White Whole Wheat and other healthy cooking gems

I'm so excited about white whole wheat!  As many of you out there know, I love a blog called Trainer Momma.  She wrote this interesting post (http://www.trainermomma.com/2010/11/not-an-oxymoron-white-wheat-flour/) explaining that white whole wheat is not an oxymoron.  I had no idea before what white whole wheat was!  I found some King Arthur brand white whole wheat flour at my local grocery store here several weeks ago, and I've been using it in place of white flour in everything I bake.  I love it!  It's pretty much the same nutritionally as regular whole wheat flour, but it tastes a lot more like white flour.  It makes my goal of eating more of my grains as whole grains just that much easier.  

I've been trying to eat healthier lately, so I've also been using the trick of replacing oil or butter in baked goods with apple sauce.  It makes cookies less rich, for sure, but still really yummy.  I love this trick.

I also learned recently via a blogging buddy that you can substitute banana for eggs in baked goods like cookies.  Who knew?  The weekend before last we had our friend Varnali over, and she doesn't eat eggs.  I made chocolate chip cookies with banana instead of eggs and I replaced half the butter with apple sauce, and they were fabulous.  They tasted a little like banana, so if you don't like bananas this is not a good option for you, but if you don't mind it's great.  Just substitute 1/2 banana per egg.

So, here are a couple of recipes that I've been loving lately:

Healthy Cookies (from Trainer Momma, http://www.trainermomma.com/2010/06/healthy-cookies/)

1/2 cup applesauce, unsweetened

1/2 cup honey

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

2 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 1/2 cup rolled oats

2 cups chocolate chips

Mix all ingredients together.  Spoon onto cookie sheets sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.  

Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

This batch made 53 cookies.  That makes it 88 calories each.  

I made these the other day for a snack to take to Andrew's play school class, but I only had one egg in house, so I used the banana trick and it worked like a charm.

Pizza Dough (from the "internet")

1 1/3 cups warm water

2 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs honey

1 tsp salt

2 cups bread flour

2 cups white whole wheat flour

2 tsp yeast

Add ingredients to bread machine in the order listed. After rolled out, brush the dough with olive oil, add toppings, and bake at 450 degrees for 10-20 minutes. Makes two 14-inch pizzas.