About Wholewheat Cookies and A Beautiful Orange Pie

Being a die hard fan of homemade cookies and wholewheat flour, I think I was destined to find this recipe by Betty Crocker. A chocolate chips recipe using full wholewheat flour. I was drooling right away I couldn't wait to try baking it. It was a lazy afternoon today, typical afternoon when we had to stay home due to the unpredictable stormy weather recently. I got butter and wholewheat flour waiting to use up. Got whitesugar-palmsugar-cinnamon mixture leftover from making churros the other day (which by the by, never had the chance to blog about, 'coz it's all gone before even finished cooling, oh my..). Got dark 70% couverture chocolate button, then I baked away.

I halved and tweaked the recipe to my convenience, so mine did not look like the ones in the picture on Betty Crocker's web site. They were mounded more and rather smooth on top than crinkled. But, hell baby, were they so goooood....!

Pepper Lunch. When Fast Food is No Longer Junk Food.

Kamera membidik. Juru masak bergerak cepat *sangat cepat!* menangkupkan nasi ke atas piring lebar. Sebelum sempat saya berpikir, ia sudah meletakkan butter dan mulai menyusun salmon segar di sekeliling nasi. Saya mengatur ulang fokus dan komposisi. Detik berikutnya hidangan sudah jadi dan siap diangkat ke meja tamu.

"Hey.."

Saya hanya bisa melongo memandang satu piring Rice Pepper Salmon sudah terbang menuju ruang makan.

"Berapa detik dibutuhkan untuk menyiapkan satu hidangan ini, pak?" tanya saya separuh putus asa karena masih saja kalah cepat.

"Hmm..," sang juru masak tidak langsung menjawab. Sepertinya ia kesal konsentrasinya saya ganggu dengan pertanyaan.

"Berapa lama?" desak saya tanpa ampun.

"Kira-kira.. 40 detik-an lah."

Bahkan tidak sampai satu menit!

Monkey Bread

It is Bread Week on Natural Cooking Club! Time to put your favorite bread recipe into action, knead and rise, bake and celebrate this humble food ever exists!

I love bread for its everything. Versatility, variety, history, and ultimately the fun of making it. Just like diving, you'll find what you specifically look for. If you seek adventure, you'll find one. Whether in yeasty dough, rustic starter sourdough, or the light soda bread and baking powder biscuit, you'll get a personal different experience you hardly forget. If you seek comfort, making it was like a meditation, and nothing can beat the comfort of home-baked bread coming right out of your own kitchen. If you need to get your creative juice running, endless of possibility was laid out in front of you, creating your own version of bread that adds to the already gigantic global variety. If you seek romantic past time reminiscing, the aroma will take you there, to the time where life was simple and problems were either to make loaves now or later after the strawberries were picked.

I love Monkey Bread. I love how it looks, how fun it is to make and eat, and how the unbeatable sweet cinnamon bursts in your mouth, covers your fingers to lick clean. I even love the name! For this Monkey Bread, I used my favorite Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread. Seriously, you can use any bread recipe you like, even biscuits, which I actually plan to make one with. The "monkey" is the shaping process. You ball the dough, dip it into melted butter, throw it in cinnamon sugar mixture to coat, arrange in a pan. You can add nuts or raisins to the cinnamon, add honey to the melted butter, anything you fancy. You can even fill the ball first before dipping and coating, i'm thinking.. cheese cream?

That's it. When you turn it out of the pan onto a plate, you get a beautiful mounded pull-out breads. 

Shiny, gooey, rustic. There, you get your monkey :)