very, very careful. :)

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Eat them and have a good glass of milk. They're wonderful, different, not healthy, but taste wholesome and real and wonderful. I'll make them again, to be sure. Strangely, these are almost exactly the same recipe I use with my standard cookies, but with half the chocolate chips and using wheat flour. Seriously, the ingredient ratios are identical except with a 50% increase in baking powder for some extra oomph. I have a theory that using the cold butter uses a pastry technique to create little pockets of butter that keep these flaky and light. Treat the dough like you would a piecrust—work it only as much as necessary and you'll be well rewarded. Enjoy!