Nutty Chocolate Chip Cookies

The nuttiness of these scrumptious chocolate chip cookies comes from nut butter rather than chopped nuts mixed through the cookie dough. I've experimented with several different nut butters such as cashew, brazil, macadamia and hazelnut. Some I've bought and others I've made myself. My favourite one to use though is macadamia nut butter because I find the resulting cookies are lovely and moist. 

Scrumptious!

I came across the original recipe, from Paula over at the blog, Mixing It Up Hong Kong, a few years ago and I've only tinkered with it minimally. The original recipe is one written for the Thermomix but you can make it without one. As usual, I've reduced the sugar content. I find that less sugar is just fine as the chocolate chips add a sweetness too. I love to use dark chocolate chips in these cookies but you can use milk or white chocolate chips instead. I sometimes use nut butter instead of grinding whole nuts and blending with coconut oil as per the original recipe. This substitution is one of Paula's suggestions that you'll find at the bottom of her recipe page. It works well and saves some time too!

This quickly became my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Here's how I make it:

Nutty Chocolate Chip Cookies

(Unsuitable for those with nut allergy.)

80g oat flour or ground whole oats
120g macadamia nut butter (store bought or homemade)
35g coconut or rapadura sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 large free range egg
100g - 120g wholemeal spelt flour
1 Tablespoon milk 
180g small choc chips


1.  Preheat oven to 180C and line baking trays.

2.  Beat nut butter, sugar & vanilla until very well blended.

3.  Add egg and beat again until well blended. The mixture at this point is quite "sticky".

4.  In a separate bowl, mix the oat flour and 100g of the wholemeal spelt flour.

5.  Make a well in the centre of the flours and spoon the sticky nut butter mixture into it.

6.  Add in milk and then mix until well combined. *While this cookie dough is fairly sticky, 
      mix in the extra 20g flour if you feel it is too wet at this point.*

7.  Gently mix through chocolate chips.

8.  Using damp hands, roll tablespoonfuls of cookie dough into balls and place on trays.
      Flatten each slightly with your fingers.

9.  Bake until lightly golden and cool on wire racks.

Every batch of these I make NEVER makes it into our biscuit tin without several or more cookies mysteriously disappearing from the cooling rack. I often have to stand guard just so they don't all disappear in one go!

Do you have a favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe?

Meg

Falling Fruit

Our mandarin tree, laden with the promise of juicy Autumn fruit just a few months ago, is systematically dropping several under-ripe mandarins to the ground every. single. day. 😦 There aren't many left now and I'm not holding out any hope that they'll stay on the tree!

Several fruit are falling from our mandarin tree every day.

Our tree looks lush and healthy. There's no obvious damage to the tree, no signs of insect attack on the leaves or the fruit. But, we have had a LOT of rain and both a google search and staff at the local nursery concurred that this was most likely the tree's response to too much of "liquid gold".  An example of unseasonal weather affecting a plant. Sigh!

Our usually very happy mandarin tree.

There's a deep disappointment to losing a potential harvest like this. (I can only imagine how farmers who lose entire paddocks full of produce must feel!) Those homegrown, fresh-from-the-tree mandarins are something we look forward to picking and eating every year. Instead, this year, I'll be trying to ripen them on my kitchen bench and researching mandarin marmalade to try and salvage some fruit. 

Unripe mandarins still on the tree.

(Fingers crossed!)

I guess this is just a gardener's lot sometimes, isn't it!  How are the weather conditions where you live affecting the plants in your garden?

Meg

Lemongrass Mulch

Just about a year after I planted out many little lemongrasses, for the specific purpose of growing some of our own mulch, it was time to give them a haircut! 

The abundant, strappy leaves of lemongrass.

One of the little lemongrasses I planted last April.

Lemongrass grows well in our climate and has loved the hot and wet conditions of the Summer just gone. Each thriving plant has provided an abundance of long, strappy leaves for us to chop and use as mulch.

One year's growth and ready for a haircut!

While we predominately grow lemongrass as a source of mulch, it has lots of great uses as Morag Gamble explains in this post over at her blog,  Our Permaculture Life.  

Roughly chopped!

I cut each lemongrass clump back quite a bit. As I worked, a lovely lemony scent filled the air and masses of chopped leaves dropped onto the ground. I left some of this to cover and protect the soil around the lemongrasses themselves and gathered up the rest in my trusty wheelbarrow to move to an area of the garden that needed some new mulch.

A barrow load of homegrown lemongrass mulch.

A blanket of lemongrass mulch around the mandarin tree.

A blanket of lemongrass leaves now covers the soil around our mandarin tree. This loose tangle of strappy mulch will allow plenty of water to seep through while protecting the soil and nourishing it as it breaks down over time. A second, lighter "trim" of our lemongrass will yield a little more of this mulch for use in our garden too before I leave the clumps to regrow their long, strappy hair-dos!

Meg

p.s. The other plant we chose to grow as a mulch, Canna Lily or Queensland Arrowroot, is also doing well. I will need to chop them back soon too. More free mulch!

A little Canna Lily just beginning to grow.

One year of growth.