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....!




I plan to make again without tweaking and see if I can get them looking like the original ones, you know, with the crinkles I love. I have food photo session tomorrow morning and will bring the cookies with me. So no pictures yet, please bear with me for the second batch. Or you too can bake it and let me know how yours turns out.

Instead, here in this post are the pictures from classes I taught recently. I posted most of them on Natural Cooking Club's website, so go ahead find the recipes there. I particularly loooove the pies, the recipes were dead on like usual.



So, here is one of my favorites, Orange Chiffon Pie. This is an unbaked pie that is easy breezy to make, feels and tastes oh-so-good. The name says it all: silky chiffony texture as can be, caressing your tongue and taste-bud with its sweet tangy orangy mousse. For those who has no experience with gelatin, pay attention when you mix it into the mousse. You have to pour it in a thin stream while stirring the mousse, in order for the gelatin to be well blended in the mousse creating this silky texture that is yet firm enough to be cut beautifully. Do not pour it all at once. Be patient, stream it, stream it in a thin line. You'll be okay.

Orange Chiffon Pie
By Fatmah Bahalwan

Crust:
150 gr butter
3 Tbsp sugar
250 gr plain crackers biscuits
75 ml whole milk

Orange mousse:
200 ml whipping cream
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
75 gr castor sugar
50 ml orange concentrate (I used Sunquick)
75 ml cold water
1 tsp grated orange peel (I used navel orange)
1 Tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
½ sdt orange paste (optional, just to give a kick on the orange aroma)
20 gr gelatin leaves
50 gr warm water

How-to:

1. Prepare a loose bottom pie tin 24 cm in diameter. Brush lightly with butter.
2. Mix together all the ingredients for the crust until well blended, press it onto the bottom and sides of the pie tin, making sure it spreads evenly. Let it set in the freezer.
3. Whip the cream and vanilla until thick. Set aside. Loosely beat the egg and sugar until the sugar dissolved. Set aside. Mix together orange concentrate, cold water, orange juice and orange paste. Mix altogether the cream, egg and orange syrup. Blend well.
4. In a double boiler, melt the gelatin with the water until it looks clear. Pour the gelatin in a thin stream into the mousse while stirring the mousse with a spatula until well blended.
5. Pour the mousse into the crust, let it set in the fridge.

Have an orangy afternoon, everyone!