Adding more fat to homemade baked goods…

[Adam Salinger]

Hi All,

I’d love to know from anyone that might have some baking wisdom, how to take a cookie I love in the front country (gingerbread cookies) and spike up the calorie and fat content.  I jut don’t know baking and ingredients enough to understand how the changes I might make in ingredients or measurements make will affect the taste, texture, and overall taste.

Here is the recipe I’m working with:

1 cup butter softened
▢1 cup light brown sugar
▢1 large egg
▢1 cup molasses NOT blackstrap
▢1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar OR white wine vinegar
▢2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Dry Ingredients:
▢5 cups flour
▢1 teaspoon baking soda
▢½ teaspoon salt
Gingerbread Spice Mix:
▢1 tablespoon ground ginger
▢1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
▢½ teaspoon ground allspice
▢½ teaspoon ground cloves
▢¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Thanks in advance for your food related wisdom.

:)

[Philip Tschersich]

Make ginger shortbread?

Shortbread is a fairly durable, shelf stable, backcountry butter bomb. I would make a ‘ginger’ version of that.

A basic shortbread recipe is simply:

2 cups all purpose flour

2 sticks butter (1 cup)

1/2 cup of sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

Just Google recipes online. To make them ‘ginger,’ just use your list of spices to add to the basic shortbread recipe.

It’s incredibly simple to make and you just pack it into a baking dish, bake, and then cut it into rectangles (like brownies) while still warm. Then you can vacuum seal them and store them in the freezer for a long time until ready for use.

[Atif Khan]

Short answer: more unsalted butter. This book is what you’re looking for: Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

She covers recipes and philosophy based on Weston Price’s research of 14 traditional societies and how leaving traditional preparation and ingredients for, basically, refined carbohydrates and packaged foods degenerated health over generations. If it can’t be packaged then it probably isn’t profitable. Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Dr. Catherine Shanahan covers the science.

[Rex Sanders]

how to take a cookie I love in the front country (gingerbread cookies) and spike up the calorie and fat content.

Experiment: Add more fat (butter), bake, taste and inspect, repeat until unhappy, then back off one step. Don’t get hung up on following recipes precisely.

Only you can judge how much butter or other fat is too much, across many factors including taste and gooeyness.

If the cookies get too gooey or drippy, try adding a pure saturated fat like coconut oil instead of more butter. Which changes the taste and everything else.

Foods that taste great in town sometimes taste foul after several days of consumption in the backcountry. Moderation in all most things.

— Rex

Cookie tasting: a tough job, but somebody has to do it :-)

[Justin W]

I’m a fan of avocado oil over all other oils for higher heat purposes such as baking, sauteing, etc.  Reason being that it handles heat without degradation better than other oils/fats while being mostly mono saturated fat. And it has a fairly neutral taste which makes it versatile.

And if a longer term trip, I would recommend drying the cookies out pretty well and then vacuum packing them for longevity.  Moisture, air/oxygen, and/or heat are the enemies of food and why they spoil. Really lowering the first two will go a long way towards preserving.  A lot less of a factor on winter or colder trips though.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Add bacon bits to your cookies.  Win-win.

[Justin W]

But if you are set on butter, I would at least use ghee instead.  Higher calorie per volume (only very slightly) and keeps better–both because it is butter with the water removed. It also ups the smoke point of the oil significantly too.

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

Just remember….more fat affects the baking. More fat can cause spreading/flattening. IMO, find a higher fat keto recipe and you will fare better.

[Jerry Adams]

yeah, more butter makes it thin and crisp.  I have done that by mistake.

But, maybe that’s still good eating.  I almost always eat my mistakes.

It could change the baking time.  Make a few cookies, wait for them to cool, try them and adjust baking time if needed.

 

[Jerry Adams]

you could make butter brickle, for example

https://www.landolakes.com/recipe/20267/spicy-almond-butter-brickle/

2/3 cup butter to 1 cup sugar has a higher butter percentage

that thought occurred to me from when I screwed up cookies and they seemed more like butter brickle

[BlackHatGuy]

Most keto recipes won’t really up the fat content, but rather lower the carb count (generally, in baking, by using sugar alcohols/substitutes instead of sugar), giving you a higher fat to carb ratio.

Also, from my experience, trying to add fat through either more butter or oil will generally give you a very ‘greasy’ cookie, which can really make a mess while out backpacking.

I’d leave the recipe alone, since you like it. You could always get some no-sugar, cinnamon-flavored nut butter in individual packets and make a sandwich out of two of the cookies and some of the nut butter ‘in the field’. That would easily add both calories and fat.

I also think Philip’s idea of gingerbread shortbread could work quite well.

[Matthew / BPL]

Yeah I like this plan of adding peanut/almond/sunflower butter to baked goods in the field. This has been a staple for a long time for good reason. It’s delicious.

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